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The Walking Listener

The Walking Listener

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For the last year I’ve been ambling not always silently and not always with music in my ears but sometimes with words in there too.  Thanks to the gift of Audible, I’ve walked to novels and meditations and nonfiction explications of our current economic woes. 

One day a neighbor stopped me on the street. I took out my ear buds to hear what she was saying. “You must be listening to a book,” she said. 

I wondered how she could tell. Did I have a furrowed brow of concentration? 

She could tell because she does, too. There must be some sort of aura we walking listeners give off that only other walking listeners can see. 

We chatted for a moment before going on our separate ways, at which point I put my ear buds back in and discovered that since I’d forgotten to push pause, the narrator was now several “pages” ahead of where I’d stopped. Just a small problem for the walking listener. 

The Ninth

The Ninth

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I hadn’t heard it in a while, and I caught only fragments on my drive to and from the post office last week. But there it was, the syncopated rhythm of the second movement on the way there and, on the way back, the first strains of the fourth movement.

Today is the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, and he will be well-represented on the radio —just as he would have been thundering through the concert halls, if those were open. If I’m lucky, I’ll find a way to hear his Ninth Symphony today, too.

But I doubt it will compare with last week’s performance. After arriving home, I rushed out for a walk, headphones in, classical station blaring, so that I could move through space as that sublime music moved through my brain. 

There was the first “Freude!” “Joy!” The soloists’ voices entwined and melodious, the pulsing timpani and the chorus filling my head with sound. And in that way, the ordinary walk became a celebration of life.

Tick Tock Tick…

Tick Tock Tick…

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I write to the sound of one clock ticking. That would be a lot of ticks in some houses, but in this house, it means we’re down by two clocks. It’s the cuckoo clock this time, the cuckoo I mourned in an essay long ago.

A year ago, when I was home alone for a couple weeks, I remember writing in my journal about the sound of three clocks ticking. It was like jumping rope double-Dutch or playing all three contrapuntal parts of a Bach fugue, the satisfying finger-twisting struggle of it all. 

It isn’t difficult to vibrate to one chord, to rock to one beat. I like to think that having multiple ticks and tocks keeps me limber, aurally speaking.

Time for the cuckoo clock repair shop.

Musical Chores

Musical Chores

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I’m always listening to music while walking with my iPod, but until recently I’d lost the ability to blare symphonies or musicals or folk tunes at home. But now, a jerry-rigged system is once again filling the house with sound. 

On Saturday morning, while putting away the groceries, it was Simon and Garfunkel’s “Old Friends.” “Bye-bye Love”  is a surprisingly apt tune for wiping down packages of peppers and strawberries and finding a place for them in the fridge. The “bye-bye” part is good for jettisoning leftovers.

Later in the day, I listened to Benny Goodman while chopping vegetables for potato-leek soup. “Sing, sing, sing” mimicked “Chop, chop, chop,” the driving bass beat perfect for making quick work with the potato peeler. Dad must have been behind the scenes for this pick, loving both food and Big Band.

And finally, while making pot roast in the crockpot, I matched the cool, foggy weather outside with the Hernon Brothers’ “Across the Sound,” an album picked up two summers ago on the isle of  Inishmore. 

Chores fly when they have a musical accompaniment. 

Playing a Scale

Playing a Scale

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In the meditation group at work, we’re beginning a two-week session on focus. It’s a skill many of us have lost, given the nature of the modern workplace, with emails, instant messages and other notifications pinging and zinging around us. All the more reason to give it a go. 

In the session that just ended we imagined the body as a scale, with various points — the ankles, solar plexus, chest and brow — as the notes. I struggled to visualize these “notes” in a way that wouldn’t bring PTSD from reliving the most difficult scales from my life as a piano student. (E major? B flat minor? I’ve forgotten so much that I no longer even remember which were most difficult!)

