THE PEARL FISHERS

Stay safe out there, runners & fisherpeople— or, maybe, don't.

On a recent long training run, I turned my entire music library to “shuffle songs.” Random selection tends to curate my experience as well as my personal will, if not better. [Lesson 1.]

Somewhere during mile three of a continuous hill that couldn’t care less about me and my questionable choice to continue locomoting, the duet from Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers began to play in my left ear (for I only wear one earbud. And have a passion for construction yellow. SAFETY FIRST).

In the opera The Pearl Fishers, two men, one older (the baritone) and one younger (the tenor), sing a duet, “Au fond du temple saint,” recalling how once they were nearly torn apart by each having fallen under the thrall of the same woman. They vow never to be separated in this way, to be faithful to each other until death. Of course, they are torn apart, in the end, and in the reprise of the duet, the older man cedes the reality of youthful, romantic love to the younger one, presumably also out of love—one that we suspect is somehow fuller, if heavier, for its magnanimity. That’s a lot to work through while your calves are on fire and you still can’t see the top of the hill, but there we have it, there I was.

As I get older—and to be clear, no one could pay me to be any younger again—I find I am sometimes granted sudden, bewildering, and complete access to beauty. The question of how to handle this phenomenon is heavy on my mind this week, perhaps in part because it’s as hard to keep running uphill while experiencing unbridled beauty as it sounds.

“Why am I so taken by this piece?” I wonder, as I try to persuade my quads not to burst into actual flames. Why do I feel transported by this music beyond what seems a reasonable point? If I give in to the experience of being moved, am I not just one more hapless prey item for skilled producers of dramatic content to swallow whole and digest into component unshed tears?

In other words, is it reasonable—can it possibly be wise—to be vulnerable to (this) beauty?

When I have such questions, my vanguard is the estimable and reassuringly structural LIST. (SAFETY FIRST.) So let me consider a few reasons why this piece affects me strongly.

1)      The men are friends. Loneliness is one of the main killers of adult men in the US, for many reasons, most involving crap ideas about masculinity. As someone who is undone by gratitude for even the small kindnesses of strangers, and who sees so much more dimension in the men of her life than their assigned societal pittance allows, I feel the loss these two characters are sustaining as they part ways.

2)      One of the men is older, and in the end makes the choice to free his friend. I feel that every day I am letting go of my children—letting them grow, become things I don’t yet know, leave behind the selves they were today. Parenting is an unexpectedly grief-riddled form of joy, so beholding the older man in this act of releasing a loved one is a doozy.

3)      The libretto is ostensibly about two dudes who are buds, but when you hear their voices join, gently at first as the bari just touches in, and then grows and sustains and supports the soaring tenor, there is no mistaking the fluidity and inclusiveness of love in all its forms—brotherly, romantic, paternal, sacred, and the list goes on.

4)      My maternal grandfather once performed the baritone part in The Pearl Fishers Duet, with tenor Matthew Chellis and the Skaneateles Festival orchestra. On flute in that orchestra is my aunt, Eleanor Robinson Wilcox. My entire maternal family’s mythos—one of musicianship, sacrifice, hard work, love, skill, and connection—is fully in play, weaving its magic above the harp’s absolution.

There exists a recording of these few moments in time, made from somewhere near the outdoor Skaneateles Festival stage. The recording itself is mediocre; there are birds and coughs and thumps in the background, the harp and string section are a little out of tune from the humid, rapidly cooling night. But damn, the heart, and the skill— you can hear it. (The small imperfections are, as usual, a sincere and significant part of what compels.)

My grandfather, David Robinson (known to many as “Coug,” or “Cougar”), was in many ways larger than life. A bald, tall, rich baritone with a proclivity for too-loud laughter, terrifying sneezes, strong judgments, and purposeful, performative misbehavior, he had a relationship bordering on sinful pride with a garden that mostly grew large, hairy green beans that were hard to eat. He would present them to family and visitors as though they were diamond necklaces. He loved center stage.

I have come along a different trajectory, most highly valuing understatement, practicality, reason, restraint—and perhaps I have valued these a tiny bit too much, I begin to think. My left ear bud tells me, as I crest that endless hill on my endless run, that Bizet and Coug have a few things to tell me about beauty. [Enter LIST # 2.]

1)      It is possible that I’ve slightly overemphasized the value of an even keel, honored it as a constant goal rather than a centering tool. The whole point of a keel is not to keep a boat vertical, but to keep it from capsizing. I can experience unwieldy emotions, and, afterwards, re-center.

2)      The two voices in the duet sing into very different spaces: the tenor, appropriately, evokes the urgency of youth (I am, I desire, I must connect), while the baritone, forever embodied for me in my grandfather’s voice, conjures the joining, spacious, supportive energy of a more experienced, and perhaps more grief-trained sensibility (I witness, I love, I release).

Interestingly, Bizet says, with his decisive and bewitching notation: let these men, these two very different singers and characters, end on a unison. And they do— the same note, the same word.

Perhaps when I’m having one of those moments of bewildering access to the complete freedom of unfettered beauty— for example, when I feel wonderment at my daughter’s two-year-old body, its glowing and absolute loveliness, and don’t know how to contain the complexity or purity or immensity of this emotion… I don’t have to.

It’s all a very messy business, lovers and aging and babies and the grandparents we’ve lost; pride in our sub-par, hard-earned garden produce; the astounding velvet of my baby’s golden thighs.

These things, thank goodness we can’t contain them, must sometimes be allowed to overtake us. We must be moved, and, so moved, dive again— always towards more and more luminosity.