Reflections on a Sitar Concert in the South of France

This weekend I made an unexpected appearance at a lecture and performance of the Northern Indian music. The event took place at an old Bergerie -once a house for sheep, translated into a rustically modern home with heating and light and windows- not very far from where I live. Candles and a few small lights illuminated the main room whose floor was covered by large pillows. At one end sat the kitchen. At the other end there lay a series of Indian drums, a lute and a sitar, all on top of a bright red and blue Persian carpet. The room was filled with maybe thirty middle-aged men and women from nearby villages. We were the youngest in the room by twenty years or more, but the crowd was strikingly familiar to me; despite their being French, all of the people could have easily been parents of friends of mine from California. The sitar player sat down and began to explain, in French, some of the differences between Western music and Eastern music. I drew my head as close as possible and stretched my thoughts as far out as I could; something about Western music emphasizing harmony and Eastern music melody; the absence of a tonic and dominant in Indian music; wood and ivory. Suddenly I was reminded of E.E. Cummings,

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because thy are too near

As I am admiring her demonstration of the Indian drums I feel a tickle in my throat and the inescapable need to cough, which is augmented by the awkwardly forced austerity created by Westerners listening to Eastern music. I start to cough. The room is silent except for the beating of the drums and my head is at the point of erupting. I jump up and hobble through the crowd to the kitchen, covering my mouth with watering eyes. I cannot remove the tickle sensation, and someone has taken my seat so I must stay in the kitchen watching the crowd and the musician at once. She picks up the sitar and explains some of the materials and the sounds and without warning begins to play.

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though I have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully,mysteriously)her first rose

What did she say about harmony and melody? She plays one low note over and over and over all the while interrupting it by a higher note, the same note, but bent, bent every time at different lengths of time and on different lengths of the instrument. Are they even in the same octave? She mentioned the octaves, something about their not being as constrictive; maybe it was that there were not any octaves at all. What is the French word for constrictive? Her playing is the only thing to focus on to keep me from coughing.

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

By this time the thirty or so people in the room and the fire have melded into one massive and slow moving, breathing creature whose voice is the crackling cataract of notes struck and bent in rapidly altering melodies. One on top of the other; one next to the other. It is almost like John Coltrane’s sound, the sheets of sound descending upon and alongside each other, a line of individual notes that together suggest a augmented seventh or diminished fifth, followed by a series of subtle tangents and perpendiculars to the original theme

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

hard and fast. Back and forth. In my dreams there are shapes that resemble you. It grows and grows and grows but never explodes. There is no tonic, no dominant. At this point she her hand is twittering like a hummingbird, her thumb wildly clanging out the lower notes and her fingers plucking and flicking the rest, in some swelling order that grabs the sonata form by its collar and stares into its eyes with a sweating brow and fluctuating pupils and presses one pair of lips against another, unwilling and afraid and aroused

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all the roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

There were samosas and fresh chai tea after the concert. I was sitting or maybe standing and I had a plate in one hand and a glass in the other. It was warm and I was naked, just like it is and I am after I read Cummings. Defenseless, tired. How heavy was the pen with which he wrote? How bright was the light that illuminated his sheets? Are there any emotions that we share? All of the people around me quietly eating and drinking too-that was nice, their eyes say, thank you, to her with her long hair and deep green Indian robes. You’re welcome.