One little thing that you may not know about me is that I can't hear very well from my left ear. I'm almost deaf on that side, actually. When I was about 6yrs old, they put little tiny itty bitty tubes on my eardrums. When they took the left one out, they tore it badly enough for me to gradually lose my hearing.
I remember very vividly the times before the surgery, it was totally needed. The only noticeable consequence of it is my need to sit or lean my head favoring my right ear. I mostly walk to the left of people when I really want to listen to our conversation. It makes for an interesting experiment when I listen to song tracks that differentiate their mix between the left and right sides. It has forced me to maybe pay more attention to the things I hear.
As a child, I was brought up in a very musical house. My grandmother sang and played the piano. My grandfather is a guitar virtuoso. And well, my mother, aunts and uncles can play some very mean keys.
My grandmother wanted me to play the Violin. And they tried, hard, but I think the math part of it all escaped me. I could never figure it out, preferring to just play piano pieces by ear. It was a more organic hobby anyways, something to do to wind down after school, gymnastics and swimming. Something to do when I got bored.
For about 10 years, I lived in a house where I would listen to opera everyday, Chopin, Bach and Beethoven while taking my bath. I was probably the only kid in my 1st grade class that knew who Tchaikovsky was. Or Vivaldi.
I can still play the two hands of Fur Elise by memory, if I practice a day or two. It won't be perfect and I'll probably stall and grouch over the keys, much to my grandmother's chagrin. It was her, as you've probably read in many of my blogs, who pushed the artistic agenda on me. I really feel that whenever I want to remember the Freedom parts of my childhood, they all revolved around all of the artistic things I did with her.
For example; we would write a short story or a poem, read it, make a song for it, paint a canvas for it, make a radio show by recording our voices in my grandfather's casette player. It wasn't until we had probably exhausted the expressions that could come out of it, that we would move on to another thing. She also loved to entertain in the thought that she was Agatha Christie. She had all of her books, lined and used so much that they were falling apart.
Another thing she did, with quite an amount of talent, was making her own clothes. She even had particular colors assigned to each day of the week. I sort of remember that she wore Lilac on Mondays. Though I could be wrong. According to my mom, it had something to do with her Metaphysic's practice.
And I think a mix of all of that stuck to me, in more weird ways than one. It struck me tonight while listening to Ella Fitzgerald and some Chet Baker. I suddenly felt like I was inappropriately dressed to be listening to them. I shouldn't be wearing this rainbow colored t-shirt from Old Navy or these low riding faded jeans that have seen better days.
For some reason, I felt I should either change into a gauzy blouse, a softer look compared to this teenaged look I'm sporting today, or just stop listening and change stations to Incubus or some other alternative rock that would match what I wear. And then another realization.
For the last 3 years, I have rarely listened to Jazz, or Big Bands... and my closet is 80% dominated by my collection of T-shirts, I have more pairs of Converse than I care to admit, and I own more jeans than I can honestly wear. Coincidentally, my iTunes playlists have more rock, alternative and such, than any classical or old age.
Before this took over, back in my time in Venezuela, I remember that my friend Luisa and I would go to our friend Diego's beach house for the weekend or escape on the odd Wednesday. We'd let the whole of my Louis Armstrong collection play through, drink wine and eat moroccan food. Fall asleep analyzing every single detail about indie movies we'd seen. We'd talk about the latest play, the latest designer show we'd gone, our over the top ideas of how our fictional weddings would be. I still had my Converse shoes back then, but most of my wardrobe consisted on things that were more conventionally feminine, or more my age for sure.
I also had a very solid paycheck, a "9 to you name it" job, an apartment of my own... all trapped in the conflicted little world I didn't want to live in.
Now, don't get me wrong. I loved those parts of my life where I escaped the chaos of living in Caracas, but it was like having a production designer come up with a posh and dramatic scheme for my life when I was starring on a SciFi movie. And right now, I'm beginning to feel the same way, only backwards.
Right now, my life feels as if my production designer created a whole scheme for "Reality Bites" and I'm actually starring (or feeling like I should be) in "Amelie" or "Love Actually" or some other middle aged movie, with some french music in the background. I had to firmly accept today that I live my life like a whole production and when something is not fitting right, the music inappropriate for this scene, it will always bother me. Like someone doing an Irish accent when they're supposed to be from Puerto Rico.
There are moments when I have the opportunity to climb on the heels that I've still managed to keep or afford. Those Diane Von Furstenberg that winked their eye to me and I couldn't resist, regardless of the fact that I ate ramen and canned soup while wearing them around my house. I felt girlier, cared and somewhat more like me for those 30 minutes. I entertained the idea of owning eventually 20 pairs of them. I'd strut them while hearing Coltrane's tunes softly around me. Would that be the perfect constructed and produced story, put into all the expressions that I could tell it by?
And I wonder if she felt at the end of her life like her scene was working properly; tied up and neat in a harmony that played without any instrument being dissonant. Maybe that's why she made her own clothes and rode the wave at her own accord, when her own resources and scenarios were so limited. She'd probably say, knowing her as much as I had the opportunity to do, that she was probably lacking a bit of sparkle, but that she would hold back, for the sake of demureness.
-
Maria Magdalena Mata Foucault De Damas (1929 - 1993) French/Spanish and then Venezuelan. A former elementary school teacher that dedicated her life to raise her five children in the eastern oil town of El Tigre. She was part of the incipient educated community of the town, contributing under a 'nom de plume' with poems and short stories to the local newspaper. She also painted a oil on canvas every week and her works were celebrated in a hall named after her a year after her passing at the Lyon's Club, by her friends and family.
A short bio for someone that spoke and meant a lot more than that.
No comments:
Post a Comment