Not only madeleines, M Proust

This April, I came back from Charlottesville a few days before usual to sing in a concert.
The choir I have belonged to for the last fourteen years is one of a group of French choirs. Each year, the Paris choirs of this group organize a Choir Workshop. One of the choir directors chooses a composer or a type of music he or she enjoys -- often outside the usual repertoire of our choirs. About 40 or 50 people practice this music for 5 or 6 weekends and give two concerts in April.
I learned in September that my choir director would be in charge of the Workshop this year and had chosen to have us work on the Anglican Choral Evensong. Since Adam is British and went to a school connected with the Anglican Church, I thought it would be interesting to learn this music from someone who knew it well. And particularly fun to sing Anglican church music with a group of French people. But I got much more than I bargained for.

The first rehearsals this fall were as shaky as first rehearsals always are. But already I smiled. The music Adam had chosen for us definitely belonged to the Established Church of the British Empire.
I imagined Miss Marple nodding approvingly as we sang “My Soul there is a country”.
Surely, Lord Peter Wimsey would have been moved by Ireland’s “Greater Waters Cannot Quench Love”. And both would have totally approved of “Jerusalem”, perhaps better known to the non-British among us from the film “Chariots of Fire” (listen to the end of the clip to hear it).
Margaret, an English woman, who, like me, has lived all her adult life in France, was in the alto section. We’d occasionally catch each other’s eye and smile in delighted complicity at the utter Englishness of it all.
As the year progressed, other memories popped into my head at odd moments. I remembered the stately, Victorian St Jude’s Church in Oakville Ontario where I spent every Sunday morning of my childhood listening to similar music.
My father sang in the choir but I could not. The organist and choir master believed the only true church choirs were adults and boy sopranos. If it was good enough for Oxford, Cambridge and Saint Paul’s, why would Mel Evans’ standards be any lower?
Despite not being a boy, it was from Mel Evans that I learned to love choral music, for he was also the Music Superintendant of the elementary schools in Oakville. There, the choirs were mixed and I was a proud choir member from the age of 9.
Marcel Proust speaks of “the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and so effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison”. His example of his memory-evoking madeleine is a classic of French literature. But I can now tell you that other senses hold memories that enclose our past.
The Workshop Choir was proud of our two April concerts. (Though we no doubt didn’t sound like the choirs in the clips under the hyperlinks, we felt like we did on that weekend)



But the broadest, most tender smiles were on the faces of Adam and Margaret and me as the pleasures of the present mingled with our” Remembrance of Things Past”.

April in Paris

The above aren’t pictures of April in Paris. I took them on April 1st and 2nd in Charlottesville where spring is a many-splendored thing. I know. I’ve seen the very beginnings of it many times – and pictures of later weeks. My friends are always telling me that I’m leaving “just as things are getting pretty”. And yet the same friends, influenced by a song written before they were born, sigh and say “Ah! April in Paris!”
Actually, April is usually the rainiest month there is. The temperature hovers around 11°C (52°F) – and that’s the daily high. (In 1932 when “April in Paris” was written, the temperatures were 2°C below normal and it was rainier than average. So much for the magic of the cinema.) The French proverb “En avril, ne te découvre pas d’un fil” which, loosely translated is “In April, take off not one thread of clothing.” says it all.
Made wise by my 37 Aprils in Paris, as I left sunny Charlottesville (temperature the day of my departure 84°F or 29° C), I was planning an ironic blog post for you. First, I’d show lovely pictures of early April in central Virginia. Then I’d contrast them with cold and rainy Paris pictures. But the joke was on me. We’ve had a lovely month. It has hardly rained at all. We rejoiced in day after day of bright sunshine and above average temperatures – though it was still wise to wear a coat, particularly in the evening.
While we enjoyed our unusual weather, the real irony was that when the cloud of ashes from the nameless-because-it-was-too-complicated-to-pronounce-unless-you-are-Icelandic volcano reached us and hovered over our heads above the bright blue sky, it stayed around for days because…….. there was no wind to blow it away.
So some tourists had more April in Paris than they were expecting. But it’s been lovely.
See for yourselves

