When Mr D died we were away for the weekend together, celebrating as I was about to start a new job. The transition had been messy, I had to start my new role part time whilst completing a demanding semester of lecturing, so I was working long hours to keep up. I was going to have a proper leaving ‘do’ later on, once I had settled into my new job, but of course that never happened. So, I left the place where I had studied, gained my PhD and worked for the last seven years without a proper goodbye, or even telling people where I was going. This made it hard to tell anyone what had happened. It’s hardly a great conversation opener ‘sorry I left with saying goodbye but, by the way, my husband died’. A few months later, as I picked up the shattered pieces of my life, I decided to contact a few people I probably wouldn’t ever have bumped into again, but instinctively knew could be important to me. I had already started the process of holding useful people close, and letting unhelpful people go. A personal tragedy brings out the best and the worst in the people around you, and you realise very quickly who your true friends are, who will get you through.
One of the people I had contacted asked if I wanted to go with them to a Prom. I hadn’t been for years, certainly not proper ‘promenading’ as I had done in my youth. Suddenly I felt like my old self, twenty years earlier, full of hope and excitement at living in London, being able to go to the Proms for the price of a sandwich and hear something new, as long as I was prepared to queue in truly British style. So it was that I found myself standing in the arena at the Royal Albert Hall, on a hot weekday evening, as the opening of Passages* washed over me. Hypnotic, rich, deep cellos swelled out of the heat. A single alto saxophone began to weave above them. This was joined by a countermelody on a soprano saxophone, then a flute, dancing above the cellos, swooping into the spaces they made. I stood transported, eyes closed, my senses overwhelmed. As a typical insistent Philip Glass rhythm began to push purposefully on, I opened my eyes and looked up at the surreal acoustic mushrooms, around at the red and gold splendour; feeling the heat of hundreds of other bodies in the arena, all attention focussed forward as the sound filled the space. It is a dangerous but exhilarating combination when you are shell-shocked, wearing your nervous system on the outside, raw and exposed, all senses heightened. It seemed unimaginable that I could experience something so beautiful. This was something Mr D would never have the opportunity to experience, which filled me with sadness and regret, but I could. I am here. I am alive. The rest of the music was stunning – beautiful, exotic and truly inspiring, perfect for a late summer evening. Perhaps it made me feel a little heady, but I realised I also felt a glimmer of optimism. I went to several more Prom concerts. I ordered Passages online and the retailer kept promising to deliver but it never came. Then, around a month later they said they were going to stop trying to look for it. I could stream it online but I have always felt a perverse desire to own a physical ‘full fat’ representation of any music that has truly moved me (even if it is only a CD, I am not a vinyl purist although I truly love the format). I started to try harder to track down a copy. As the Proms ended and the seasons changed, a CD finally arrived. However, it felt like the moment had passed. I left it on a shelf, not even bothering to remove the shrink-wrap. Then one day I decided to unwrap it and put it on. As the cellos at the beginning of Offering washed over me, so did the intense feelings of that night. I have listened to Passages a lot as Autumn turns to Winter, and I move closer to the end of the hardest year of my life. The woodwind trio dancing above the stately swell of the cellos still brings a lump to my throat and makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, but Summer will come again, they represent hope… *Prom 41: Passages by Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar Performed by Anoushka Shankar and the Britten Sinfonia 22:15 Tuesday 15 Aug 2017 Royal Albert Hall https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/e8c3d4
0 Comments
I am starting to get back to playing music regularly again. I didn’t play for a month after Mr D died, the longest period of time when I haven’t picked up a saxophone for decades. I started playing relatively late in life. I changed schools a few times and never really made traction in terms of friends or fitting in. I had dabbled with guitar, strumming Puff the Magic Dragon at the school lunchtime guitar club, but it didn’t really engage me. We had an old piano in the house when I was very young but lessons weren’t available. My Dad played a lot of vinyl in the house and would take me to gigs at the Manchester Apollo so I was probably the only 10-year-old in Macclesfield with a good appreciation of Billy Joel’s best early work, the soulful tones of Hall and Oates, Suzanne Vega, Queen, Bowie and the like.
