My Fiddle, My Friend, My Voice

Part 2: Speaking

My husband and I once watched a documentary about a young man living on a small farm in China with his mother. The two lived in exile from the village, as the people disapproved that he was not killed at birth, since he was malformed. On the son’s shoulder, close to his neck, lived a vestigial twin. It consisted only of a nose and mouth connected to the young man’s nervous system. When he laughed, the eerie twin’s mouth widened and its tongue rose and fell, just like its host’s. When the young man cried, his twin’s mouth crumpled in silent mimicry of sobs. Somehow this never-to-be-forgotten image explains to me the function I expected of my fiddle – except that it was going to express my emotions in sound, not physical mimicry. The vision now seems like an immature expectation full of beginner’s hubris, but not without truth.

Working with fourth and fifth graders last spring, I would ask, “If you were a space man, how would you guess that a human could talk?” Well, humans have mouths – openings in their bodies. They also have lungs that inflate and deflate, so air passes through the throat, changing tones as the muscles in the vocal chords expand and contract. The tongue shapes words, cooperating with teeth, lips.

The fiddle can also talk, or sing, in that it has two openings, the sound holes. (To call them F holes made the kids snicker, but let’s forget about that.) The wind, or vibrating force, is created by drawing across the fiddle strings with the bow. That the bow is made of a wand and a horse’s tail made eyes wide. The sound of the note you want to make, I told them, comes from shortening the fiddle string by stopping the sound in different places with the fingers of your left hand, analogous to the work of the vocal chords. (Of course I didn’t use the word “analogous,” but struggled to show with my fingers how the vocal chords work.) The function of articulation is not by tooth and tongue and lips then, but by the strokes of the bow, controlled precariously by the fingers of the right hand. Are the motions of the bow choppy and short? Are they long and resonating? Hard, soft, medium pressure applied?

Because I believe in the energy centers of the body known as chakras, I appreciate the space that the fiddle occupies when played. The fiddle sits under the chin, protrudes from the body, and becomes an extension of the neck, throat and upper chest. In energetic terms, it lies close to the fifth chakra – that of vocalizing the soul’s work of receiving, interpreting, and then giving back information based on one’s unique experience, worship, perception. The position also hovers about the fourth or heart chakra, the warm energy field that transforms experience into nourishment and also allows us to love and be loved by others. The fiddle, then, is the little twin who is capable of broadcasting intense expression.

When I was new to Irish fiddling, and would tell people I thought I had a lot to communicate on the fiddle, they responded cynically. My husband suggested I tape record myself playing a jig with great emotion, then play it a second time shifting my attention to control of my motor skills, then listen to the difference. What he predicted was true: the controlled piece sounded much “better” because the force of emotion made my playing sloppy. Taking what is inside and projecting it is one thing, but preparing the message to be received and understood by others is another time consuming process. Like learning language, it is a long journey from using beginner’s words and phrases in order to voice basic needs to communicating ideas in complex word groups, conveying specific and detailed information. An even deeper layer of language is culture-specific, using colloquial terms readily understood by members of a community that shares physical, social, and historical references.

It is between two poles – the technical and the emotional -- I’ve had to bounce back and forth, over and over the years, while a river of information from listening to other players runs through my body/mind memory: tempo, phrasing and variation, tone, articulation. Emotion. But I’m always working toward creating a fiddle voice that represents my feeling- world, couched in my relationship to Irish traditional music.

My Fiddle, My Friend, My Voice

Thoughts are bulging out of my head and they seem to be emerging in essay form. So: Caveat: only for those with a long attention span.

Part I Initiation and Immersion

What is fiddling? People say he or she is “just fiddling around,” meaning that someone is wasting time doing inconsequential stuff. Not busy at serious, goal-oriented pastimes. In this season of falling leaves, of trees standing naked, I feel close to the wood of my fiddle. Its grain is a kind of hieroglyph of wind and water; its glow the memory of sunshine pouring down through openings in the forest roof. I know that the work I have done in learning tradition fiddling is the result of following a strong spiritual urge to find a source. For a long time I thought that source was outside of me, but now I see it is also within me. It is a force that motivates others possessed of the similar madness.