The Big Read Book Club

Four years ago, Charlottesville joined in The Big Read, a relatively new National Endowment for the Arts program. Participating communities choose one of the books recommended by the event’s Reading Committee, receive a small grant to promote The Big Read in their towns and commit to organizing various public lectures, readings and discussions of their chosen book. “What a great idea, “I thought when I first heard of it. I scanned the schedule of events each year, disappointed to see that most of them took place when I was in Paris. (One of the things you learn when you have a double life is that there is always something interesting going on in the place where you are not.)
Last spring, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I invited a group of friends to discuss the Big Read book at my house. They had a great time and unanimously decreed that I should do it again. Happy to oblige, I organized the second edition of the Big Read Book Club on March 27th this year.


Cake and candy, iced tea and wine fueled the discussion.

Charlottesville’s choice this year was “A Lesson Before Dying” by Ernest J. Gaines. Not only had I never read it; I had never heard of it or its author.
Thank goodness for the Big Read because I wouldn’t have wanted to have missed this book.
Gaines was born in 1933 in Louisiana, the son of a sharecropper. His early education was at a black plantation school that only met for 5 or 6 months of the year. Fortunately for us,it was reinforced by intensive reading at the public library in California when the teenaged boy joined his mother and stepfather who had moved there a few years earlier. Gaines went on to university and, on the basis of short stories published in the college quarterly, won a scholarship to the graduate creative writing program at Stanford.
The young student wrote his early stories because he couldn’t find books about the life he knew in rural Louisiana. "A Lesson Before Dying” is also set in the place and time he knew so well and described so eloquently -- its hardship but also its strong community.
I’m not going to tell you much about the novel because I want you all to read it. (In French the translation is entitled “Dites-leur que je suis un homme”). Both titles, in my opinion, point us in the direction the author wants us to look. So,I was surprised at the turn the early part our discussion took, proving once again that the reader brings to a book as much as he or she takes from it. Most of my friends talked immediately of racism past and present and the disproportionate number of black men – some later proven innocent -- on death row. After a time, I said “In my opinion, that’s just the setting; that’s not what the novel’s about.” Shocked silence. “Consider the title.” I suggested. They did and had lots to say. But their first emotional reaction was the strongest.
All cultures and countries have partly healed wounds. Segregation is one of the United States’. My passport and age say I should share this. But my early years were spent in a small Canadian town with only one black family. And when Martin Luther King spoke in Washington in 1963, I watched it on TV in Jamaica, surrounded by black and brown classmates and teachers.
Once again, I was an outsider. It’s a familiar and, therefore, comfortable position for me. Fortunately, my white American friends and this African American author gave me a deeper understanding of this slowly healing American wound on that March evening. We had a great discussion. Sorry you couldn’t have been there.

Musical Interlude

My spring visit to Charlottesville is not only about books. It’s full of music,too.
Two of my favorite choral groups have concerts during this time.

The Virginia Consort, directed by Judith Gary, has a special spring concert. The 35 member chamber chorus swells to at least twice its size with the addition of the Festival Chorus – adults who can’t commit to year-long participation in a choir, but, after 8 weeks of hard work in January and February, participate with the Consort in the performance of a major work with orchestra. This concert is made even more fun for me because one of my neighbors is in the Festival Chorus

and one of my tenants plays percussion in the orchestra.
This year’s concert was Carmina Burana, a work I didn’t know. Well, it turns out I did know part of it. O Fortuna which begins and ends it has been used in movies as varied as “Hunt for Red October”, “Jackass: the Movie” and “Cheaper by the Dozen”
These 13th century poems set to 20th century music made a powerful impression on me. Thanks Virginia Consort.



I also attended the Oratorio Society’s spring concert – a particularly happy event for them this year as their Christmas concert had to be cancelled due to Charlottesville’s first major snowfall. They sang Brahm’s German Requiem. Hard to believe that such beautiful music was so controversial for so many years. Fortunately for the Oratorio Society, their appreciative audience took no part in the controversy.


