From 2005:
I found this note from an old friend, written apropos of a recent posting: “I felt, during my chemotherapy, that I lived in the Goldberg Variations, because it was the universe.”
I’ve never undergone chemotherapy (though I’ve watched it being given many times), but I have had a not entirely dissimilar experience with Bach’s Goldberg Variations. If you’re going to have mystical experiences accompanied by a piece of music, I guess you can’t do much better than the Goldbergs, and should the time ever come when I find myself in an extremity as dire as being on the business end of chemotherapy, I hope I’ll have the presence of mind to recall that reassuring fact….
Read the whole thing here.