The present moment
Part of a conversation in a separate blog with two colleagues, Mary and CeCe.
On my hands and knees in the 50cm space between the shed and Sol’s studio… It’s hard on my knees, like when I knelt, in the boarding school chapel, more than 60 years ago ... I've fetched some unused potato sacks from the shed to act as cushions, but they don't help much … I’m changing the orientation of the roof tiles I’ve used as flooring in the gap, so that the valleys are parallel to the shed and studio walls, instead of at 90 degrees. This will make sweeping the autumn leaves out much easier … I’m listening to the Sibelius violin concerto through my hearing aids as I work … These hearing aids have been wonderful, as much for listening to music and podcasts as I garden and cook, as an aid to hearing what people are saying … Sibelius … Finland … Snow and lakes and mountains … Vikings … My father introduced to me to Sibelius, the 2nd Symphony and the Violin Concerto with violinist Ginette Neveu who was killed in a plane crash when quite young… Dad's World Club record had a golden jacket … I lift the tiles to reposition them, and the earth is teaming with small lizards and insects, scurrying to escape … I try to pick one up gently to move him out of harm’s way, but he wriggles off … The leaves will make good compost for my newly re-located compost bins … I’ve moved them because the fence with my neighbour is about to be replaced … Sol, now nearly 23, is painting in the studio … he’s so diligent, I admire his self-discipline, enjoy his obsession, like me as a young teacher … I find myself thinking more about my father ... I feel a surge of gratitude towards him for infecting me with his love of music … I see him standing in our sitting room with cigarette and whiskey at the end of a day at work, listening to a Handel Concerto Grosso, or getting me to listen to the miracle of a Mozart piece composed when Wolfgang was a teenager … Dad dead when he was younger than I am now … like him, I love the garden, the compost heap, the raking up of leaves, the digging of garden beds ready for spring … I’m suddenly aware of the bitter taste in my mouth … a new coffee machine, still unmastered … While I listen to Sibelius, I’m thinking about Deleuze and Berger and time, and notions of the present moment’s relationship with the past, of it being filled and formed by everything that has gone before, only a tiny fraction of which enters the consciousness. Tiles … insects … music … family … record covers … death … compost … coffee … landscapes … soil … each a tiny island in the midst of a vast unconscious sea.
Background music: Ginette Neveu playing Sibelius Violin Concerto in D minor, Opus 47.