SEWANEE MUSIC FESTIVAL

Every year in July, we Sewanee residents traditionally celebrate two  art festivals—The Sewanee Music Festival and the Sewanee Writers Conference. A few months ago, I volunteered to sell tickets at the Music Festival on June 27 and July 17, and as a reward for volunteering, I gained entrance to the concerts, gratis.

The Sewanee Music Festival is a summer event that provides a program for advanced music students and a professional concert series. The Festival, over fifty years old, offers a training program that focuses on performance experience. Yesterday’s Sunday afternoon program included the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Sewanee Symphony, and I was amazed at the brilliant performances of some very young, gifted students.

In a departure from traditional renditions, the Sewanee Symphony surprised the audience with one of Gyorgy Ligeti’s compositions entitled “Atmospheres,” which some readers will recognize as the background music of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and “The Shining” movies. Now, I am a fan of Phillip Glass who is a modernist, but I wasn’t prepared for the sounds of a composition that focus on texture and tone, rather than melody, harmony, and rhythm. The music reminded me of Bartok, and I’ve read that in his youth, Ligeti admired this composer. The instrumental sounds at the beginning of the piece hit my amateur musician’s ear like a blast of tuning up noise, and I glimpsed a cello player on the front row grinning broadly at the surprised looks of music aficianados in the audience.


The images that came up for me when I heard the opening sounds, known as “tone clusters,” were those of the bazaar in Iran where I lived in the 70’s. In my first book, IRAN: IN A PERSIAN MARKET, I referred to it as cacophonous—the dissonant bleating of sheep, donkeys, clanking carts, Paykan automobiles, strange Farsi cries  and screeching tires intermingling in the streets. I became accustomed to the bazaar, and as I listened to Ligeti’s “static mass of sound,” my ear gradually became attuned to the unusual sounds. However, as the music progressed, I also became aware of interval silences. At the conclusion of “Atmospheres,” the image of a door closing and someone stepping out into space came to mind. “Atmospheres” was a strange, almost mystical experience that sent me scurrying to read a biography about Ligeti.

Ligeti was born, a Hungarian Jew, in Transylvania, Romania and later became an Austrian citizen. His family suffered during the Holocaust, and his father died in Auschwitz where both parents had been sent. Ligeti lived in terror for awhile, fleeing to Switzerland in 1947, then returned to Hungary until 1956. After “Atmospheres” and “Appartitions” were performed in 1961, he became famous worldwide. His repertoire, varied and controversial, is defined as “micropolyphony,” and in his old age he commented that he was bold enough to say that he had already found a new style. In his late years, Ligeti composed a unique opera entitled “Le Grand Macabre.”

I look forward to the next concert at which I'm to sell tickets, but doubt if I’ll hear sounds equal to that of this gifted modernist. And I wonder what kind of poetry I’ll hear at the Sewanee Writers Conference?!

LET THE TREES ANSWER

Yesterday when I put water in the bird bath under the hemlock tree, I spent a few minutes pondering how long the magnificent tree has been growing in my backyard. Hemlocks here on The Mountain reach lofty heights, but live oaks in Louisiana could challenge them as far as “spreads” are concerned.

My pondering led to thoughts of the old live oaks near my other home in New Iberia, Louisiana. Some of them are several centuries old. This large spreading tree that The Celts celebrated as a tree of doors and the gateway between worlds, supports the epiphytes known as Spanish moss and embellish many of the yards of homes in Teche country, especially those along Bayou Teche.

Several years ago, I published a thin book that featured live oaks in the title, LIVE OAK GARDENS: A PLACE OF PEACE AND BEAUTY, a place on Jefferson Island, ten miles west of New Iberia. Although some of the live oaks date back to the late 19th century, many were destroyed during hurricanes and were replanted by J. Lyles Bayless, Jr. who inherited Jefferson Island during the early 50’s. Bayless designed and planted a beautiful avenue of live oaks on the approach to the island and, again, hurricanes destroyed many of the trees. However, today, visitors to Jefferson Island still enjoy some of the old oaks scattered throughout the gardens. I was so inspired by the island’s live oaks, I wrote in the introduction to LIVE OAK GARDENS: “…the live oaks form ancient shelters, standing like patriarchs with their beards of moss trailing in the slight breeze. They arch high above the paths, unencumbering, but offering visitors respite from the sun…”

Live oaks abound in New Iberia and remain green year-round, leafing through the mild winters there. Several famous live oaks grow near old homes on Main Street, one of which is the Gebert Oak, first planted in 1831 when it was eight years old. The magnificent oak suffered from a disease that afflicts trees a few years ago but has since revived and is over 170 years old. The first Spanish settlers who came to New Iberia camped out under a live oak tree at the end of Darby Lane, which was only removed when a newly-built highway to St. Martinville intersected with Darby Lane. One of the local schools is named Live Oak School, an old hotel once bore the tree’s name, and a Live Oak Society with a mission of preserving the oaks, thrives in the area. A Festival of Live Oaks will be held in March, 2011 in New Iberia’s City Park to celebrate the long lives of all the oaks that have survived storms, hurricanes, and drouths. Some of the trees in town could probably compete with the national champion of live oak trees in Louisburg, Louisiana that topped other competitors around the state in 1976.

