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| Yes, I know Crècy was bows and arrers but not close up | I |
I was warned. That pumping cytotoxins – a fearful word - into my decrepit body would have side-effects even the medics could not predict. Unsurprising, really. This bag of bones, part deadened nerves and tired blood has become a battlefield in which a gruesome Middle Ages conflict – Crècy, say – is being re-enacted. Where hoarse-voiced farmers go for each other with axes. Axes!
But would all these side-effects be inimical? I have long since realised my tiny reading audience has a limited capacity for news about my progress as a singer. Can’t be helped. The appeal of creating music – as opposed to just listening to it – is hard work. And possibly mysterious.
But I had a terrific lesson yesterday. At my request V and I resurrected Roger Quilter’s setting of the Elizabethan lyric, Weep You No More Sad Fountains, last worked on three years ago. The power was with me, in that my vocal resonance was solid, as I re-explored lines like:
Sleep is a reconciling, a rest that peace begets.
Damn me. The body’s falling apart but it was confirmed, I can bloody well sing. I at least can create – and revel in – the nourishing of a song. Might chemo have played a part?
Not just that. I’ve been sleeping badly and in the killing time (3 am) I suddenly recognised an irony: normally we welcome light, but not when we desperately want to sleep. I dashed off twelve lines on this (See The Unravelled Sleeve): hurried, obscure and no great shakes as verse. But I’d had the idea, you see; in old age these are rare.
Should I ask my specialist – the elegantly named Dr. Chennupatti – whether I’d been chemo-inspired? Bellow out six bars of Fountains as proof? Watch this space.
As you say, Coleridge took laudanum and some quite remarkable verses were the result. I can remember voluntarily learning by heart his "Kubla Khan" on a wet Sunday afternoon when I was about 15 (no TVs then). I still have it in mind at 83.
ReplyDeleteSo what you may produce under chemo could be memorable. Do ask the doc. about it.
Avus: As I say, watch this space.
DeleteIt has been said that when one faculty diminishes, another heightens...so ride the notes and refrains, and dash off the sonnets...whatever for creativity heals the soul. Who knows maybe the body also. Can't help but think of Robin Williams insane cinema Doctor that insisted laughter was the best way to heal his small, very ill patients. And it did. SM
ReplyDeleteSandi: Certainly my inclination to write - which dates back to age seven or eight - began to diminish as a facility with music grew. But the problem lay mainly with writing novels (say, 100,000 words); I was still able to put on my creative cap and manage a 300-word blogpost. And laughter is the most satisfying bridge between any two individuals - assuming that, by then, sex has become an ashen memory.
DeleteLOL....mission accomplished.
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