Sound
Memories can be triggered by each of our senses - sight, smell, sound, touch and taste.
We catch the smell of roasting beef and we are back in childhood.
We see a person, who immediately reminds us of a friend about whom we have not thought for months.
We taste a drop of gravy, and memory takes us back to a family Sunday dinner, 30 or 40 years ago.
We touch a hand, and remember the many hands we’ve held with tenderness, or the hands which have been raised against us.
Every morning, soon after 6:00 a.m. I hear a ‘plane overhead. It’s the first flight of the day, Delta Airlines from SRQ to Atlanta. That makes me remember being in our back kitchen, aged 10 or so, when a train would chug up the line from Bristol to Bath (UK), and Dad or my sister Maureen would say “there’s the 7:45, it’s on time today”
Last Thursday I was at a Diocesan Clergy day conference with our Bishop. We sat in the Church, listening to an organ prelude, and waiting for the beginning of the Eucharist. A Priest made her way to the Sacristy. Her heels clip/clocked down the aisle and across the front of the Church.
Immediately I was back at St. Stephen’s, Pittsfield, where in Lent we had the choir and clergy procession in silence, and the clattering footsteps reminded us that this was the season for quiet reflection. One woman in Pittsfield told me “I hate the silent procession, but I need it, to remind me that things are different in the Church at this time of the year”.
On Mondays and Wednesdays I get to Resurrection House for my volunteer ministry at about 7:30 or 7:45 a.m. One of the neighbours of Res. House (believe it or not), owns a rooster (deep in urban Sarasota), and I hear his “cocka-doodle-doo”. It reminds me of urban Bristol where I never heard a cockerel, and of a couple of visits to a farm near Devizes, Wilts, where the morning crowing intrigued and delighted me.
But it’s more than a reminder. When I hear the rooster, I am “way back there” - more than 50 years ago.
This afternoon I attended a quite remarkable and wonderful recital at the historic Asolo Theatre in Sarasota. My friend Orlando Gonzalez had three complimentary tickets, and so he and I attended, together with my Cambridge friend Judy Beers (in SRQ for a week)
This unbelievably wonderful recital was given by soprano Jennifer Zetlan.
http://www.jenniferzetlan.com/
Amongst other songs she gave us “Si mes vers avaient des ailes” by a composer of whom I had never heard “Hahn”.
This song, sung with rare skill, brought tears to my eyes.
I was glad that a piece of music could still make me teary eyed. But in memory I was back 55 years. Then, whenever I heard “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” from Handel’s Oratorio “Solomon” I would weep.
This 63 year old memory leap-frogged back 55 years, and was glad for an experience and memory of tears, brought about by sound.
We catch the smell of roasting beef and we are back in childhood.
We see a person, who immediately reminds us of a friend about whom we have not thought for months.
We taste a drop of gravy, and memory takes us back to a family Sunday dinner, 30 or 40 years ago.
We touch a hand, and remember the many hands we’ve held with tenderness, or the hands which have been raised against us.
Every morning, soon after 6:00 a.m. I hear a ‘plane overhead. It’s the first flight of the day, Delta Airlines from SRQ to Atlanta. That makes me remember being in our back kitchen, aged 10 or so, when a train would chug up the line from Bristol to Bath (UK), and Dad or my sister Maureen would say “there’s the 7:45, it’s on time today”
Last Thursday I was at a Diocesan Clergy day conference with our Bishop. We sat in the Church, listening to an organ prelude, and waiting for the beginning of the Eucharist. A Priest made her way to the Sacristy. Her heels clip/clocked down the aisle and across the front of the Church.
Immediately I was back at St. Stephen’s, Pittsfield, where in Lent we had the choir and clergy procession in silence, and the clattering footsteps reminded us that this was the season for quiet reflection. One woman in Pittsfield told me “I hate the silent procession, but I need it, to remind me that things are different in the Church at this time of the year”.
On Mondays and Wednesdays I get to Resurrection House for my volunteer ministry at about 7:30 or 7:45 a.m. One of the neighbours of Res. House (believe it or not), owns a rooster (deep in urban Sarasota), and I hear his “cocka-doodle-doo”. It reminds me of urban Bristol where I never heard a cockerel, and of a couple of visits to a farm near Devizes, Wilts, where the morning crowing intrigued and delighted me.
But it’s more than a reminder. When I hear the rooster, I am “way back there” - more than 50 years ago.
This afternoon I attended a quite remarkable and wonderful recital at the historic Asolo Theatre in Sarasota. My friend Orlando Gonzalez had three complimentary tickets, and so he and I attended, together with my Cambridge friend Judy Beers (in SRQ for a week)
This unbelievably wonderful recital was given by soprano Jennifer Zetlan.
http://www.jenniferzetlan.com/
Amongst other songs she gave us “Si mes vers avaient des ailes” by a composer of whom I had never heard “Hahn”.
This song, sung with rare skill, brought tears to my eyes.
I was glad that a piece of music could still make me teary eyed. But in memory I was back 55 years. Then, whenever I heard “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” from Handel’s Oratorio “Solomon” I would weep.
This 63 year old memory leap-frogged back 55 years, and was glad for an experience and memory of tears, brought about by sound.
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