Or of Light Sabers and Lutes
I can’t sing.
Or rather, I can, but birds drop out of the sky and trees lose their leaves in dismay. (I do sing, loudly and tunelessly, in the car, but the mechanic says it’s bad for the spark plugs.)
Music is beyond my grasp.
While my fingers are happy with pencils and brushes, they are clumsy around strings and keys. My voice, while it serves (even audibly on occasion) to make words, is tuneless and off key. (The most frequently asked question I get in conferences is: “Can you speak up, please?”; runner-up: “Can you repeat that please?”)
Happily, there are others in this family who have no such problems.
I often hear tales from people whose lament centers on their exclusion from their partners’ or familes’ vocations and obsessions. Wistful refrains about time spent on something from which they feel excluded. All-consuming passions they watch from afar, from the pages of a book they open always on the same page, or the sidelines of some arena of art or communication, all the time feeling they have been placed on life’s warm-up bench for the duration.
Very sad.
In our house, the studio is on the second floor. My wife, when she is not pushing pencils in the studio, is in the living room on the ground floor, practicing her singing. (She sings everywhere except in the car, though I’m sure it would do wonders for the engine.) Our son inhabits the lofty spaces of the floor above, and when he’s up there, music from all kinds of instruments filters down from above.
And it seems to me that these moments when they are giving themselves heart and soul to something I cannot do, and of which my understanding is exclusively based on what has rubbed off on me from them, are the moments when I feel the closest to them. (Admittedly, if they were more inclined to base jumping or deep-sea diving, my refrain might not be quite the same.)
It seems so strange, that when provided with a door held so wide on a world beyond, with a potentially eager guide at hand, people do not venture out. I only realize how many of my own interests are driven entirely by the interests of those around me. I’m slow to catch on, but when I do, I find myself, out of habit, hanging about areas long abandoned by their previous owners. I used to know ALL the names of dinosaurs, I could identify EVERY Star Wars 3 and three-quarter inch figurine, and still find myself picking up books on saurians in bookshops or wistfully surveying the blister packs in toy shops. Soon, however, I will know everything there is to know about archilutes and theorbos.
Even in midwinter, it’s always summer here, and the landscape is full of music and song.
CINEMASCOPE
A few more images from the documentary. We had a sneak preview the other day, and I am relieved to report that I was not cringing in dismay and consternation. (Even my foreign accent, which seems impervious to time and my most earnest endeavours to eradicate it, was not enough to make me plug my ears.)
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Left: The MANY steps up to the top of the donjon.
Centre: The Renaissance stairwell in the interior courtyard.
Right: Heading out. (Likely hoping there’s still a restaurant open nearby…)
