The Write Thing

Schumman’s Spanisches Liederspiel cycle perhaps finds its most beautifully crafted expression in Emmanuel Geibel’s translation of ‘Cojo jazmín y clavel’ into Botschaft. Sung by the harmonious and delicate voices of Frederica Von Stade and Judith Blegen, one cannot but wonder how anyone could escape the sensuality of the piece. The Habanera-like melodic background works wonderfully in this soprano-mezzosoprano duet, where both Blegen and Von Stade seem to be able to dose the delivery of each line so that the text is enhanced in a sinuous scenery in which flowers and love are omnipresent.

Tausend Blumen, tauumflossen,
Find ich neu im Tal erwacht;
Alle sind erst heut entsprossen,
Aber hin ist ihre Pracht,
Wenn der nächste Morgen lacht.
Sprich, du duftiger Jasmin,
Sprecht, ihr flammenroten Nelken,
Sprecht: kann so schnell auch Liebe welken?

I wish flowers could speak about the duration of love. Sometimes humans cannot and they should not really have to. They should just let it happen. Will you, my valkyrie?

Interesting invention, this thing called time. While we eat, work, think, watch TV, read, or get engaged in the most menial tasks, the towering force of a capriciously measured non-entity whose passage is mostly recorded in physical signs (whether we call them wrinkles, memory lapses or simply aging) imposes itself upon us, and rules. Time, the intangible frame that shapes a life, passes by. There will be those who adhere to the carpe diem motto, and others that simply think they will catch up with their own hourly losses later, when they have time…ah! Utopia itself. Unexpectedly, time runs out. However, as we like to think we dominate, we say we run out of it.

I am not the dominant type, regardless of whether we are dealing with time or with people. I believe in flowing, in listening, observing and, if possible, connecting. Probably that is the task I devote myself to as time passes. There is no avoiding it, so we can only aim to make the most of whatever there is of it. These days, I have been thinking about time a lot. I have missed someone, but this has been a quiet feeling. I have saved time to spend with someone, and that has been a novelty, a change for the best from my workaholic days. I have spent time with someone, only to let the seconds dance around us as if they never existed in the first place. I have loved, and my heart has ticked in tune with each second of the wait until I would see her again. Maybe, after all, I have only done one simple thing…live.

Like sipping a good wine, caressing velvet, softly drawing the contour of a face in the shadows of a dim-lit room…that is how we are being born outside ourselves and into one another. I unravel you slowly, peacefully, in tune with a melody neither of us has heard before. Awakening, I said that to you the morning after we first kissed. We are awakening to each other, piece by piece. I feel you, fragmented and whole, in the body I can only imagine and sense. The wait only enhances the pleasure of our own discovery. Everything that went before you has been a journey worth of its destination. You, the port where I find my unity, the name I have grown into, the woman I love.