Tag Archives: song

Twice upon a Time

By Posted in Books, Life, Literature, Work by Others, writing Tagged , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

 

Once upon a time, an old man travelled by train from the goldfields to the great city. The old man took his seat and looked around. Seated at a remove in a row parallel to his sat a younger man with a bony face, his features stony and set hard. His limbs were a living art gallery of tattoos; unlike all others aboard the train he wore no mask and, when asked to show his rail pass to the conductor, he did not speak, did not move, but showed no ticket. The old man felt a sense of implicit menace, not only on account of the younger man’s scowl, but in his very silence, and somehow in his unseasonable short pants and t-shirt, as if he declared he was tougher than others,  rugged up against the cold of the day.

 

Nobody challenged the Man of Silent Menace.

 

 

About twenty minutes into the journey the old man smelled smoke. It wafted his way from the parallel seats. He stood and looked for signs of fire. He found none. No-one else seemed perturbed. The old man hoisted his backpack and walked out of that carriage and into the next. He left behind him the smell of smoke and the Man of Menace, and we too leave them now, as they play no further part in our story. The old man walked out and into a different story.

 

 

In the next carriage the old man found an empty corner where he sat down and started to read. He heard a voice and, wondering, he looked up. He didn’t catch the words for he was an old man, but he thought he heard ‘looking stylish’.

He turned in the direction of the voice, which was feminine in register, and he found himself facing a young woman who had, indeed, addressed him. The young woman was slightly built, her hair was red and she had freckles dotting her face and arms. Her face was covered, as the man’s was, by a mask. An open laptop computer sat on her knees.

 

 

The old man, surprised, because few over his long lifetime had remarked favourably on his ‘style’, asked the woman: Did you speak to me? I’m afraid I didn’t hear clearly.

I said you look stylish.

Golly, thought the man.

Thank you, said the man.

Yes, the cool jacket, the beret. Especially the beret.

 

The man thanked her again, and asked, (because he was interested in such things), What are you writing?

A story, she replied. I hope it will become a novel. Would you like me to read you some?

The old man said yes, I would. Thank you.

 

 

The old man thought, What a fearless young person!

The young woman now picked up her computer, her pink tote bag, her backpack and a fluffy jacket and removed from her corner diagonally opposite the man’s, and sitting herself down opposite him, almost knee to knee, started to read.

 

 

The young woman read musically and expressively. Her story told of a father and his young daughter. The father, a magician, delighted his daughter with the magic he practised. He created a world where her mind dwelled in fantasy. The father commanded his daughter never, never to open the trunk which contained his magician’s materials. His tone was tender but firm. The man departed, leaving the trunk in the care of his daughter.

 

 

The daughter felt tempted. She too wished to work magic, for she knew that despite the doubts of many, magic was real, its actions were everywhere to be seen, if only one had eyes to see.

 

 

The temptation was stronger than the daughter’s resistance. In truth she did not try to resist; she wanted to do what her father did, she wanted to know what he knew.

The girl opened the trunk.

 

 

At this point the storyteller closed her laptop and looked up at the old man with a question in her gaze. For his part, the old man had fully entered the world of the story and was sorry that it had stopped. He felt surprised at himself for, being a prosaic old man, he held no belief or interest in the world of magic. He said, I like your story. I liked the atmosphere you created and I’m interested in your characters and in how their relationship will play out. If I had been reading this story I would want to read on. I’d want to learn what happened next. There will be consequences of the child’s action, and I imagine, of the father’s trust or  his trial of the child.

 

 

The young woman smiled with pleasure. 

 

 

The old man ventured: I’ve published a few books.
Wow! Where can I find them?

You can check out my blog.

Your blog! Wow!

 

 

The old man asked if she was a student. She said I’m doing a degree in Creative Writing and Film, at uni. The man asked the author where she had boarded the train. She named an exquisite mountain village in the vicinity. She went on to describe the farmlet where she and her fearless brother were raised and still live. She spoke of the animals, all of which bore names, she spoke of her creative parents – musicians – who passed on the gifts of music to their children. She said, Dad mowed a maze into the acres and acres of grass behind the house. We grew up in enchantment and imagination. As she spoke she glowed with recall of a childhood of wonder.

 

 

The old man thought the woman’s lived idyll somehow echoed the idyll she created in her story. He asked, do you make music too? Oh yes, we all do, we play and sing. I’m in a band. We’re going to cut an album. I write my own songs. Would you like to hear one?

