The Rationality of Music
I grew up thinking music wasn't all that important in my family.
It wasn't pervasive like the argumentative silence-- the constant grudge that was held against communication and creativity in general. But I was wrong. Impressions leave a mark, and they are only half-truths, empty indentations, before the long paragraph that would follow as explanation.
Music was part of our myth, after all; the Polyphemus, kneeling, before sound.
I grew up believing I wasn't musical, and competitive as is my nature, I was determined to make up for that deficit. I asked Mother for a flute one year. The year before they would have selected openings for Band. I was eight.
Flute, sax, clarinet, trumpet, or drums. Those were the options for tutoring.
"Ask your grandfather," was the monotone answer behind the magazine, after a long sip of homemade latte. Mother liked a little coffee with her heavy cream, between the lazy trailings of her red tipped dragon companion. Newports.
Her father, Bruno, with deference, was one step from church and God Almighty--
he was Bank.
Promptly, my grandparents returned from a trip to Europe with a lovely hand carved wooden recorder. (Flute, sax, clarinet, trumpet or drums, remember? unless trying out for string orchestra.) Sigh. I was disappointed. I had no natural ear; otherwise maybe I'd be already mimicking bits of Mozart... with all humility, I knew I needed lessons.
Mother played the piano; and refused to teach us. The basics, to me and my sister. Finger positions, chords...
"I'm not good enough," she sighed pushing some junk mail from side to side.
I persisted.
I wanted a flute. For a very specific pragmatic reason.
It's odd the way things metaphorically distort mentally, in the eye. Stress. They say children lose their distance-vision as a defensive response--to things they fear to see or wish to shut out of their lives.
Listening intently to the inside.
I don't condemn them for it, philosophically. Our parents refused to get us glasses, though both my sister and I "clearly needed" them by mid-elementary years. The admonishment was that the crutch of lenses would make the myopic condition irreversible.
As might be imagined, it made school difficult-- not seeing the board, or math problems, or oncoming persons, or gym balls, etc., etcetera.
I strategized that a flute would secure the comfortable "convincing" distance I'd need to actually see the music sheets, and discretely learn the notes, in sound and name, and the corresponding finger positionings... Music is dynamic like that...
The Bank, reconsidered.
And gave me a beautiful, old, imported Stradivarius.
It was gorgeous. Red carved and lacquered wood with requisite horsehair bow and an amber block of intoxicating pine-scented rosin. They immediately encouraged me to take it out of its ornate case and hold it, under the chin proper, with arms extended... my nine-year-old heart breaking at every silent punctuation of the natural dimensions required.
No, I could not see the music sheet to save my life.
Not only did I have no natural talent to "play by ear," but now with musical notation in front of my face, I was a certified idiot.
I was just awful. Mrs. Bobiak all but said so.
I practiced of course, at home, at odd angles, to memorize the songs so as not to mortify myself, in front of peers, but time and time again, if asked to start at some arbitrary point (on paper) I was at a loss... f*k if I knew what note was what where, and somehow Mrs. Bobiak never grasped that I could not see the sheet...
My sister, on our Father's insistence for fairness, was also given a Stradivarius, the subsequent year; to her bewilderment; and she took the thing with emotional distance. She never saw the issue. She was musical, and voice was her preferred instrument.
As for the violin, she seldom practiced.
To wrap this part of the torturous history, a brief stint in foster care, as well as court appointed healthcare, landed us both in unfashionable, but functional eyeglasses. My sister made rapid progress. Mrs. Bobiak said so and smiled politely at my continued ineptitude.
I continued to grow up believing my family really didn't care for music...
All the perquisites were there, but surrealistically misplaced.
Father, on his part, had recorded with a band of his own devising (...Ciche Mnichi, meaning The Silent Monks) in which he played Banjo. Our family house had a modest collection of unplayed vinyl with the standby labels and titles, Elvis, Roy, Aretha, Beatles, etc... here respectability shattered... the expensive stereo was as if permanently transfixed to a leaky corner of the living room, where water seeped from the cathedral ceiling and made it semi-operable... and upstairs in the library closet, audio cassettes number in the 100's including four sometimes five copies of identical albums... maniacally... still sealed in cellophane, and those hard plastic wrap around handles designed to prevent theft....
And the greatest treasures, of lyric and instrumentals, were bootleg. Wojtek Mlynarski. Maciej Zembaty, Edith Piaf, Leonard Cohen, among others. And some that got transferred over, and over to fresh blanks... Like ABBA and 100 of the World's Most Beautiful Melodies...
As it turned out, Father cared so much for music that he would rather play it in his memory, than suffer a washed-out reality over poor equipment or disintegrated copy. He told me, when he could not suffer another note by Aula Babdul (*on poor mix tape containing the otherwise esteemed Paula Abdul).
Which explains, in part, why music was listened to primarily in the car...
It was Mother who surprised me most, years later... when she met my husband, music fanatic Bunny Villaire, and it turned out they spoke as if the same language, like veritable encyclopedias, referencing fairly obscure gems of music recording...
Mother even voiced the title on his mind an hour before our wedding as he searched his files for just tune as I descended the stairs...
"...play the Power of Love," she suggest. "Perfect," he answered, setting the needle.
I understand now that love of music is kept locked, close to the heart, and emerges at times, spiritually like Gospel or Jazz, improv.
And it is beautiful to take part in Song, whatever the genre; and its counterpart.
The track that comes to mind, as haunting my music experience: