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November 26, 2008Why are clams happy?I don’t know but they can’t clap their hands to show it.INSTEAD THEY SHOW A SMILEAccording to the Phrase Finder, “It has been suggested that open clams give the appearance of smiling. The derivation is more likely to come from the fuller version of the phrase, now rarely heard—’as happy as a clam at high water.’ Hide tide is when clams are free from the attentions of predators; surely the happiest of times in the bivalve mollusc world.” HAPPINESS AND ITS CAUSESYes! If we can determine its causes, we can cure it! There was just a conference in SF by that name, which I didn’t attend because I am closer to old age than New Age. Anyway, I hadn’t heard of it but my buddy Beau volunteered for it and registered me to attend a symphonic concert and world premier that was part of it. Well this clam was not happy upon hearing the San Francisco Sinfonietta’s performance of Dvorak’s “New World Symphony.” A “sinfonietta” is a small orchestra, or an orchestral piece written for one, and there was no doubt this Sinfonietta plays second string to the SFS. I’ve heard the Conservatory Orchestra do better. I’m not qualified to be a music critic; my judgments rotate solely around listening pleasure, and feelings stirred. But I’m used to hearing the best—the Philadelphia Orchestra, the London Philarmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the SF Opera Orchestra—and half-a-dozen winces spoil the gravy for me. You’re not listening to the music as sound, but the way it’s being played. Uh-uh. Distracting. BUT BLESS THEIR HEARTS.It was a benefit concert for good causes, and it was a happy event, featuring star marimba player Matthew Coley, and few things make me happier or more hopeful for the future than a young virtuoso. “Congratulations,” I said, shaking his hand after he moved those mallets at the speed of light in the “Concertino for Marimba and Orchestra” by Jorgé Sarmientos, a Guatemalan composer with an aura of mystic calm about him, of modest greatness. His son Igor conducted the world premier of his “Buddhafonias,” which made me feel I had entered a lush, dense Central American rainforest, ground soggy and leaves dripping. The air almost went moist and humid. Hints of Villa Lobos. The Sinfonietta redeemed itself on that one. THE JOY OF MUSICis perhaps my greatest joy. I’ve been without a turntable for a number of years, either too lazy or too broke to do anything about it. Then friend Saand gave me an old DJ’s turntable she had stored under a table. Oh! What a splendid gift; it has reintroduced me to music I haven’t heard in years, because I have zealously held onto my LP collection of 30+ years, some items nostalgic or historic. Entire different eras of my life blossom when I listen to them. The soulful Dvorák “Notturno”; the delightful, somewhat silly “Polka and Fugue” from Weinberger’s “Schwanda, the Bagpiper”; my precious, classic Amadeus Quartet knock-out performance of the Grosse Fugue (the recording I have most hyperventilated over), from the Deutsche Grammophone Beethoven Bicentennial Collection of 1970 (I was 15 when I acquired it); Schumann’s heavenly Duet, “In Der Nacht”; Robert Plant’s classy “Big Log”; the Modern Jazz Quartet’s wonderful “Blues on Bach”; the fabulous Scarlatti harpsichord Sonatas in all their Longorian glory; Brahms’ Quartet for Voice and Piano, “An die Heimat” (makes me swoon); Lionel Hampton kicking ass on “Star Dust”; the luscious Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings; McCoy Turner’s frenetic “Sahara”; Bizet’s charming “L’Arlesiénne Suites, and of course—Lionel Richie’s classic “Can’t Slow Down” (I like “Hello”—sue me). Too many to list without boring you to death. But music always breathes new life into me. Back in my twenties, a friend was murdered on the U of P campus. I was depressed for weeks, and what brought me back was the Philadelphia Orchestra and Schumann’s “Rhenish Symphony.” Life goes on. Hers was over, mine was not. You have to have perspective; from the ashes will a Phoenix rise. Because, LIFE IS A GARDENYou gotta dig it. SAM GALLUP,a miner laid off by the St. Lawrence Zinc Co. in upstate New York, left his mother, fiancé and her daughter behind to uproot his life and drive 2,000 miles for a job with Stillwater Mining Co. in Montana, which had solicited him to join them. Coming home after his two-hour commute from his first day on the job, he checked a voicemail on his cell phone, and discovered that after his single ten-hour shift, he had, again, been laid off. The guy’s flat broke and living in a friend’s finished basement in Billings. Apparently there’s a prospect for work in Nevada. “You’ve gotta keep your head up,” he said. “Life is a garden. You gotta dig it.” “SO, THAT HAPPENED,”said a dazed Alec Baldwin, emerging from his car after a traffic accident in David Mamet’s film “State and Main.” Sometimes that says it all. If this Gallup guy’s life is a garden, mine is the Garden of Eden, or at least the Garden Center of Greater Cleveland. Don’t think I don’t know it. I closed on my flat about two minutes before the economy crashed. EVER REARRANGE YOUR LIFEfor something or someone and had it fizzle soon after the cork popped? Like following a lover to another city and ending up on your own there? Like putting someone through college and getting your walking papers with the last bill? Like enrolling in graduate school and the only thing you learn is you don’t want to be there? Well, as David Alan Grier put it, you can only be “as sure as sure can be, if you can be that sure about being sure.” Anyway, I don’t need to attend a conference to know what causes happiness. I cause it. I’m in sole control of my own, and happy is as happy does. Count your blessings. The less you want, the less you need. If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands, bee-yatch! And happy Thanksgiving, one and all.
The devil can assume many forms. ------------------------------------------------------------ The happiest of times
Find me another poem predating mine that contains “bivalve mollusc world" and you get my Thanksgiving leftovers. copyright Alexandra Jones 2008 |
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