Music I Like, #17: Oblivion by Astor Piazolla

Astor Piazolla's Histoire du Tango (arranged for piano trio) is a piece I learned and played at the Apple Hill Summer Chamber Music Workshop in the summer of 2007.

Apple Hill is a place that is very, very special to me, in a way that's hard to put into words. Madeline L'Engle, in one of her published journals, describes playing the piano and writing stories in her first studio apartment as part of her deepening. It's hard to say just what exactly she means by that--on the surface of things, it's simply growing up, but also growing up in a way that leads towards curiosity and empathy and love of beautiful things. And Apple Hill was for me a place of deepening. It was where I learned to make music with other people, and music played with other people is always more than music.

Oblivion always brings to mind the following poem.

Special Glasses

I had to send away for them
because they are not available in any store.

They look the same as any sunglasses
with a light tint and silvery frames,
but instead of filtering out the harmful
rays of the sun,

they filter out the harmful sight of you --
you on the approach,
you waiting at my bus stop,
you, face in the evening window.

Every morning I put them on
and step out the side door
whistling a melody of thanks to my nose
and my ears for holding them in place, just so,

singing a song of gratitude
to the lens grinder at his heavy bench
and to the very lenses themselves
because they allow it all to come in, all but you.

How they know the difference
between the green hedges, the stone walls,
and you is beyond me,

yet the schoolbuses flashing in the rain
do come in, as well as the postman waving
and the mother and daughter dogs next door,

and then there is the tea kettle
about to play its chord—
everything sailing right in but you, girl.

Yes, just as the night air passes through the screen,
but not the mosquito,
and as water swirls down the drain,
but not the eggshell,
so the flowering trellis and the moon
pass through my special glasses, but not you.

Let us keep it this way, I say to myself,
as I lay my special glasses on the night table,
pull the chain on the lamp,
and say a prayer—unlike the song—
that I will not see you in my dreams.

PS I'd forgotten until wrote this post but that same summer my sister and I were playing tangos, a delightful and charming group of women were celebrating their fiftieth birthdays at Apple Hill--one of them wrote about her experiences here.

(My sister and I are the twins playing violin and piano with daylilies in our hair--though I don't remember seeing the bat!)