In my senior year at Tahanto Regional High School, I had an incredible AP English teacher, Mrs. Kerrigan. Not only was she an incredible woman, with an endless supply of information and a sharp sense of humor - that sense of humor saved many a senioritis sufferer - but she introduced me and my classmates to some of the most incredible literature I have read to this point. One of these books, Four Letters Of Love, by Niall Williams, was simply amazing. The writing is flawless, and the story is beautiful. I went to buy the book at Barnes and Noble, having taken the book out from the library for use in class and wanting my own copy, and you can imagine my delight, having thought so highly of Williams' work, at finding a SECOND book, entitled As It Is In Heaven. This book touched me as very few have before. The description of the power of music and of love was exactly what I felt through my awesome times of involvement in music through high school and outside the halls of acadaemia. My favorite passage from this amazing book is pages 294 through 296, give or take...it's what I always wanted music to be. I've included it here...along with a link afterwards, for when Niall Williams' writing has convinced you that you need to readthe rest of the story...possibly along with Four Letters of Love.
It was eleven o'clock, half an hour past the advertised opening. At last, as if she had finally paced all the way to the far end of hope, Gabriella stopped in the middle of the hallway. She paused a moment for her spirit to break. Then Stephen told her, "There are two cars."
It was a moment typical of their life together, for within it was a kind of desperate yearning, an outrageous dreaming that belonged to a more innocent world than this, and which appeared to be always on the point of crashing headfirst into the chill reality of failure, but then was rescued. As if God were juggling glass-ball moments with mischevious riskiness, letting them hurtle towards the ground an then defying the odds to pull off once more the little miracle of salvation.
There were two cars, the Kennys' and the O'Connells'. Then there were three more, The Mulvihills', Mangans', and Greenes'. they came in with the low-chinned circumspection of those who enter new rooms for the first time. They had come from the Lahiffe funeral, they explained over the Vivaldi, draining the councillor's face when he realized he had missed it. They smiled and shook hands and did not seemto resist the sudden switch from the mood of the graveyard to the bright triumphant joy of the music. Others were coming along, Joe Kenny said. But the traffic was all caught up in Miltown Milbay. He took the wine Moira offered him and drank it back in a shot, then looked up a the bare walls as if at paintings.
Big Tom Lernihan came in the door. The Josie Hassett, Nuala Normoyle, the three Looney girls, the Penders, the Reidys, the Mohallys, and six families of Ryans. Within half an hour the funeral had arrived at the music school. There were a hundred people in the hallway, and the mud of the graveyard slipped from their boots, and the heat of their bodies rose and filled the air with the smell of rain returning heavenward. The music played through the talking, the deep notes of the cello beating like rhythmic wings across the space above them all. Timmy Purtill said it was music like he'd never heard in his life and sat beside the speaker eating a cheese from Denmark. Mary Enright took the arm of Gabriella and told her she had a boy who wanted lessons. So did Maura Galvin. Then the barrel-chested Donnie Cussen, who was called Casanova, smiled his full mouth of teeth at Gabriella and said, "Any chance of a tune for us?"
And then she was playing.
The disc was turned off, and while Stephen held the baby and he crowd hushed, Gabriella Castoldi played Fibich's aching "Poeme." She played with slow and sweet melancholy, and stopped the hearts of those who heard her, so that their mouths opened and their spirits flowed out into that hallway to meet the soul of the woman with the violin. It was nothing less than that. For even from the first notes it was apparent that the action of her bow on the strings was not simply the mechanics of music, but that between the instrument and her there was no distinction, and that the infantesimal beauty of the high notes came like some ambrosial breath from within her. When Gabriella finsihed there was not a sound. There was only the astonished faces of those who had had no idea the could be so moved by such music. Casanova Cussen raised his big hands and crashed the air, but before the ovation could reach fullness Gabriella was playing again. "Party pieces," she said, and swept into Kreisler and then Dvorak. She played as if she were dancing. She played out of relief and gratitude, out of an understanding that she was not alone and that the rain of west Clare that day in October, with Stephen Griffin holding their child, was as much happiness as she dared accept from the world. She played Brahms's "Hungarian Dance" and Dvorak's "Humoresque" and was pausing between pieces when she saw the tear-wet face of the woman who was Eileen Waters talking to Stephen and then taking his offered hand and slowly shaking it.
