The morning is still dark as I creep down the stairs. I am five, and under the Christmas tree are two boxed sets of LPs – Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance.
I finger the cardboard, open up the lid, and feel the weight of the four black discs in each box. My small phonograph is blue and silver with a hinged cover. I sit on the floor, and open it carefully. Slipping the record out of its sleeve, I put it on the turntable. Holding my breath, I lower the arm onto the disc. The needle sinks into the shiny grooves of plastic. I lose myself in the scritch scratch of the margin. I wait for the music to fill me.
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Sound is all around me. My denim skirt swishes between my legs when I walk fast and hard. I laugh, and almost jump with pleasure. It is the whip of sails against the mast, it is the sound of laundry being hung out on a cold day, of curtains in a heavy, dusty breeze.
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These days are dark and quiet, filled with composing. I have finished I Hear the Mermaids Singing, and wait before copying the pencil score onto the computer.
I live in a world of sound, my ears are filled. When I look up from my work, the house is surprisingly calm, the street empty; the magnolia tree waits to blossom. Looking down again, my ears are flooded. Sound has never kept me so entranced, so excited. My days are effortless. I am full. Before I touched the surface, now I bathe in the waters. I put my head down in the cool depth and breathe.
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There has been good work on my piece. The beginning has a metallic howl, the slow growing melody goes well.
In the afternoon, I walk on the beach. The skies over the ocean are grey; the waves are dark. The wind is so cold that my face aches. I sit in the sand, and watch the overlapping clouds move layers. A bright spot is in the sky where the sun almost comes through. The houses on the ocean are boarded up. Like trees without leaves; they are without life. I trudge past them; their ears are shuttered to winter and the wind.
Excerpted from Let Your Heart Be Broken, Life and Music from a Classical Composer © Tina Davidson, 2022.
Listen on YouTube: I Hear the Mermaids Singing, for viola, cello and piano
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auLzryCh_Mk
Buy the CD:
https://www.newworldrecords.org/products/tina-davidson-i-hear-the-mermaids-singing
