Friday, February 13, 2009

Domestic Bliss


This is how it is for me:

I'm sitting here in my home office belaboredly trying to piece together a proposal to beg people for money for the opera. Below me, from two different rooms in the house, comes the sound of music. But ah. what music! Do you remember Caliban's speech in The Tempest about the music on the magic island? Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments will hum about mine ears....

So. From one chamber beneath comes the sound of Trisdee energetically practising the pi nai, a traditional Thai instrument whose sound is like the mating call of a flock of geese. Elsewhere, Jay is playing a succession of arpeggios on the violin with the relentless energy of a stuck Phillip Glass record. Somewhere just outside my office door, the two sounds blend -- if you can call it that -- into what can only be described as a symphony of horror (and you will recall that this was the subtitle of the 1922 film Nosferatu.

No wonder I'm insane.

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