celtic_writer

Sound

Went to DC tonight, to the auditorium at National Geographic, to hear young musicians play traditional Irish music in a presentation called "An Irish Christmas in America."

There were photos of Ireland splashed upon the wall behind the players as they performed. It was wonderful and mysterious, haunting and joyous. A gift. A whistle of old performed by the new.

The Irish recognize sound as their heredity. Proust said memory is in taste, but for the Celts, it is the pulse of the drum, the scream of the pipes, the shrill of a thin penny whistle. All a celebration of good, as well as what is painful. Notes contributing to the recognition of being.

This sound is in the blood, passed on through the genes. Music is story. And story is life.

Years ago, I read an explanation about people who live on islands. They feel they have no escape, so they take on the world as a chip on their shoulder, double-dog daring anyone to knock the block off.

And then they head west, towards heaven, a direction the Celts professed the unknown to be. And the journey brings knowledge. And softening.

It is past midnight here in Mason Neck. The sound is quiet. The crescent moon is gold.

They forecast freezing rain and sleet for tomorrow. I will wait it out.

Chatwin's Folded Pages

Saturday night, soon to be Sunday. Adjusted a Web app for a client today, then ate a steak with salad. Labbie Walt and I went for a walk. Leaves have finally fallen from trees, and the wind in Mason Neck blows them about.

Before I fall asleep these nights, I pick up a book, as always. And lately it's been the re-reading of nomad Bruce Chatwin, a Brit who left the society of Sotheby's so he could wander around the world to see what was really going on.

I originally found Bruce Chatwin in a bookstore, his tome on a table marked "for $2.00 or less." It was a book about Welsh brothers called On the Black Hill. It was his only work officially marked "fiction." I didn't want it to end.

There may be better writers in this world, but this man tells great stories. When he was a child, he discovered "a piece of brontosaurus" on display in his grandmother's "glass-fronted dining room cabinet." This treasure was "thick and leathery, with strands of course, reddish hair." It was a creature that "lived in Patagonia." His grandmother's cousin, "Charley Milward the Sailor, found it." Eventually the experience sparked a book called In Patagonia. I hope some day you get the chance to read it.

What I like about Chatwin is that he makes me fold the page corners of his books. An action spawned by a phrase I want to remember, wish I had written, a few words I can return to that make me think. While reading "Among the Ruins" last night, he wrote about a man named Axel Munthe, a Swedish physician descended from Scandinavian "bishops and burgomasters" who made an escape to the island of Capri. There he bought a villa, and made it into his own. Chatwin quotes Munthe:

"The place is small. It was built by me on the principle that the soul needs more room than the body..."

The soul needs more room than the body. When taking that sentence to heart, how can anyone on this planet need to be kept hostage, in business, or in life?