Yes. Choose a sad one.

 

 

In asking her to sing to an audience of only one, the man was testing the limits of the young person’s boldness. But she gave voice, sweetly, to the story of an intimate friendship which ebbed and flowed in pain and closeness and ended in estrangement. I hate you/ I love you – she sang. The old man found the song and the singing unexpectedly pleasant. He anticipated the usual tuneless jingle and the usual trite lyrics, but this was bright and sweet and heartfelt, without becoming mawkish. He said as much.

 

 

The young woman was greatly pleased. She confided in him about her current girlfriend, throwing in, as if to assure the old man or herself – but I’ve had a boyfriend before her. We were together for four years. I realised I’m not binary.

 

 

The old man asked, Would you like to hear a poem? It’s a poem about a weeping man, he said. Probably a sad man, like the person in your song. Yes, please, she replied.

 

 

The old man read to her Les Murray’s poem, An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow. The young woman listened without moving, stunned by the music of the lines and the breadth of the poet’s understanding.

 

 

Wintry sunshine lit up the little freckles on the woman’s arm. The old man recalled with love his freckled sister as a little girl and the lines their mother used to quote: Glory be to God for dappled things…

 

 

The train pulled into the platform. The passengers disembarked. The old man said, Make sure you tell me when your book is published, then he turned left. Taking up her pink carry bag, flinging her pack onto her back and draping herself in her fluffy jacket, the young woman turned right.

 

 

In the half-light of dusk in the cavernous space of the railhead the old man set out for the long escalator which  rose up and up and brought him to an elevated level. He exited the building, looked about him, realised he was lost and returned to the roofed space. Here he took a downbound escalator (this is really a ‘descalator’, he thought to himself) and rode to the platform level. Still lost, he looked about him, wondering.

 

 

Before him stood a young woman. The woman was slightly built with fine freckles and reddish hair. The two exchanged surprised smiles.

The old man thought, this is twice upon a time. The man asked, Which way is Spencer Street?

That way, she said, extending an arm.

Thanking her, he turned to go.

Behind him a voice asked: Would you hug?

Would I hug, he wondered.

She opened her arms wide. The man felt diffident, unusually awkward. Uncertain of today’s etiquette, too-conscious of how others might see him, he held her by her bony shoulder blades while she held him firmly for a time.

Goodbye, they said in unison.

Walking with my Father*, after all this Time

By Posted in Books, Childhood, Faith, Family, Life, Music, My Father's Compass Tagged , , , , , 9 Comments

Most Saturdays I walk with my father. Saturday is shabbat, when I go to shule (synagogue) in the morning and walk home alone afterwards. It is this walk that I take with Dad. It works like this: services at the shule of my choice finish around noon-thirty – precisely the time my family will be gathering at home. No-one wants to risk coming between a Goldenberg and her food at meal time; too dangerous. So just a few moments before the congregation sings the concluding hymn, Adon Olam, I duck out of shule and hurry homeward.

 
When it comes to a prayer or a song a Goldenberg is not one to short-change his Maker. So, striding like my father before me, I sing that song as I walk, feeling anew the melody I sang with my father through our decades of shule-going together. In fact, Dad and I shared two different melodies to Adon Olam, one of them quite beautiful, the other even lovelier – or should I say – slower, sweeter, more expressive of longing. We loved them both, I love them still, and so I sing – first one of the two, then the second.
 
When I was a timid child I attached myself devoutly to the final lines of this song:
Into His hand, I entrust my soul
While I sleep and when I awaken;
And while ever my soul remains with me –
The Lord is with me – I will not fear.
 
But of course I did fear. First I feared the wolves and the bears that would come for me in my bedroom from the grim tales of Europe; later I felt afraid of snakes, of adults who shouted at me, of the world. I felt safe with Mum and with my dreadnought father, and – more perilously – with my risk-taking brother Dennis. I did a lot of fearing and I seized needily at the comforting closing line of Adon Olam. I’d sing it to myself when I walked alone in the dark.
 
***
 
Dad sang sweetly, his light tenor voice rising high above the circumambient baritone drone of fellow worshippers. He’d look intent as he sang, for music spoke to Dad more truly than words. Dad always claimed he didn’t like poetry, but he loved song. Music reached Dad in his secret places of abiding anxiety, it inspired him and carried his hopes, his love of life, his belief in beauty.
 
