THINKING THROUGH MY FINGERS: The Face Looking back From The Mirror

Tuesday 12 December 2017

The Face Looking back From The Mirror

He gazed into the mirror, the reflected face was familiar but for the life of him he couldn’t remember to whom it belonged. The room reflected in the glass was also unknown; was he in a hotel? He ran his hand along his cheek, watching the reflected hand as it moved and felt the stubble of his whiskers and from the recesses of his mind a voice seemed to whisper, “You need a shave”. As his hand moved he saw the ring – somehow he knew that it was a wedding ring, but who was he married to?

He turned away from the mirror which hung over a chest of drawers. In front of him was a single bed and in the corner an easy chair and a TV set. On the wall were several large, framed photographs depicting smiling men in bow ties and women in glamorous gowns. He had an uneasy feeling that he should know these people but although he stared at them, there was no spark of recognition. He took the three steps across the room to the set of book and photograph filled shelves. He looked at the spines of the books. Again, there was something vaguely familiar about them but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. Picking up one of the framed photographs he held it to the light from the window so that he could see it better. It was, he knew instantly, a wedding photo – black and white – two smiling unknown people standing arm in arm. He picked up the other photo - a group of people – a family group, two older people, some younger and three or four children. Who were they and why were they in this room? What was this room? Where was everybody? Where was he?

The photographs still in his hand, as he looked out of the window. A lawn lay below with a garden seat with two strangers sitting on it – should he know them? Was it his garden? What were these strangers doing in his garden? He shook his head – it all looked so familiar and yet so unknown; he turned and walked back to the chest of drawers. At the side of the drawers, by the wall mirror, was a tall CD rack filled with CDs. On top of the chest was a CD player, its digital display blinking: 16:23. He pulled open one of the drawers, it was neatly filled with socks and handkerchiefs; he opened another drawer – underwear. He moved along the wall to where there were two doors in the wall and slid one open. It was a built in wardrobe and inside the man vaguely recognised shirts and trousers hanging on the hangers. Were these for him, he wondered? Returning to the drawers he put the two photographs down and looked closely at the CDs. He knew what these were but their titles seemed completely new. He pulled one out of the rack and opened the box, the silver disc immediately catching the sun’s rays making a rainbow effect. He instinctively knew that the disc had to go into the CD player but had no idea how to do this. He looked at the tiny controls, the buttons and dials – he pressed one to no effect. Then he turned one of the dials; no effect. He pressed another button and immediately the room was filled with the crashing sound of heavy rock music. Instantly, without thinking the man’s fingers automatically shot back to the dial and spun it back – the music died. And he stood there – hopelessly confused. What was happening to him in this strange place where nothing seemed to make sense? His mind tried to grapple with this unknown place and the things that he didn’t know.

Picking up the photographs he sat on the bed gazing in front of him. At the side of the bed stood a digital clock, its numerals telling him that it was 16.27 and under the digits flickered Tues. 14 May. “Soon be time for tea”, the man caught himself thinking. “I wonder what we’ve got? Can’t smell it cooking ....maybe Pam’s at the shops”. He looked around. In the far distance he could just hear the occasional voice. He called out “Pam, is that you, love? What’s for tea – is it sausages, it always is on Tuesday?” Silence. He gazed in front of him, waiting for Pam to return from the shops.

Spotting the CD player again he stood and peered at the controls. Taking the CD which was still lying on top of the drawers he read the title: Robert Schumann: Lieder Op. 12, 13, 25, 42. Barrowdale (Piano) & Davies (Soprano). There was something familiar about this but he couldn’t think what. He read the words on the front of the player: EQUALISER, PLAY, OPEN, CLOSE, VOL, TUNER, FM, AM, PRESET, ..... and then dabbed his finger at PLAY. Nothing. He pressed it again and held it. Nothing. He pressed EQUALISER. Nothing. OPEN – nothing. His frustration mounting he feverishly pressed other buttons and then, as if by magic, little blue lights came on and the screen lit up. How had that happened? Had he pressed the right button – and, if so, which one? Somewhere deep down a voice said “Take it slowly” – so starting on the left he pressed each button in turn until hey presto! - a little drawer magically opened and without thinking about it the man expertly dropped the silver disc into the drawer. But what to do now? He was just about to start pressing buttons again when, of its own accord, the drawer slid silently shut swallowing the CD and on the little screen above the drawer came a list of numbers, 1-16 and the words PRESS PLAY. He obeyed and pressed the PLAY button but all was silent. Instinctively knowing that he should be hearing something he concentrated – he knew he had to do something, but what? Then in a flash it came to him and he slowly turned the dial labelled VOL and as he did so he heard a sound that he knew as clearly as he knew his own voice. He stood transfixed, his lips silently mouthing the words coming from the woman’s voice on the player.

