14 December 2015

1 December 2015

One sentence about music in which lots of conjunctions - as well as choirs and goats - get an unplanned outing





This sentence is attempting to follow music to its logical conclusion, which isn’t logical at all given that the trail contorts, yet the journey, if you can imagine it, is as pre-determined as the route of the number 61 bus in Ottawa taken every Monday and Wednesday on the way to the Ottawa Public Schools Central Choir for which, let’s pretend, you are auditioning, and where you stand on a stage for the first time, looking out to your mother who has her eyes cast down in order not to put you off as you are made to sing God Save the Queen (not even O Canada), and then asked to copy phrases in a lower register, in the alto, which suits better, although you did not know there would be others with richer, stronger voices; Gail, for instance, one of those girls mature beyond her years who immediately gets whichever piece of music is thrown at her and is already the matriarch of the group, notwithstanding others on the sidelines who are bound to attempt a minor coup the way that cats gang up - or goats for that matter when they stare you out on a narrow road in Crete, as if their knack for climbing rocky heights and lounging on narrow ledges gives them inalienable superiority, despite the fact, it has to be said, that when served in stew they can be a little stringy; it all depends on the amount of sauce, preferably a marinade in which the meat has been left to relax, like softening the blow, softening the tragedy whose etymological origin, of course, spookily, means goat song, that wail of goat mothers when they are separated from their kids, the primeval hurt, the hurt of hurts, the howl, the end of all music.