Notes, Notes, and Notes….

December 18, 2009

a post by Alex Bigney

IT WAS REALLY SNOWING! By the time I finished the driveway, the other end of it needed shoveling again, the best time to return to the house, to light a fire in the stove, and then to sit and stare out at the cold whiteness of it all from my warm place inside.

I like it when things with similar substantial aspects on the outside turn out to be essentially different on the inside. I also like it when things which are essentially the same, look dissimilar. Most of the time it’s fun to be surprised, fooled by mimicry, as in the clever use of marzipan presented in the windows of Sicilian sweetshops; or tricked by the hidden reality of trompe l’oiel environments, as in the faux wood grain or marble that decorates the interiors of some old buildings. So I’m also delighted with words in English which are spelled the same but can have several distinct meanings.

This is the season for notes–notes about the gifts I plan on giving, notes about ideas I plan on considering, notes on images I plan to paint; and visual notes, the sketchy basis for making pictures, notations that will grow into complete patterns and painted worlds. I make a lot of notes, where one mark or color is enough to bring a complete view to mind. (Where’m I going with this?) Notes on next year’s garden that already begin to grow inside me as the real thing.

Then, there are the familiar combinations of musical notes, the seasonal songs and hymns that seem to carry me back in time, the notes of traditional melodies, the tunes passed down like gossip traveling from fiddles to feet, the toe-tapping stuff I’m addicted to (images of my nana step dancing in the kitchen with my dad late at night) interbred with my spiritual craving for communion with something bigger than me (memories of Sunday School, of congregational hymns in church, and the singing of heavenly-sounding choirs).

From what I want to remember, the little pieces of bigger themes–to what I can’t forget. I’m lucky. During this time of year the house is filled with notes, the music that my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather played, my kids preparing for seasonal concerts and parties. For me, these notes resonate the universe I live in–which is magic. Kirkmount, A forgotten village in the hills of Nova Scotia, the white-washed church and little graveyard, the place my dad knew as home–much of it has returned to woods and barrens. The one-room schoolhouse has recently collapsed, where folks danced strathspeys and reels all night to fiddles and the percussive banging of the piano. But in my house the lingering notes of the driven bow and irregular spiky rhythms are still heard, especially during these months when the celebration comes inside out of the cold and snow.

And finally, notes, the ones scribbled in a journal beside my bed where I jot down the conversations and contents of dreams, notes from another kind of place, not just from inside, but from in-between. I noticed the other day that on several pages I wrote horizontally and then rotated the book to write vertically spanning the height of the page, to create a cursive grid scrawled first across and then up and down. Then there are those pages where the notes refer to notes several pages before, notes written in circuits back and forth throughout the book.

Notes, the mnemonic doorways into memory. Notes, the sonic building blocks of music. Notes, a secret code to decipher at the right time and in the right way. Notes, notes, and notes….

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