Then a couple of things happened. First, when I was choosing my O’levels (I am aware that dates me!) I noticed that Music clashed with PE on the school timetable. When you change schools a lot you don’t just miss out making friends, you are always the new girl, always with a slightly different accent, and in my case with slightly darker skin and terrible clothes. So to say you are a target for bullying is an understatement, and PE, with the spectre of communal showering, was the low point of my week. The only part I enjoyed was cross country running, because I actually could run. So, whilst the cool girls walked the course, stopping to sit on a wall for a fag and to annoy local residents at regular intervals, I stretched into a good pace and got back to the changing rooms a good 20 minutes ahead of everyone else. I could shower in peace and be safely away before a cigarette fug heralded the return of the rest of the group. But when I noticed the timetable clash there was just one problem, I didn’t technically play an instrument. This is when the second significant thing happened – Live Aid. I was mesmerised by David Bowie. Not just by his effortless style, his generosity and appreciation of his band, or the superbly slick set, but by the sax player. Clare Hirst stood at the front of the stage, tiny in a fitted black dress, pumping out fabulous rhythmic lines on a tenor sax that looked almost as big as her. When the set finished with Heroes that was it, I was going to buy a saxophone. My mother wasn’t terribly impressed, but it was my post office savings account and it was my liberation. I went in to school and said it was OK, I had a plan, I would take O’level music and play the saxophone. This was South Yorkshire in the 1980’s, a grade 1 saxophone exam wasn’t even available yet, the school didn’t take me very seriously. I went to talk to the visiting peripatetic woodwind teacher. He mostly taught clarinet, but was a big band jazzer at heart, and delighted to have a saxophone student. He registered me for free 30-minute weekly lessons and helped me buy my first student sax. This was a key turning point in my life. The powers that be at school still weren’t impressed - I had to pass grade 5 by the time I sat my O’levels, or I wouldn’t be entered for music. I don’t think they really thought I could do it, I couldn’t even read music. For me that was the perfect motivation. With a stubborn streak that has prevailed for the rest of my life I would prove them wrong. So Heroes is a pivotal track for me, I never forgot that Live Aid set, I can always hear that sax line even though it is buried in the mix on the album track, and it changed my life. Let’s skip forward around 30 years. I’ve been married for nearly 20 years. Mr D grew up with Bowie, the Berlin years were his favourite era. I remember him drunkenly singing along to Heroes during many a kitchen disco after a night out, waving a fag indoors when you still could. Then one Sunday morning in January 2016, the day after my birthday, we woke up to the news that David Bowie had died. It just didn’t seem possible that someone who had just recently produced such stunning, vibrant work could be dead. Mr D was working overseas a lot at the time, and went away on a long trip the following Monday. I listened to Blackstar relentlessly, watching the videos which were now so prophetic, mopping up all the Bowie documentaries on BBC4 late at night. So why am I telling you all this? Last week was the 40th Anniversary of the album Heroes. I was driving back late from a big band rehearsal with a very nice bunch of people, having spent the evening with my favourite saxophone (baritone, which a bit like Clare Hirst’s tenor at the time, is pleasingly almost bigger than me). I was feeling centred, happy, settling into a new kind of life, 6 months after Mr D died. I was playing a lot, going to gigs, feeling alive and more like myself than I have for a very long time. I switched on BBC Radio 2 in the car and heard Tony Visconti talking about Bowie in Berlin*. My heart stopped in my chest. I knew where this was going. I chose the music for Mr D’s funeral very carefully. I knew anything I chose might be spoiled for me forever but it had to be right, and Heroes had to be a part of it. I sat in the crematorium, looking at the coffin, knowing exactly what was inside - I had been with him when he died, sat with him in the hospital mortuary waiting for the police, chosen and taken his clothes to the chapel of rest and done my best to make him look like he had in life, in death (I failed, but it was an impossible task). I had got through most of the day stoically, but unsurprisingly it was music that brought me closest to losing control. Sitting in Golders Green Crematorium, listening to Heroes, looking directly forward with a rock in my chest was one of the hardest parts of the day. All I could see was Mr D singing along with gusto in his Glaswegian accent, waving a fag, slightly worse for wear. I didn’t hear the track many times after that. I started to avoid it but whenever it did pop up, I always had a battle to stay in control, and I didn’t always win. It seemed so unbearably sad that not only was Bowie dead, but less than 18 months later so was Mr D. So I sat in the car with a heavy heart, realising this was probably a 1 hour show, it was only 10:20pm and I had a 40-minute journey home down the A1. I couldn’t turn it off, it was too compelling even though I had heard many of the stories and anecdotes before, but I knew how it would finish. I had a good journey and got home at 10:50, but sat in the car in the dark outside the house, still unable to switch the radio off. And then it came. That track. Swelling out of my old car stereo but still sounding magnificent. My chest tightened, my eyes welled up, and then something surprising happened. I remembered Clare Hirst. I remembered why this song mattered so much to me. I spent the small hours watching that Live Aid Bowie set over and over again, listening to the album version, reprogramming the connections in my brain. I will always experience a tightening in my chest when I hear the opening synth swell and craggy guitar riff. I will always see Mr D, but I will also see Clare Hirst and remember that playing the saxophone has saved my life. *david-bowie-the-revealing-stories-behind-his-incredible-album-artwork **BBC Radio 2 David Bowie's 'Heroes' 40th Anniversary |