The most intensive part of my spring musical experience, however, is the course I've taken at the University of Virginia for the last three years. There’s been a lot of music in my life. I attended classical music concerts from an early age. I took piano lessons for 7 years – only the first year of which I appreciated. I’d rather have taken figure skating classes with my friends instead of practicing alone in the living room. But parents don’t always understand these things. Elementary school, high school and university choirs gave me my most appreciated musical experience. But, somehow, I never learned much about the composers whose works I listened to, sang and appreciated. For the last three years, I’ve been filling in the gaps while feeling like a student again -- without any of the pressure of my real student days. Every Thursday evening from late February until April 1st this year, I gobbled down an early dinner at home or grabbed a sandwich at one of the student hangouts and took off for a college classroom where I spent two wonderful hours while a Professor Emeritus of the University enriched twenty adults’ knowledge and experience of Beethoven and his music. I appreciated the wonderful audio and visual equipment – so different from what I would have had available during my real student days.
Several times a week I went to the library to do my reading. I’m sure I’d have spent more time in my university library if it had been like this. Comfortable chairs and sofas cluster in the front, each providing a nest for an undergraduate. Small tables encourage group work. There are also booths along a series of windows (my choice of a reading spot. I’ve always loved having a window to look out when I work or read.) The groups of undergraduates worrying about their exams and papers or just enjoying each other’s company as they hurried through their reading probably thought I was a professor – maybe a professor emeritus,alas, if they noticed me at all. But as I contentedly looked out the window at the aftermath of the winter storms and the newly emerging spring flowers, I knew better. I'm a Life Long Learner.

Celebrating Books ..... and Spring

For the last sixteen years, just when people are thinking that winter will never end, readers, writers and books sprout up all over Charlottesville.






The Virginia Festival of the Book has arrived. Can spring be far behind?




Like other events and activities that are now an important part of my life, my relationship with the Book Festival, as its aficionados affectionately call it, began on a whim. Ten years ago, my good friend Nancy took over directorship of the Festival.


I had no idea what to expect of it, but I love books and thought it would be fun to come see Nancy in her new job. By the end of the first day, I was hooked. I’ve only missed one Festival since -- sitting in Paris wishing I was in Charlottesville the whole time.
Non-Charlottesville friends often remark “Oh, yes. It’s time for your Book Fair” as I prepare for my first trip back to Virginia each year. “Not Book Fair; Book Festival,” I amend. “Whatever,” their condescending smiles reply. But the distinction is important. Book Fairs take place in big conference centers bulging with stands where publishers display their latest wares. There is an “authors’ events” section in the catalog but a Book Fair is mainly about commerce. The Virginia Festival of the Book is about readers and writers – with some buying selling and promoting of books, of course. At least the authors hope so.

Writers – more than three hundred of them -- come to the Festival to speak and read from their works. Most participate in panels of from two to four authors. Over two hundred events take place over the five days. If, as I do, you go from morning til night, you feel as if you’ve had a college seminar by the end of the week. And you’re as tired as if you had attended one, too.

Another fun thing about the Book Festival is the variety of venues. This year I attended programs at the Omni Hotel (center of operations and where most of the out-of-town authors stay), the library, City Council Chambers, the County Office Building auditorium, a local restaurant , the Paramount Theater, the University Book Store and the university theatre.

Had I made other choices or had a car, I could have attended events at other book stores, the Jefferson Library at Monticello, a gourmet kitchen store, a running shoe store or the Senior Center. Sure beats the enclosed atmosphere of a major conference hall.
A few years ago, I begged Nancy for a volunteer job and she found me the perfect one. I work with another woman, organizing the team of volunteer drivers who chauffeur out-of-town authors to and from the local airport and, if needed, to and from their programs. My part of the job is to make a spread sheet of all the arrivals, departures and programs and slot in the volunteer drivers for each author. By the time the Festival begins, I have basically memorized the names and travel details of half the authors I meet.
After three weeks of spread sheets and co-ordinating phone calls followed by five stimulating and mind-stretching days and evenings, I need to relax. Thanks to a number of friendly authors and booksellers, I know just how I’m going to do it.