colmar, a decade or three ago: i am roused from a deep sleep. music, somewhere, arches gracefully through the darkness, caressing me, tilting me above my dreams.
i realize, surfacing, that i have not tumbled into paradise. paradise has tumbled into me.
i grope my inquisitive way upstairs, where daniel, the gentleman of the manor, sits in a beanbag chair before the hearth. he is clearly as transcendentally challenged as i am.
"what do you think?" he asks. ("c'est merveilleux, non?")
"if my life could be accompanied by one melody forever and ever and ever," i say, transfixed, "this would be it."
he smiles.
"c'est le canon," he explains, "de pachelbel."
I remember rue de la Herse, the river at the back, the cobbles outside the front door, the huge loom in the entrance. I remember spaghetti suppers, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot .... but Pachebel I know from elsewhere. Was it really three decades ago?
ReplyDelete... three decades ago ... what a wonderful memory to be able to share ...
ReplyDeleteMy memory of Pachelbel's Canon is of a '91 music camp on the Southern Highlands of NSW in the small town of Robertson between Bowral and the coast in an elegant old country house. My son was part of a wind quartet that performed a specially transposed version at the Sunday soiree for parents.