What happened after that occurred in the vague uncertain way that time has decided traditional sesiuns should begin; whether Francie Golden spoke first, told anyone, or simply carried his fiddle everywhere, whether it was an inperceptible signal, a nod or wink, or whether it was the moment of the warming of the French wine in his blood reached the point of inspiring action, there was an instant when the crowd were clapping for Gabriella, and then it was Francie Golden who was playing "Upstairs in a Tent" and grinning sideways in the terrible pleasure of his own devilment. Like Gabriella he flowed one tune into the next and for the first time in that building made the air dance to a jig. There was clapping along and toe-tapping and little waves of quick encouragements: "Good man, Francie," "That's it, boy," "Now ye're playin," and a few plain whoops of wordless gaiety.
The moment Francie finished, faces turned to Gabriella, as if she might disapprove of that simple old jaunty music that was theirs. But at once she caught the violin under her chin and said, "Like this?" and played the same tune back to Francie Golden, who laughed and joined her, and led her on another tune inwhich she followed him and then another. Then Gabriella played Schubert, and Francie was urged to try his fist at it, and did; and the twin O'Gormans, who had been there and gone home for their instruments, arrived back and joined in on two flutes. And Moira Fitzgibbon called Frawley's from the car phone of the councillor and ordered all the hot foos they had to be brought up to the school in Dempsey's van, and the four Keoughs went for stout and came back with Mickey Killeen, the box player, and Johnsie Kelly, the pipe-playing tiler from Kilmurry. And though the rain beat on outside and the car park puddled deeply beneath the bruised sky, none in Miltown Malbay that day gave it a care, for the music was like a long and intricate spell, and transformed grief and worry to laughter and delight in the very same way it had done for centuries. The wall rang wth it. Men took off their jackets and dance the Clare set with their wives. They battered with toes and heels on the carpeted floor, as if it were flagstone, and spun in giddying quick circles that returned them to the moments of their childhoods, when the magic of dancing first saw them leap and spin on kitchen floors. They danced and the music played on. More people arrived, and soon the crush of the crowd made somespin off down the corridors and dance in each of the rooms of that pentagonal building, dancing even beyond the hearing of the music, and making steps and keeping time to the music that was already inside them. Gabriella put down her violin and danced with Stephen and Alannah in a bumping, uneven jigtime. Stephen danced like a man who had been given wooden legs. They flew out in sharp angles and measured space like a pair of pincers. He kept his head bolt upright, where it perched above Gabriella's and caught the swirling perfume of lilies as it rose off her hair. He felt the smallness of her back beneath his hand and pressed there to draw her to him, so that she might feel his happiness and love and never leave that moment. And she was laughing while she danced. And while they flew through the other couples (passing the thrown-back head of Eileen Waters where she abandoned herself to the rhythm coming from the wine and dance Eamon with a particular and memorable vivacity), cars started to arrive from Mullagh and Quilty and Cree and Doonbeg, and the space inside those walls had to expand and defy laws of science to accomodate all the ghosts and musicians and dancers of those and other parishes, and that, although they did not know it, the music they were playing was already transforming, and becoming ever so slightly something new, something which absorbed, which was both of that place and others, and allowed the classical to speak to it and would become in time the music of the new millennium. It did not matter. They played and danced on and were like the sea, changing moods like tides, now bright and quick, now slow with airs of sorrow. And while the moon was lost beneath the coverings of thick cloud and the stars were put out in the western sky, the party continued. It continued all that starless, moonless night, while the rain fell and the wind blew and none cared, for it was as if in those moments of music and dance each man and woman was seized with the knowledge of the boundless hardship and injustice of life and knew that this night in the pentagonal building of the music school in Moses Mooney's field was one they would look back on from the edge of like and realize that yes, there they had come as close as they ever had to true happiness.
As It Is In Heaven on Amazon.com
Four Letters Of Love on Amazon.com
