Songs For A Blind Date

Prologue I hear the sounds of place more clearly as I grow old, as though the earth is calling me home. Some people stay and listen profoundly to one song until they fade into the walls and become the notes that others hear. Some move on and weave new harmonies into the song of life. I wanted to hear the notes of new places and sail on a wash of sound until the rhythms carried me into deeper water where snatches of the songs of the world rippled across the surface. Perhaps I could pick up a minim here, a quaver there and although I can’t read music, I could work the notes together in my head and listen for the music in words. The audiologist said that the ringing in my left ear was because my ability to hear the higher tones was declining in that ear. This causes my brain to become bored and invent things for me to listen to. It isn’t a very satisfactory explanation but the audiologist added that it was too early for the benefit of a hearing aid, so the ringing has become part of my song, like the drone of bagpipes from a Scottish moor. When I decided to move on, the last thing I did before leaving Australia was take my collection of CDs to the local community radio station. The daughter of one of my friends said brightly that I should record the collection on an iPod and when I got to Malta I could buy a docking station and play my CDs randomly on shuffle. I never did. Without the visual reminders of the CD sleeves, the anonymous black iPod remains in a drawer and the memory of tunes merges into the background music of my life. But the songs that I hear grow louder as the Middle Sea of my new island home swishes in my middle ear and distant forests on the other side of the world murmur their memories. In Australia, the songs of place are strong with rhythms of drumming rain, dry heat and crackling fire syncopated by startling singular notes of bellbird and whistling kite. In Australia, people add their homeland songs to the ancient drone of place. My neighbor, Jake mixed the notes that he heard with the laments of his Scottish home and made his own song as he faded into the rhythms of mud and mangrove. Ernesto lived with the clashing notes of another world, mountains without sea, mother without form. His song struggles for shape in the bark of dogs and the bitter dream of family. In Malta, the changing rhythms of the Middle Sea shaped the notes of my story into my first song cycle. The words became fixed on a page but the music stayed in my head. When I revisited Australia, the old songs were different. Some notes jarred and some had softened, some rang true and some were out of tune. I set to and wrote another song. Here it is.