Joyce Maier wrote:

>Well, obviously you're an excellent pupil of Freud.:-)

I think I can "play the game" as well as the next person, which doesn't
mean that I take it seriously!

>The crux in his digressions on the deafness is that at least partially
>it was not a physical disease, but something psychosomatic.  It was
>Beethoven's "task" to become deaf.  He "needed" his deafness.  It was an
>initiation rite to become a composer, but, alas, alas, he had to pay a
>price and quite a high one.

I see it now!  To be an effective spiritual minister to your flock, you
must forego marriage and sex.  To lead your people to the Promised Land,
you must sacrifice your own right to enter it.  To become the truly sublime
composer, the one to pile Osa on Pelion, you must surrender your capacity
to hear!

Walter Meyer