Gripped

Monday's singing lesson was hard. And mildly unbelievable. The last seven notes of Gaelic Blessing ("Deep peace of Christ to you") are all the same pitch – B. How hard is it to sing the same note seven times? Fact is, the notes have different lengths yet must hang together as a musical phrase.

Also, in singing any note you are not only influenced by what went before, you’re anticipating what's to come. A "time travelling" state of mind I’m still coming to terms with.

"I've worked you really hard today," said V.

Quite true, I thought.

"You've done really well."

It hadn't seemed like it.

"It's amazing how far you've come."

Have I? But then I'm nearing four years of solo tuition, that should be the case.

The room was silent from our labours. V sat at the piano (“It needs retuning,” she fretted.) and, because of intermittent back pain, I sat on an upright wooden chair. The much-scrutinised score, source of all rewards and difficulties, stood near-vertical on the music stand.

V said, "The better you get, the more picky I have to be."

I thought. "The better I get the more pickiness I must be prepared to take."

Not a brilliant aphorism but it would pass.

V said, "Don't work on Gaelic Blessing at home. We're going to forget it for a while."

That was a blow. There were answers I’d envisaged trying, but V's the boss. She’s the one who has brought me this far. As I drove home the embedded words of Gaelic Blessing rose unbidden in my mind/throat and I mumbled them before I realised and stopped. Same again, today, as I waited at the hairdresser’s.

I don’t actually possess music, it possesses me.