musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

If Music be the food of Love


Things seem to have changed from when I was young -drifted away I think. I’m not sure if it is an Age thing, or simply a perspective shift -an adaptation to altered circumstances. If something changes slowly enough it’s often difficult to notice, difficult even, to realize that it no longer occupies its former central role…

When I was just starting off in life, and forced to take piano lessons against my burgeoning will, my father told me that even Hans Christian Andersen, his favourite fairy-tale collector, had believed that ‘Where words fail, music speaks.’ I suspect he was simply stating the obvious: since I couldn’t persuade my mother that my friends would laugh at me if I played the piano, he was suggesting that perhaps I could show her she’d be wasting money on lessons.

I should have known he never believed that, though: he always said it with a wink and a twinkle. In fact, I actually found that I liked music. Loved music. But I soon realized that I occupied what seemed an overly busy spot on the Bell Curve: despite my enthusiasm, it was  apparent that, like sports, I was only average, or below; a career on the keys never beckoned. I even bombed an impromptu imitation of Little Richard (a very popular piano-banging singer at the time) in our Grade 6 music class.

In fact, since I was more drawn to Rachmaninoff with his impossible notes, or Chopin with his difficult to express lyrical melodies, I realized that musically speaking, I was a better listener than doer. I began to collect LPs (those black circular plastic things with grooves that you put on turntables and attempted not to scratch as you lowered the needle onto the surface), and religiously lugged their increasing number and weight with me to every city we moved to as a family, and every university and post-graduate program into which I managed to gain admission however temporarily.

Perhaps I’ve shifted somewhat on ‘the Bell’ by now -although my friends have jokingly suggested that ‘the spectrum’ might be a more apt description of where I have moved… At any rate, music maintained its primacy in my life. When the iPod came out and then the little speakers you could put on your desk, I got one for my medical office so I could play samples of my recorded music for me, and those who chose to visit me. Eventually, as the speakers and technology improved, I moved again -this time with the times- and flooded my office with soft, classical music to create a more peaceful, reassuring space where I hoped problems could be discussed with equanimity. I sometimes had to turn the volume down of course, although along with the profusion of plants and paintings on the wall, I think most people found it relaxing.

But I’m retired now, and I seem to have a less voracious appetite for music; certain frequencies -like those of violins or the upper keyboard registers of the piano- decreased or disappeared until I resorted to hearing aids; and even they were only the poor cousins of my former life. My listening choices switched to podcasts on my smartphone, so frequencies were less important. I still longed for music, but somehow it wasn’t the same anymore…

That was all before the bus, that is. Let me explain.

I live on a little island near Vancouver, and frequently take the ferry across to the mainland on the pretence of shopping, but really to escape for a while. ‘Our minds are like our stomachs,’ observed Quintilian, ‘they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetite.’ Noise, however, does little for the appetite.

I suppose I should have known the ferry would be noisy when I saw the throng of chattering schoolgirls waiting on the pier. I’m no longer able to judge the ages of children, but to my eyes they ranged from perhaps 9 to about 12 years of age -grades four to seven, maybe. They were well behaved, and their teacher seemed in control, but I wasn’t used to the noise of excited jabbering voices anymore.

On the ferry, the teacher kept them confined to the cabin area at the front, so I relaxed and pulled out a book to read on the short voyage over to the mainland ferry terminal. There, I planned to take a bus into the city and, well, just wander around.

Hoping to get a good seat, I took a shortcut from the terminal to the waiting bus. By then, I’d forgotten about the crowd of girls on the ferry and contented myself with looking out of the window once I’d found a seat on the already crowded bus. I must have closed my eyes for a moment, because I was suddenly aware of burst of voices and when I looked, I realized the class of the girls from the ferry was crowding along the aisle, and for lack of seats, filling it completely.

The teacher I’d seen on the ferry was standing near the door and smiling at his charges; I was seated, but still uncomfortable with the noise and bustle around me. Everybody was chattering and laughing as children do, but the confusion bothered me. Why hadn’t I taken a later ferry, or a different bus I wondered, feeling distinctly uncharitable as I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat?

I closed my eyes again hoping to block it all out when, gradually at first, it began: the song. And then it spread through the aisle like a wave, until it became the bus: every rattle, every bit of confused conversation, idle chatter, senseless giggling disappeared; there was only song: many voices somehow suddenly one; the message suddenly believable.

“You can count on me, like 1 2 3” they sang, as if transformed into a single voice. I couldn’t help but listen, appreciate, welcome their voices. Confusion disappeared; music, like the Phoenix, arose in those precious moments:

“… If you ever find yourself stuck in the middle of the sea
I’ll sail the world to find you
If you ever find yourself lost in the dark and you can’t see
I’ll be the light to guide you

… We find out what we’re made of
When we are called to help our friends in need

… You can count on me like one, two, three, I’ll be there
And I know when I need it
I can count on you like four, three, two and you’ll be there
‘Cause that’s what friends are supposed to do…”

Although the class got off a few minutes later and disappeared, laughing and chatting like children once again, I had to wipe some silent tears from my eyes. I realized that if the girls had branched into harmony, my tears wouldn’t have remained silent.

The song stayed with me the rest of the day. It was obvious that it was a song they’d been exposed to somewhere: TikTok, Shazam, Google Play… or perhaps they were a choir heading to a school concert on the mainland, but they were absolutely spellbinding, no matter what started them off…

As Fate would have it, the girls were on the same ferry going home and I went over to the teacher to thank him and his class for making my day I was so impressed. The teacher smiled and nodded. “I had no idea they were going to do that,” he said. “It was completely spontaneous,” he added, a smile taking over his face.

I realized that Music had returned to my life. Nothing so precious can ever hide forever…

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gozzter

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