Washing up by Candlelight

Sunday 11 December

Excuse me – has anyone seen my life?

Anyone know where it went?

Anybody remember when they last saw it?

Information please, to the Home for Distressed Gentlefolk

(Third on the right, past the Museum but just before you get to the Zoo)

Things move slowly in my world, so it was a while before I realised it had gone, and that I’d really lost it, somewhere between the house on the cliff and the weaver’s cottage in the village with an ancient flour mill. By then it was useless to retrace my steps, to try to figure out where I must have dropped it. And besides, there was an ocean to cross on the journey. Could have drifted anywhere by now. It could be hand-beating silver in Copenhagen, or weaving silk in Kyoto, or fishing the Newfoundland Banks, or dancing to native songs on the beach in Vanuatu. I mean, knowing me, it could have ended up just about anywhere. 

But oddly enough, I think I may just have found it again, in a lovely terraced house in Derbyshire, further from the sea than I’ve ever lived. (Yet I can still feel the lift of the swell in my blood and bones.) At least I’m sure enough that those are my own footprints, from the worktable on the top floor, down to the piano and back up again, back up top, to the computer*, up and down two flights of bloody stairs all day long, and a sleepless night or two thrown in, too wired to let go. 

For four days now. No wonder the footprints have become visible to the naked eye, even to my blind side (which I always pretend to have until it becomes impossible to maintain, when clear sight is needed, and it’s obvious to everybody I’m not as dumb as I look and I was only shamming for the sake of convenience). Especially when I can see as far through a brick wall as most people** if only they would acknowledge their intuition. But I digress. As usual. Digression got me into this state in the first place. 

However. It would appear that I am no longer a wraith in my own house. I seem to be huge, all of a sudden – able, creative, and thinking Damned if I’ll just do what everybody expects of me, like eating three times a day and getting to bed at a sensible hour. And each morning after, there is the proof, bold as brass all over the kitchen table. Song. Words. Empty cups. Empty plates. Empty wine bottles. Happiness.

The fact that I may have just spent the last four days reinventing the wheel is beside the point. One or two of the chord progressions sound suspiciously familiar. Possibly because I haven’t played it much above 142857 times since Thursday morning. Altering it again and again, changing my mind, attacking a different bit, changing my mind, and stumbling with a wrong note into something better. I hope I never know whether I have painstakingly recreated someone else’s artwork. It doesn’t matter. 
If I have reinvented the wheel, not everybody can say that. 

I feel like I used to do, before the storm blew down the signpost. 

And I keep trying to make phone calls, or eat, or go to bed, or once in bed at least drop off to sleep rather than read yet another book, but I keep having to sneak downstairs and play it again. Who would have thought that 32 bars and 16 lines of vocals could be so mesmerising? So challenging – “Go on, find a flaw. Find a new chord, I dare you,” it calls to me. After a certain hour I can at least tell it to shut up, because I do have neighbours after all, although they swear they can’t hear the piano through the old, thick stone walls.

  

Apart from all that, I’m none the wiser where it came from. Just fell out of my head, like most things. (Including my memory… and I was so sure I’d put the oven on.) What can I tell you? – the moon changed, somebody read my cards, there was a beautiful full moon, there was an eclipse, the snow came….  Whatever the reason, Stuff Happened. Thank God there wasn’t an equinox on top of all that or God knows what I’d be up to. 

   

If it all seems too rosy to be real, there was of course a small – a very small – downside, the immutable commandment which sayeth ‘Thou Shalt Suffer For Thy Art’, when what it actually means is ‘For This Is Where Obsessive Behaviour Will Land You’. Hence the following texts to Mari on day three: 

(I should add that I was texting from the computer keyboard where I can be as verbose as I like)

1905     Can I put you off coming over this evg? Have a really sick headache. Can’t bear light or noise. Prob through eye strain. Def not up to talking - whispering more like ! xx

1907     oh dear. hope u feel better soon. take care. xx

1909     Sure I will... going to creep noiselessly about by candlelight for a while, do washing up – have just taken pain killers but they may resurface shortly. Noticed my eyes aching two hours ago and should have stopped then. But some bugger kept tying me to the piano stool and shouting PLAY! PLAY! WRITE! WRITE! Should have decked him there and then. xx

1912     And it's a pitiful shame, because I was really looking forward to playing it for you. xx

1913     That Muse is a right tartar. xx

In fact, even candle flames and nightlights were too piercing. Had to hide them behind things. (And don’t mention my lower back. The left side of the sacro–iliac joint is pinging me with nasty arrows and feeling very ominous indeed. And from experience, I know it means business if I don’t pay it some attention.)

But do excuse me now. I have to play the song again, just in case... I’ve left the piano alone for at least an hour while I write this and the lamb’s cooking, the spuds and courgettes are slowly mashing themselves, having given up waiting for me to do it for them, and next thing you know they’ll be peeling the garlic and getting the butter out of the fridge, and anyway my piano doesn’t do Being Ignored very well. At least the piano tuner’s coming this week, not a moment too soon, so that should clap a stopper on its whingeing. 

Monday 12 December

I think it’s done. I think it’s cooked, finally. What a blessed relief. 

Like never knowing when to stop messing with a painting, another stroke would detract rather than increase. Some very simple parts of the melody have their own poignancy…. By definition, they are innocent. 

Oh, and Christmas? My beloved sewing, emails, stuff like that? Let’s just not go there. We’re not looking for miracles right now. Joy unconfined is quite enough to be going on with.

* for the music writing program - type it in, every note a mouse click, play it back to check, and print it out so I can read my own writing, as it were

** the lovers of Patrick O’Brian (Aubrey/Maturin) will readily forgive me using this phrase – and ‘clap a stopper’, come to that.