The song ended, but even before the next one began the man was quietly singing its words as he sat on the bed, tears streaming down his face. He listened, the voice gently ringing in his ears; he knew these songs so well, but from where? He knew this woman’s voice like his own but who was she? The woman, he knew, was singing in German and he quietly sang with her, he too, in German. Then, in a break in the singing, when only a piano was playing, he fell silent his fingers moving as they played an invisible piano, anticipating and replicating every note the piano on the CD played.

He was still sitting “playing” and quietly singing the words in unison with the CD when, ten minutes later, there was a gentle knock and a woman slipped into the room. She kissed the man on the cheek. “How are you Dad” she asked “What part of your murky past are you reliving today! Are you ready?” She smiled, walked over to the drawers and picked up the empty CD box and carried it back to the bed where she sat. “Oh, that’s nice”, she said, “I always liked this recording – you and mum at Snape in 1960.” The man looked confused – “Me and Mum? What do you mean – whose Mum? What’s Snape?” The woman, smiling, put her arm around him. “Oh Dad, what are you like, what are we to do with you! We have this conversation every day!” She held up the CD box so that he could see the picture: a man and a woman, a piano lit by a spotlight and the title David Barrowdale (Piano) Pamela Davies (Soprano) at Snape Maltings. Schumann Lieder. “That’s you and mum when you were young, Dad – you were a concert pianist and Mum sang in all the opera houses. Look, all your CDs are on the shelf. And look at the photo on the wall behind us – that’s you and Mum with Benjamin Britten at that Snape Maltings’ recital” The woman walked to the shelf and picked more CDs – “Look, that’s you doing the Rach. 2 with the Phil, and here’s Mum at La Scala, and, oh, my favourite, Mum when she played Butterfly at Covent Garden and you conducting. “Don’t you really remember any of it, Dad?”

David looked at the CD boxes and then at the woman and then, hardly audibly he muttered “Who are you..... where am I.... where’s Pam? Is it sausages tonight? I think today’s Tuesday and it’s always sausages on Tuesday.” The young woman smiled, but in her smile there was a tear as she hugged him tightly and didn’t want to let him go as she whispered in his ear “I’m your daughter, Clara, Dad. Don’t you remember? You and Mum named me after Clara Schumann, the wife of Robert Schumann, you both so loved his music; that’s what we are listening to now”. Clara stood up and walked over to the shelves and pulled out a large album. “Look – these are the old programmes and reviews of you and Mum”. David looked at the faded mementos: he read the words but had no understanding: New York Met, Royal Albert Hall, Covent Garden, La Scala.... . He looked at Clara – “But where’s Pam” he asked “it’s Tuesday, is she cooking sausages?” Clara looked at him and gently smiled. “Pam’s dead, Dad. Mum died almost ten year ago”. A tear ran down David’s face as he looked forlornly at Clara; “I want to go home now”, he said. Suddenly he stood, “I’m going home, I’ll be late. It’s sausages on Tuesday. I’ll be in trouble if I’m late. Don’t want the sausages to go cold. Where’s my coat”?

Clara sighed, she knew that she had to go with the flow. “That’s fine Dad. Oh! Look at the time, it’s almost five, we’ll be late. Let’s get your tie on. Can’t go out looking like that! What will Pam say?” David stood while Clara buttoned his shirt and expertly tied the bow tie brought from the chest of drawers. She ran a comb through his whispy hair and held his jacket for him and then stood back looking at him. She smiled, kissed him on the cheek and said, “You’ll do”. And the two of them, arm in arm walked through the door and into the corridor.

Fifteen minutes later Clara stood at the back of the communal lounge with the manager of the care home for retired musicians. Every seat was filled – as always. Each Tuesday and Friday at 5 o’clock for six years her father had given a tea time recital to the other residents before they all sat down to dinner. David Barrowdale’s recitals were high spots of the week. He sat, at the piano, again in a world that his crumbling, long lost, mind knew so well. Clara never knew (and suspected that neither did her father) what he would play; today, she recognised Bach’s 48 Preludes & Fugues, so much part of her childhood - she had listened to them daily while growing up as David, like all concert pianists, had played the “48” for his daily practice. But at other care home recitals he might play one of the great piano concertos or some Chopin or Mozart – whatever flitted through his far away mind until Clara or the manager gently intervened. For an hour David was again centre stage, inhabiting a world that made sense to him, his fingers flying across the keys, his body moving with the music; all thoughts of sausages and going home gone. And afterwards Clara would eat with him in the dining room, and then, as they did several times each week, they would play the CD player and quietly relive his past. She would show him the photographs, always hoping that some spark would register but knowing that it would not. She would talk about him and Pam, and her brother and about David’s grandchildren and he would smile and nod but say little, while his fingers – as they did each time they sat listening to the CDs - played the invisible piano, perfectly in time and tune with the long lost pianist on the CD.