Interestingly, I recently discovered that a realtor wants to sell an entire island of live oaks dubbed Live Oak Island off the coast of Beaufort, South Carolina. The realtor didn’t give a list price!

My great-grandmother, Dora Runnels Greenlaw, in her book of poetry simply entitled VERSES, once penned an ode “To An Old Oak.” An excerpt from her long poem:

“…Each year has locked its story within your heart,

and the secrets, untold, will perish with you.

But listen, O mighty work of a provident creator,

the soft gray moss bearding a few of your trusted limbs,

will creep slowly, slyly over your stately form,

and as slowly sap the life from your unsuspecting heart,

so you too shall fall a victim to time’s relentless mastery.

Passing! …O silent historian of the forest.”

I love her last line and have often said, “if only trees could talk!”

Photograph of a live oak taken from my book, LIVE OAK GARDENS published by Acadian House Publishing in Lafayette, Louisiana. Photography by Ed Bowie, Cliff Deal, Curtis Darrah, Mickey Delcambre, and Jim Valentine.

OAXACA, OAXACA…

Since March, the major activity at our cottage on The Mountain at Sewanee has been restoration—a new bath, electronic garage doors, porch painting…and, unexpectedly, the installation of a new AC when the old one burned up. When all was said and done, I felt that every line of poetry I might have written since March had been siphoned off in the hecktivity of home improvement.

This morning after services at St. Mary’s on the bluff, I sat on my front porch and contemplated writing poetry again. Immediately, memories of the summer I spent in Oaxaca City surfaced. Not only was I inspired by the landscape and people to write poetry while I vacationed there, I became interested in the ancient Nahua poets—poets who believed that we’re born with a physical heart and face, but if we’re to be truly men and women, we’re to leave temporary pleasures and create a more lasting Self manifested in a more enduring, true heart and true face.

This Nahua poetry was preserved by friars who arrived in Mexico and studied the country’s native languages and customs. From this preserved poetry emerged verses such as this one written by an anonymous Nahua poet: “From the house of flowering butterflies/was born the song;/I hear it come to life; I, the singer./It wanders flying, the peerless firefly of/the gods.” Many Nahua sad songs appear in A GUIDE TO MEXICAN POETRY by Irene Nicholson and represent the Nahua’s struggle toward faith and fulfillment, fostered by a belief that life on earth is perishable and an illusion; however, it can become permanent when the true heart and true face are created.

Of course, the research into Mexican poetry while I was in Oaxaca City, led to Octavio Paz, whose long poems remind me of the American poet Walt Whitman and who was strongly influenced by surrealism. He transported me into the landscape of Mexico: “only this plain; cactus, acacia, enormous boulders exploding under the sun.”

We stayed in a hotel on the zocala (square) in Oaxaca City and watched armed soldiers march into the center of the square to raise the Mexican flag every morning. We were apprehensive about the military maneuvers and later learned that in 2006, violence erupted in that same square when the Oaxaca Teachers’ Union staged a strike and called for the removal of Ruiz, the governor of Oaxaca. An American journalist was shot in the chest in the zocalo during October following the teacher’s strike in May. We shuddered as we read about scenes of violence that took place in this historic square we had enjoyed in the late 90’s.

Most afternoons when we sojourned in Oaxaca City, we rested in our hotel room facing the zocala and read, journaled, or wrote poetry about our experiences in this city with its narrow streets, old stone buildings, and shaded plazas. Here’s one of the poems I later published in my book, AFTERNOONS IN OAXACA.

ADIOS OAXACA CITY

Every night is Saturday night in Oaxaca square,

hot marimba on the keys,

rumba in the street,

voices murmuring on the hot wind.

We leave their celebrations,

the orange and yellow blossoms on sandstone,

but the sun will not age before we return,

lonely for the bruised stone,

wind blowing the curtain

through open casement windows,

seeking the birds of myth,

the gold and black butterflies,

blue and yellow tapestry of memory,

our Spirits’ refreshment again,

and Quetzalcoatl, their ancient man-god,

anointing his new companions.