Fiddling and traditional music in general comprise an invisible world that can only be known by devotion and perpetual practice. It is not like playing from written music, with its succinct instructions, nor is it much like performing in the symphony, led by a conductor who interprets the musical piece. In an orchestral setting, the musician is a worker under the instruction of different bosses. Ironically, this is the kind of musician most widely regarded as productive and exemplary. Many of them cannot learn strictly by ear, as traditional musicians do. Their music does not become completely internalized and must be summoned by external prompts. Not all, but many classically trained musicians rely on written music. How then, does the process of learning traditional music, of fiddling begin?

You go through a gate. As far as Irish traditional music, if you are not born in Ireland, or in an Irish community in America, where you may have been born into a family already steeped in music, the process begins randomly. It may be a traditional concert down by a lake, or a recording you hear at a party that rocks your world. For me, it was an LP played for me when I was deep in grief. The music – it was the Chieftains -- soaked into the broken place inside me, telling me that it knew me. It seemed to be speaking about what I was feeling. How did it do this? Irish traditional music is for me, and always will be, a language of the deeper life of the soul, spirit, heart: whatever words you want to use to name the currents that run through us all. There is a kind of instant attunement, not unlike falling in love.

After you enter through the gate, that initiation, there follows a long period of listening and learning. As well as yearning. Nothing will satisfy that longing except being where the music is played. Hopefully, you are able to find traditional music communities or individuals who have a repertory of tunes. It only takes two to transmit and receive the music. This period may last for decades, or a lifetime, as it has been with me. To be open, to listen, and learn – these are traits which bind us to the world in a thoughtful way in general, not just in music. During the immersion period, waves of sound wash over the consciousness, each wave focusing, illuminating, until finally a clearer picture of the tune forms and curves begins to emerge. There is something pure about this period, as one listens holistically, allowing the colors and feelings of the tunes to come in, without judging or parsing out according to one’s acquired likes and dislikes. This sensory data will continue to cling to the tunes, including time, place, people, odors, emotions, in the same process that Proust’s madeleines sent him time-tripping, and indeed to question the nature of time itself. In time, the tunes provide an inner landscape rich in imagery: a kind of bank, or inner wealth of tunes that will demand to be played.

THE DRUMS AGAIN

I wrote these lyrics in 1977, when I was involved with the (successful!) movement against a proposed coastal nuclear power plant in Charlestown, RI. The song came back to me this morning, thinking of the brave ones now speaking out for balance, sanity, and the renewal of faith between earth and mankind.

CHARLESTOWN DRUMS

I will stand from my chair

Slowly I will shame the frozen air,

Set my words flying;

Speak the truth and hope it will appear

Before my dying.

The tires and the tractors shock the silence of the stone

Businessmen recite the words their fathers never owned

Every soul, believing it is ruthlessly alone,

Forgets the future.

I walk beside my children

Toward the light I took for granted as a child

The light of morning

My feet retrace the pathways

With the quickness of a rabbit’s beating heart

Beneath the meadow.

Inside smoky offices the Big Ones make their plans

Replace thoughts of balance with the deity of Man

Leaving to the poets all the reverence for land –

They’re dead, not dreaming.

The silence of the forest is the music

Of the senses breathing slow

You’re bound to listen

The sunrise on the ocean is the promise

Of the wedding of all hearts

Choir of color.

As the constellations weave the magic of the stars,

Brilliant white of Venus and the burning red of Mars,

All the earth is shining with the vision that is ours

If we just listen.

copyright cathy larson sky 2011

HIGH SUMMER BLUES

No blog entries lately because it has been all I could do to survive the storms and heat of summer. Finally I was able to give voice to my feelings with this poem. Sometimes I find myself channeling the rhythms and language of the Romantic poets, because I love them, especially Blake, Keats, Wordsworth, and Shelley.

SUMMER’S GAZE (The Mole's Lament)

The naked gaze

Of August days

Strips away the subtle shades:

The timid Spring,

The elphin glades.

The brutal sun

The Shining One

Robs every private breath

The lungs possess

Till leaves succumb,

And meet their death.

I flee this heat

On tiny feet

On naked pink and scurrying toes

I dig, I borrow in the loam

Seeking cool and fragrant home.

While in the sky

Great hawks do fly

Regarding, with most bitter eye

The prey below

And limbs that blow

The clouds of pollen to and fro.

These yellow clouds

That blur the sight

This yellow sun that drives the night

From resting place on hill and dale

And strips the fields of summer yields

And burns the skin once fresh and pale.