It was late in Dad’s life that he surprised me, speaking once of Adon Olam: Whenever in my life I’ve felt afraid, that last line has come to me. As a child I’d sing it to myself when I was walking alone in the dark.
 
Now a man walks home alone. Approaching threescore and ten he walks, still vigorously, as his father walked. He sings softly as he walks. Adon Olam swells in his throat. His voice slows to climb the penultimate arc of old melody, he holds that high note, then allows his voice to fall, to slide peacefully, into peace.

The man walks home alone but never alone.
 
· *’Walking with my Father’ was a chapter title in my first book, ‘My Father’s Compass’ (Hybrid, 2007). That memoir recorded my life with my father that had ended with death at a great age, a few years earlier. It was that book in which I first went public with my (possibly regressive) ancestor worship.

Singing Man

By Posted in Life, Music Tagged , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Walking to shule early on a shabbat morning in spring, walking along, swinging along, here’s my neighbour approaching, walking along, swinging along, along with Jarrah his handsome, brainless hound.
‘Hello Hugo.’
‘Hello Howard.’
We discuss the terror raids. A Sydney paper runs the headline: SYDNEY UNDER SEIGE. I wonder aloud about a climate of alarmism. Hugo trusts the government to protect the people. I trust any government to protect itself. We agree to disagree.
‘Bye Hugo.’
‘Bye Howard.’

Walking long, swinging along Meadow Street, swinging towards the park, there’s a man ahead of me, singing. He’s walking along, singing along, singing aloud, singing with sunny uncaring, his ears clasped by headphones. A brown man, tall, a head of tight dark curls, his voice ringing out in the swinging morning.
I walk behind and I wonder. What is this singing, what the tongue, what type of singing? Some droning, drawn-out notes, long phrases, thick gutturals: might be mid-eastern, might be something different..
I swing faster, draw alongside, address the singing man; ‘What are you singing?’
The singing man smiles, stops his singing, removes his earphones. ‘Listen’, he says, his accent unemphatic, possibly sub-continental. He clasps my ears with his ‘phones. Soft rushes of sibilant sounds – unaccompanied percussion – fill my ears.
‘That’s not the music, that’s just the rhythm, the backing. I make the music, my song…’
‘Is the song your own? Do you compose it?’
‘Yes.’ Another smile. “I will record it in a sound studio, make a tape and try to sell it.”
‘What are you singing about?’
‘A beautiful girl, so beautiful she shames the sun.’
‘Will you sing it for me?’
The man smiles, replaces his earphones, bursts into song, full-throated, and we swing together along Meadow Street. The singing man creates waves of sound, rhythmic, patterned. I can discern the lines, pick out sound rhymes.
It is lovely.
‘Will you translate for me?’

‘” Do not go out ino the sun, my beauty,
Do not go into the sun;
If you go into the sun, my beauty,
The sun will look pale,
You will shame the beauty of the sun”‘

‘Thank you. That is beautiful.’
‘Thank you.’

We swing together along Meadow Street. When we reach the corner, I say goodbye. ‘Good luck with your song.’
I turn the corner, heading for the park and for shule beyond.
The man calls to me, ‘Have a good shabbat.’

Report from Womadelaide

By Posted in Life, Music, Travel Tagged , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Early visits to Womadelaide exposed audiences to plentiful Jewish song, to Ladino and Hebrew, to Jewish and Israeli musicians, cantors, singers and folklorists.

Since Israel’s Gaza operations I find the Womadelaide landscape depleted of that Jewish and Israeli richness. That portion of the landscape has narrowed, possibly as a pioneering and undeclared expression of BDS, possibly as a coincidence. Of late Jewish people have encountered a lot of coincidence.

***

The guitarist of Tinpan Orange walks quietly onto the stage, as one might who lacks a foreskin.

I know his state: I circumcised him. (Does Womadelaide realise?)

The prepuceless one sings discreetly, sweetly, alongside the keyboardist and the violinist, as Emily his sister, publicly pregnant and wearing fruit and flowers in her hair, takes centre stage.

I know and love them so I have nothing dispassionate to say about this group, but the Frenchman sitting next to me on the grass murmurs his pleasure in the small quietness that follows every song.