Tony Beale May 2017

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Marks on a Page

I have always loved the sound and feel of words. I’m sure that I didn’t understand most of what I was singing when, as a child, I stood in school assembly each morning singing from the great Ancient & Modern Hymnal but I can still vividly remember being gripped, excited and mesmerised by the power and beauty of the words in front of me: “Immortal, invisible, God only wise, In light inaccessible, Hid from our eyes, Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days, Almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise”. How could one not be moved and excited by those words? Or, as a callow teenager from the back streets of a northern industrial town I was, I remember, bowled over by the simplicity and beauty of Robert Browning’s wonderful evocation of a spring morning in his short verse Pippa’s Song: The year's at the spring ,And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in His heaven — All's right with the world! If that doesn’t make you feel good about the world and about mankind then you really are a lost cause!

My world in those far off days was seldom, if ever, one of dew pearled hillsides or larks or snails on thorns; it was a world of endless grim rows of terraced houses, of the smoke belching factory chimneys and pavements vibrating as you walked past the mighty cotton factories such as Horrockes’. The very earth shuddered beneath your feet when you walked past these dark satanic mills; the great looms pounding out as they wove the cotton cloth which, as I was often reminded by my aunty and mother – both weavers, - was why “England’s bread hung by Lancashire’s thread”.

But I loved those words – the sound of them, the feel of them, they way they looked on the page, the visions that they conjured up in my young mind - the great hymns of my school days, poetry such as Browning’s, books such as Treasure Island or Children of the New Forest took me to other places and other lives far away from the dark satanic mills of northern England. And I have never lost that love and fascination with words. When I sit in a Mozart opera or a Shakespeare play or enjoy a musical such as Les Mis I am quite mesmerised at the cleverness of it – the production the costumes, the energy......but most of all the words; their beauty, power, how they "fit" the music or the context; I find them both compelling and often overpowering.

Now, as teacher long retired, I look back on my years in the classroom. I can still quote the words from many of the poems and books that I read to children and the lessons that I taught. Nothing gave me a greater thrill than when the class were hanging onto every word – whether it be a fun poem like The Hairy Toe, one of the great children’s poems such as The Highwayman or wonderful children’s books such as Alan Garner’s Elidor – a classic of fear and magic that leaves Harry Potter looking a pale, limp imitation – or Meindert DeJong’s evocative and beautifully written The Wheel on the School. Even today I still get the occasional email from a past pupil who remembers being in my class perhaps thirty or forty years ago and still remembers with excitement or affection a particular book or poem that we read or listened to.

But, today, in the eighth decade of my life, I am saddened when I look around me and see how language and words, through carelessness, neglect or action, are being debased and devalued. The impact of text messaging/email and the like, a lack of care with diction and pronunciation, a desire for “plain English” (a euphemism for an easy, shallow vocabulary and structure) and the lauding in the media and in public life of people who in the misguided name of equality, speak “the language of the people” – often coarse, badly structured and poorly expressed – is for me source of worry and regret. The ability to communicate through language – be it spoken or written - is largely what separates us from the animal kingdom; it is why humanity has developed to the stage that it has. It is the secret of how we think and act – without language and effective communication with others we could not think, act, understand or create in the way that we do.

Yet the opportunities for using and developing language are so great today; as I sit writing this I can in a few seconds put it onto my blog and through the magic of the internet it is immediately available to everyone in the world should they care to look. What would Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Darwin, Aristotle, Dickens or Milton have thought of that? What would the men like Johannes Gutenberg who half a millennia ago laboured – often in great fear of persecution - to print the first books and so bring the printed word to Europe have thought of that? They would have marvelled – and yet we, today, show scant regard and an increasing tendency to not value it. We have a President of America – the most powerful and influential man in the world - who is functionally illiterate. But people believed that it was wise to vote for such a man and months after his election still tolerate his ignorance; and more worryingly, he is happy to display his linguistic deficiencies and his ignorance to the whole world. It really is a perfect illustration of the Emperor's new clothes where millions are so easily taken in by the obviously false and trivial.

We live in an increasingly complex and interdependent world and in order to make sense of that world and to function within it, to make the right decisions when we vote or when we listen to those who would lead or influence us we need to understand the complexities and nuances of language. Sadly, society across the western world, but especially in the UK and USA, is becoming lazy, uncaring or dismissive of this important fact. We will all, in the longer term, suffer and pay for it.

And as I get older I increasingly feel the need to write things down – not particularly to help me remember things, important though that is – but rather to leave my humble scratching on the page just as the first cave men drew their wall pictures to retell their story, and later hooded monks wrote beautiful manuscript to retell the Bible stories, and then great authors, scientists, playwrights, travellers, journalists, philosophers, politicians, poets and the rest recorded their ideas, created imaginary worlds, and spread mankind’s knowledge. This blog is my digital equivalent of marks on the page – my words and those of others.

Tuesday 12 December 2017

The Face Looking back From The Mirror

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