Playing for the Pioneers

I park the car at the entrance to the lot, and Madeleine and I walk up the incline with her fiddle and mandolin teacher, Doug, to a side entrance of the Pioneer’s Home.  We meet up with another musician, Mick, who also will be playing in today’s gig.  The fourth member of the group, Matt, is already inside with his mandolin.  The four of them are set to play an hour show for the elderly residents of the Home.   A full year before Arizona became a state, the Pioneer Home opened in February 1911.  Perched on a hill overlooking the county court house and heart of Prescott, it is a massive red brick building.  It houses a couple hundred old folks who have been residents of the State of Arizona for at least fifty years.

Madeleine is somewhat nervous, but Doug’s easy-going demeanor lowers her stress.  As we enter, Doug says the gig will be more like jamming in someone’s living room than a concert.  He adds that there will likely be a group of people already seated and waiting.  It’s likely the highlight of the day for many of them who are no longer able to go out.

Doug leads us down a hall, past unoccupied rooms, each with a bed, dresser, and window.  It’s somewhat depressing, but the natural light and real wood furniture assuage the institutional effect.  The residents are not confined to their beds or even their rooms.  Eventually we enter a large room with the occasional loveseat and chairs arranged in rows.  The cafeteria is off to one side and is busy and noisy as lunch service ends for the day.  On the opposite side of the room are large windows that look out on the courthouse plaza.  We are high on the hill and there is a sense, even far from the windows, that we’re on the edge of a precipice.  It doesn’t feel frightening, but more like we’re on top of a mountain with nothing blocking the view.

As Doug predicted, there are at least a dozen people already assembled and seated, ready for the concert.  The musicians gather chairs and prepare to play.  The set begins.  Doug announces each song, sometimes sharing some history or lyrics.  It is all very informal and simple and lovely.  The tunes are traditional and the four musicians easily find their rhythm together.

At some point, an ancient-looking man shuffles in during a song and sits next to me.  When the song is over, Doug nods at him and says, “Hello, Ray.” 

Members of the audience regard him and begin to call out, “Ray, where’s your fiddle?” 

He says, breathless, “Well, it’s upstairs.” 

This is no excuse.  “Well, go get it,” they call, one after another.

He says he will, but it’s a bit difficult to tell if he’s pleased that they want him to play or if he’s exasperated at having to make the trek.  He manages to get his stooped body out of the chair and wanders down the hall.

The group begins another tune, and Ray reappears as it ends, fiddle and folding chair in hand.  He manages, eventually, to get the chair set up and he prepares to join in on the next tune.  His hands shake quite a bit as he brings his violin to his chin and he holds his bow in a very unconventional way.  But when he begins to play, his tremor lessens significantly.  They play quite a few more tunes together, some that Madeleine knows and others she doesn’t.  But she’s poised and comfortable there on the makeshift stage.  During “West Virginia Waltz” one couple gets up and dances around the room.  Eighty years separate Madeleine from Ray, yet while they play, those years make no difference at all.  

When the concert’s over, several of the old ladies fawn over Madeleine.  They want to hold her hand and compliment her.  She beams, glowing in their appreciation.  One asks for a hug and she obliges.  Others call to her, urging her to never stop playing.  I think of the many proverbs across cultures about honoring the elderly.  By the time she reaches me, she is grinning and full of pride.

“I want to do this again,” she says.  “Old people are so cute.” 

Once again my shy, introverted daughter has found her voice in music, bringing light and joy and memory into these lives.  I think of how blessed I am to have two musicians living in my home, and that both of my daughters have found such good matches with their teachers, who seem to challenge and encourage them in such a balanced way.  As Plato said, music is the soul of the universe.