But never mind. The only “performance” that matters now is visualizing a light, like a bulb inside a shade, the narrator says, airy and spacious, touching all the “notes” along the scale. In time, we’ll be able to play this scale at will, simultaneously softening and sharpening our attention. In time, we’ll acquire focus. It sounds lovely — but I’ll believe it when I feel it.

Metronomic

Metronomic

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Today I was idling at an intersection, turn signal on, when I noticed how the tick-tick of the signal was in perfect sync with the meter of the Bach on the radio. I enjoyed the music even more with the pulse of 4/4 time reinforced in the car.  

My days of musical study are long since over, but I still find myself tapping out beats. If it’s not convenient to nod my head or tap my fingers, I move my toes quietly inside my shoes, as we were taught to do long ago in orchestra class. 

What strikes me then, and still seems true now, is how we live in rhythms of our own making and how music merely makes us aware of that lovely fact. It’s the rhythm of life — and it’s ours for the tapping. 

Brahms Second

Brahms Second

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A morning errand, almost there, the radio on a news station. It would be a long segment about something I didn’t want to hear, so I pushed button six on the dial. 

The car filled with Brahms, the Second Symphony, the finale. I hadn’t heard it in a while, had forgotten how sonorous Brahms can be, how you get swept up in the sound so that nothing else seems to matter.

I only heard the last 10 minutes of the work … but it was enough.

Noting the Passing

Noting the Passing

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The pianist Leon Fleisher died August 2 at the age of 92. I’ve written about him before, both as a pianist and writer. I even vowed to learn a piece of music because of watching him play it, a promise I have not kept, by the way. So the least I can do is honor the man here.

Fleisher was a master of reinvention: winning competitions as a prodigy, losing the use of his right hand, despairing for a while, then eventually remaking himself as a conductor, teacher and performer. The difficulty he faced almost sunk him — he considered suicide — but he emerged stronger as a result. 

“Time and again, I would look at my life and marvel that so many wonderful things had happened that never would have happened if my hand had not been struck down,” Fleisher wrote in his memoir Nine Lives. “I couldn’t imagine my life without conducting. I couldn’t imagine life without teaching so intensely.” 

Curiously enough, Fleisher’s obituary shared the page with that of another artist and master of reinvention. The film director Alan Parker directed several movies I’ve loved, such as “Fame” and “The Commitments,” movies that, until reading his obituary, I wasn’t even aware were his. Like Fleisher, Parker took risks, made changes, didn’t find a safe path and follow it but continued to learn and grow.

Two men, two creative careers, but one lesson (at least for me): Whatever you do, they say, don’t get stuck. 

Bustin’ Out

Bustin’ Out

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I’m not sure how much of my world view has been shaped by Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals — probably more than I would care to admit. Given that, perhaps I can be forgiven for hearing a certain refrain from “Carousel” pinging through my head these days.

“June is bustin’ out all over
All over the meadow and the hill
Buds are bustin’ outta bushes
And the romping river pushes
Every little wheel that wheels beside the mill

Because it’s June — June, June, June
Just because it’s June, June, June.

And my favorite verse:

June is bustin’ out all over
The sheep aren’t sheepish anymore
And the rams that chase the ewe sheep
Are determined there’ll be new sheep
And the ewe sheep aren’t even keeping score

Because it’s June — June, June, June
Just because it’s June, June, June!

All of which is to say … it’s a June-is-Bustin’-Out kind of day!

Wild Things

Wild Things

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On yesterday’s walk I marveled at the wildflowers — the daisies and clover and honeysuckle — how they hemmed the sidewalk along West Ox where I was huffing and puffing in the late afternoon humidity.

Last night, I fell asleep to a chorus of frog song, as the critters enjoyed a dousing in the thunderstorms that rolled through our area after dark.

Then this morning, Copper and I saw a fox cross the road in front of us. The creature trotted confidently through our neighbor’s yard, turning his head occasionally to stare at us, as if to ask, what are you doing here?

We live in a tame suburb of Washington, D.C. — but we are surrounded by wild things. And yes, they make everything groovy.


(A tip of the hat to the Troggs and their great one-hit wonder.)