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The concert last night — given by the Ensemble Intercontemporain in the Canterbury Cathedral crypt –was…one of the most powerful musical experiences of my life.

Words can only gesture toward what happens when players at the top of their form engage with music sublimely suited to the place and time. People all around me were crying. I was crying. Nancy and Hamish were there. I saw Nancy at the interval and she said she had a struggle not to cry in the first bars of Debussy’s … — and that was only the first piece!

The silence in the Cathedral crypt  always crackles. It seems to hold everyone’s thoughts and emotions, somehow turning it all, like a big ship, back upon us. The silence washes over in waves.

This was music of course that privileges silence.  I’ve always found the contemporary/modern music of French composers such as Messiaen and Boulez resonant. It’s an aesthetic not far from R’s, and not far from my own, at heart. Lots of space, breath, and a sense of elevation, suspension. Where the quality of pure sound, the sound of sound, if you like, is valued. (Or so it seems to me. I realise I am quite the pleb when it comes to musical analysis…)

But I sort of digress. I suppose some of what I’m saying is that I was up for it. As was the whole audience it seemed. The clarinetist Alain Damiens and the cellist Pierre Strauch, well. It’s difficult to say without seeming mad, but I wanted to climb inside their instruments and live there. I wanted to be in that, all day every day. I thought, in another mad moment, keeping in mind that this was in a church — so I probably prayed it — just let me always hear this, be there, and I will never be without joy. I wanted it to last forever.

The final piece was Messiaen’s astonishing Quartet for the End of Time. After the last, almost inaudible strains of the music finished, the audience did not clap for perhaps 20 or 30 seconds. It was as if everything we knew had stopped in its tracks. And we were waiting for some sign, any indication of where to go next, what to do. Waiting to be reborn. Which never came. Because we had no choice but to return to our lives. And clap.

I feel particularly quiet today, like I’ve been through a crisis and must recover. I don’t know how we are to carry on after a night like that. The transience is almost too much to bear.

The programme:

Claude Debussy Sonata

Gerard Grisey Charme

Tristan Murail Les Ruines circulaires

Olivier Messiaen Quatour pour la fin du Temps

*

Thank you, Sounds New.

My dear friend Nancy gave me this for my birthday:

I’ve only just set it up this morning. So far have done 405 steps (back upstairs after taking this photo). How did that happen?! I’m still in my dressing gown!

Other blogs may do thousands of words into writing a novel. That appealing accumulation. Of which I have precious little at the moment.

So. I’ll do steps. Okay? Today so far, 10 am: 405.

This time of year is not at the top of my list of favourite times. With Christmas over, all you can do is wait for the mornings to get lighter. And keep your head down.

Saying this, it is a time for considered thought somehow. I think of people who’ve died, who I’ve lost touch with, or things I’ve let slip. And I am grateful for those who’ve reminded me just by their friendship and steadfastness of what’s important: Nancy, Lynne, Lisa, Katherine, Deborah, Helena, Valerie. Not to mention relatives, again whose consistent and unconditional presence has been life-changing: David, Janet, Hugh, Bridget, Anna, Howard, and my mother.

And don’t even get me started on the children, or R.

***

I feel a need today to write for Valerie. From the ages of 10 to 12, we were each other’s best friends. Bestest friends. Times change though, and we moved on, and lost touch, and…to her credit she searched me out last year — after 25 years. It’s been a treat to talk to someone who is ‘from where I’m from’ and who — still, all these years later — is interested in what I’m interested in.

Anyway, today I heard that Valerie’s much-loved dog Luna had died. The memory of holding our 17 year old moggie as he died last year is always close to the surface, despite our two new lovely kittens. Like everything we lose or lose track of, they stay with us.

The title of this post is taken from a poem by Yehuda Amichai called ‘Ballad on the Streets of Buenos Aires’. It’s a love poem, really, and the whole thing is one of my all time favourites, but this particular line keeps me breathing this dark time of year: and the light is always there to serve all loss. (I prefer the Stephen Mitchell translation, so have used his version of this line.)

Well. All I can think of are lists this morning. Thanks in particular go to:

1) Tom, for arriving just as I sent a panicky message saying we’re going to have to take the kids with us

2) Sat nav

3) Crockatt & Powell, for opening their doors and keeping them open

4) Anthony Delgrado, for the book and the wine

5) Lynne Rees, for a blushingly lovely and funny and altogether warm intro

6) Nancy Wilson and Hamish Fulton, for their gift of these wacky and wonderful ceramic cups:

7) The charming, inexpensive Japanese restaurant down the street, the name of which I could not register by the time I reached it

8) R, for making us laugh and laugh

9) Sat nav

10) Today being Friday

Did I mention I was still recovering?

Much of the day now I’ve spent registering the changing weather and reflecting on the life and writing of Elizabeth Bishop — long-time favourite poet of mine, too easily below the daily radar somehow.

It’s rare for me to take a break of any reasonable size in a day, so I surprised even myself when I told good friend Nancy that yes I would listen to the Radio 3 programme she’d forwarded to me on Bishop, and soon.

I’m glad I did. Presented by Lavinia Greenlaw, this 50 minute programme is a striking, acutely sensitive celebration of part of Bishop’s creative and physical geography, located in Great Village, Nova Scotia. Listen if you get the chance. I was completely gripped.

M ill these last two days: a horrible throat and croup-y cough. Still out of sorts enough to lie on the sofa and say that she’s fine really, fever giving her shiny, other-worldly eyes.

Meanwhile one image keeps surfacing in my own addled, care-taking brain:

It’s by the same person who lent me the header image for this site, Nancy Wilson — an excellent photographer. And fine friend, come to that. I think she’s particularly good with light and shadow, reflection, time standing still. Which seems about right.