Summer, with your staggering heat

Crueler more than Winter’s cold

Merciless, your summer storms

Your rattling, shattering skies unfold

Burst and boom through every room

And keep the gentle child afraid

There is no silence in the trees

But drums of wings the insects made.

Sick of light, I long for dark

Lapis, cobalt, purple, ink

Poems writ of indigo

The dome'd void, the stars that wink.

BLACKBERRY WINTER

The mountain people call it Blackberry Winter. Just as the first pure white blossoms appear on the vines, the temperature drops and the weather stays chilly for quite a few days. I enjoy this temporary halt in the mad growth and greening. It is a quiet pause before the earth yields to the riot of fecundity we call summer. The scent of wild roses, also in bloom, is piquant and pure in this cocktail of oxygen and cool, damp air.

Once again I take out companionable sweaters or reach for my homespun afghan in the night when the temperatures dip low enough to require extra covers on the bed. The pup, nearly grown, shivers in the mornings and regresses to her need to cuddle on a lap, burrowing into a soft blanket. These pleasures seem superior to the constant beckoning of the outdoors during spring and summer. The people of Spruce Pine are devoted gardeners, both of veggies and flowers, and the sight of their handiwork puts my hours of fiddling or journaling to shame. Dig in the earth, people tell me. Send away for catalogs. Plan your garden. It’s very therapeutic.

I want to belong to this community, but the lust for coffeehouses, cafes, films, and bookstores is still strong in me, though it’s now almost four years since we left our urban lifestyle in Chapel Hill to live here in relative isolation from The Stuff. I am weak and spend time shopping on the internet now that our limited budget and the soaring price of fuel makes the one hour trip to Asheville a luxury rather than a casual option to simple country days. I should be buying tomato plants but I’m on eBay looking for a spring handbag.

Owning acreage on the side of a mountain was not one of my life goals, but now that it has happened, I find it has ups and downs like any relationship. Some days I am overcome with love for the familiar trees, the rushing of the creek after a good rain, the mounds of quartz embedded in the soil, the shining flecks of mica everywhere. Others, the silence and beauty do not call me. Instead I long for the stimulation and buzz of culture. My heart is here; my mind wanders elsewhere.

BIRD BOP

Finch upside down on a thistle sock

A whistle stop

For bird a flutter, bird a twitter

Hoppy, pecky

Bird-zipping, low flying

Tiny beak, tail-flick:

Birds, snow, seed, feed.

Puffed out peck’ums.

Touche-touche

Dart/swoop/flutter

Fat Jack on a couple o’ tacks

Hop-sticks,

Keep a movin’

Down/up, birds up down

Peck’um.

copyright cathylarsonsky 02/2011

THE DOLL CHAIR

People seldom sat in her,

The Doll Chair

She lived by the hearth,

Facing outward,

She partnered the television

Two sibling watchers,

One on squat claw feet,

The other a grey orb

Observing the Living Room

At my grandparents’ house,

With its worn Regency grandeur

Its well-trod carpets

And fragrances delicious and kind,

Waved inside by the swinging kitchen door.

On Christmas morning

The doll I wanted,

Had longed for

All those other seasons

Appeared in the Doll Chair,

Its small arms extended,

Next to my sister’s choice,

And our two Christmas stockings

Bulging with treats.

That was the miracle of having.

But before came the miracle of waiting.

Christmas eve,

On the foldout in Pop Pop’s study

Sister and I lay bug-eyed

While headlights from our cars

And the neighbors’ cars

Lit the darkness behind white nylon curtains

Made dancing panels on the high ceiling

And whispers came and went

Muted fluttering from the other

Regions of the limitless house.

In the mysterious night

I lie sleepless, alive to every sound.

My sister’s quiet breath beside me

I can’t wait but I do

Knowing that my wish is going to come true

That magic is about to happen

I am present to the velvet darkness

In an ever-new, ever changing way.

And it seems to me now

That my child mind believed less in Santa

Than in my ability to make appear,

By my dreaming and my desiring,

The most cherished of earthly things.

The Doll Chair a portal

For the bright, the new, the shining.

She is mother love

She is the full-petaled rose of possibility

Of gifting, of renewal.

On a New Year’s morning she reminds me of what is gone

And the possibility of what yet might be

Unseen now

But roiling in my heart to appear

Tiny flashes of clarity in the sleepless night

Reassurance of what may come

What may yet come.

copyright cathylarsonsky jan 2011