Life's Rich Playlist

For my fortieth birthday, Dan made me a playlist.  He is a master of playlists, assembling songs that flow perfectly from one to the next.  The one he made for that milestone birthday, though, contains ninety-five tracks, each released between 1968 and 2008.  I’ve been listening to it again since my birthday this year.  And while I’ve been the recipient of some special gifts over the years, this playlist is one of my favorites.  There’s a memory, an era, a phase for each tune.  For example, I can’t listen to the following without some kind of flashback:

U2:  Where the Streets Have No Name.  If you were in college in the late 1980s, this song was the theme for every party, road trip, pre-game celebration, and, ahem, study session.

REM:  I Am Superman.  The first openly lesbian woman I knew, who lived across the hall from me my sophomore year in college, played this song a lot.  She was older than the rest of us in the dorm, and was very wise for her years.  It was a big deal when she moved in, practically a scandal, but I remember how most of us came to consider her a friend.  I think of her when I hear this song and I wonder where she is today and what’s she’s doing.

The Smiths:  How Soon Is Now?  The theme of my senior year of high school.

Paul Simon:  Hearts and Bones.  I fell in love with Simon’s strangely poetic lyrics because of this song.  He made me realize how playful and poignant words could be, sometimes simultaneously.

Led Zeppelin:  Stairway to Heaven.  My favorite song when I was in about seventh or eighth grade.

Dire Straits:  The Sultans of Swing.  This song was on endless repeat during my summer in Paris.  My Parisien friend Marco had this song, and nothing but this song, on the cassette he played as we drove in his little Peugeot from café to café on the weekends.  He sang at the top of his lungs with his French accent, the lyrics just about the only English he knew.

Red Hot Chili Peppers:  Breaking the Girl, Smashing Pumpkins:  Disarm, and Cowboy Junkies:  Powderfinger. These are a few of the songs that Dan and I listened to a lot early in our relationship, and while I still love these songs, I also love how our musical tastes have continued to evolve as we grow older.

I doubt that Dan is aware of some of the stories behind these songs, and really, everyone has their own memories connected to music that can’t adequately be duplicated or expressed.  But I still love my lifelist, five years down the road.  A gift someone makes for you is truly something to be cherished.  Merci, D.  xoxoxox

 

An Unexpected Gift in Port Orford

You never know what you might find when you open the door to an antique store.  It’s usually pretty fun to poke around inside one, to see if you might find a treasure or perhaps reignite a memory (Now on sale:  relics from your childhood!).  Whenever we travel, we always like to check out an antique store or two, and maybe add something to one of Dan’s collections (his latest obsession is fountain pens) or find something unique or unusual.  A trip to an antique store is always more interesting to us than the local tourist-trap tchotchke shop. 

But when Dan and I opened the door to an antique store / art gallery in Port Orford, Oregon last week, we never expected to encounter a jamming fiddler and guitarist.  We listened as they finished up their song and then I went out to the car to retrieve the girls.  They were tired from our hike up Humbug Mountain and were more interested in the games on their iPods than a boring-to-them antique store.  I explained that they should hear the musicians in the shop and they agreed to come inside.

When we entered, I introduced Madeleine to them as our fiddle player.  Their eyes lit up to see a young fiddler and they started asking her what tunes she knew how to play.  The guitarist found a fiddle for her to play and tuned it and handed it to her.  She took it, somewhat reluctantly, and they soon agreed upon a song to play. 

They let her take the lead, the guitarist providing the rhythm and the fiddler playing harmony to her melody.  They played three songs together and Madeleine, my introverted daughter, was so much more comfortable playing music rather than speaking, as usual.  To hear these strangers playing beautiful music with my daughter, with the difference in their ages at least two generations and barely a dozen sentences exchanged between them was a lovely experience. 

Madeleine has had the wonderful opportunity the past year to learn music from a teacher and musician who is able to teach her traditional Celtic and American tunes in such a way that she doesn’t need the music in front of her in order to play it.  For her to use her instrument to speak so beautifully to all of us who are fortunate enough to get to listen is such a gift and seems to suit her old soul perfectly.  And like many treasures one might find in an antique store, this was definitely one-of-a-kind.