Wednesday, June 24, 2015

An Immense Iinvitation or, Beauty Undefined!








Dear Hummers and Singers,

Here is a song I hope you will want to whistle with me.  I adore 3/4 time, or perhaps this is 6/8?  I never can be certain from the listening, because I never took the proper course in music theory.  Which leaves me a terribly satisfied dilettante, and a stubborn fool for not just looking it up. 

Helen Keller has written about the beauty of the natural world in her autobiography, The Story of My Life:   

They are always asking:  "What does this beauty or that music mean to you?"  You cannot see the waves rolling up the beach or hear their roar.  What do they mean to you?"  In the most evident sense they mean everything.  I cannot fathom or define their meaning any more than I can fathom or define love or religion or goodness.

At a shore side sunset yesterday, the topic, as ever, of the legendary green flash came up.  Some of our party had seen it, on the internet (where else?!) and the rest of us eagerly requested a link be sent.  After a few seconds, I blue-penciled it, realizing that I wanted to see it the hard way;  some enchanted evening, standing on the sand, looking west. 




I remain, as ever,
your stubborn fool dilettante.







PS
Another version, with piano and frills, and marionettes.  Furthermore, and unnecessarily, this is a song that I look forward to hearing in ten, twenty, thirty years- I will think, I will remember:  this is what it sounded like then; that was the Zeitgeist of then.