At the conclusion of the concert the Frenchman stands and stretches, and we exchange slow smiles as we do after sleeping on a plane; as we do

upon waking with a person whose name we will never know, one with whom we have shared an hour of pleasure. The Frenchman says: I am at this festival three days now, and I listen to many concerts. This one is the most beautiful. This is the best, with Hanggai.

Hanggai is a gaggle of old Mongols that fiddle and bellow and sing. A couple of men of picturesque antiquity occupy either extremity of front stage wearing rags that upon closer examination are national dress. The two bow their traditional fiddles with a solemnity that belies the leaping tempi of their tunes. Behind them are instrumentalists, half-seen, whose clamorous attack upon percussion never amounts to an assertion of personality or individuality. The bellows at centre stage is a weight lifter, semi-nude in his cut-away jerkin of dyed and carved cowhide. His latissumus dorsi and pectoralis muscles are exclamation marks, his biceps are upper case. He strides to and from the edge of the stage, a lion pacing out his territory, his voice a roar.

He enjoys a good deal of self-approval in his imagined kingdom. We in the audience are charmed and amused.

And then Hanggai sings. A drone flows and rises from somewhere, higher notes join with a pounding bass, rhythmic sounds gain power and tempo, building and building to a pitch that swamps physiology: my chest is an echo chamber that pounds and vibrates to a beating from without. What is that sound? That deep, deep vibration coming from under ground, or rumbling from clouds unseen? On it drones, constant yet syllabic, hinting at a human source.

I glance to the thin old men, seated, as all leap and throb and swing about them. Sedate, studious, swinging chicken wing arms in their bowing, fiddling and singing.

From one of the two that sound emerges, that throat singing which is the group’s aural autograph. The throat releases its unearthing power through a mouth that smiles withal. I rest my pleasuring eyes upon the fiddlers: their eyes, their sparkling eyes, are gay. 

Carminho is introduced as a fado singer. She personifies (as I am informed by the braziliophone seated behind me) a classic grammatical contradiction. That is, “fado” signifies a singer is in the masculine gender while this singer is feminine. Every line, every phrase of her Portuguese lament (never really a song) seems to end in the “u” sound (heard as in “tutu”, but spelled “o”, the suffix of the masculine). After applause that never rises beyond the perfunctory, the singer thanks us: “Obligattu/o”. A woman would properly say “Obligatta”, murmurs the braziliophone. The singer is a woman lamenting, even thanking, in a man’s grammar.

I sit on the grass, one of a teeming multitude, all steaming in the Adelaide heat. The woman starts with a moan that rises quickly to a scream, her willow frame erect even as her voice shakes and shrieks and dissolves into staccato sobs. Portuguese seems to be a relative of Spanish – here, greeting a loved one, Carminho sings buon dia, amor –(good day, beloved) – but the words lack the flowing sweetness of Spanish. Portuguese, at least in fado, must be chewed and swallowed or spat out. Fado, like the Argentine bandoneon, is an instrument without a single happy note. And that is what we have come here for. For the fado, the Portuguese cry of pain, of fate. But I find this singer lacking in depth. She lacks – or neglects – the lower vocal register. However all about on the grass are figures and faces that are rapt, absorbed. Only half engaged myself I muse upon the crowd. Here are olive-skinned faces old enough to remember sons, brothers, husbands, lost in the colonies, in the wars, in Angola and Mozambique. And here are African faces, African voices conversing in Portuguese: these might have been the colonized. Fado carries the griefs of their losses too.

Afterwards my family and I exchange impressions. I am the only one who feels disappointed. Remembering Maritza, haunted by Maritza who sang here four or five years ago, I experienced anti-climax today. For me, Maritza’s is the authentic sound: I like a look of agony because I know it’s true.

My family recalls Maritza too and concedes the difference. That’s why they enjoyed Carminho better. Carminho is not a complete stranger to the light, to human joy.

Finally, Pokey La Farge. Pokey is as good as his name. This man is the antithesis of the fado singer, his music the roughhouse stuff of mid-west America. Harmonicas wail and rattle, fiddles fiddle, other strings are plucked in a frenzy, while bow-tied in his chequered shirt and his braces, Pokey paces the stage exhaling his riotous self-satisfaction in rollicking song.

And we in the audience, we inhale it deeply. The only times a saw a crowd of people so deeply and broadly happy were 1968, 1990 and 2010. And on those occasions the heavens smiled too, for Collingwood had won the premiership.