Ripples in the Mirror
BEGINNER’S EAR | 7.25.21
“The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart,” said Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese poet who wrote under multiple pseudonyms, staged literary quarrels between his own aliases and then killed one of them by having another publish his obituary.
“Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face – there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes.
Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself.”
Pessoa died in 1935. Imagine if he had lived to see Zoom.
I recently went three blissful weeks without any video conference. As in-person meetings are once again possible, more conversations take place over the phone, where we get to listen to each other without the ignominy of having to look at ourselves.
Enhancing the bliss was the discovery of a different mirror: this lake, a short drive from my home. The first couple of times I swam in it I forgot to take goggles, so I plowed through it in patient breaststroke, head above water, eye-level with dragonflies.
Swimming like that, you keep bending the mirror. With each movement of the arms you create a bulge that then settles as your legs complete the stroke. Undisturbed, the water’s surface reflects the sky. As ripple, it catches the forest ringing the shore.
In smooth waves, the picture keeps changing: Silver to green. Bright to dark. Seeming opposites are pulled into rhythmic coherence.
These days, I come armed with goggles and athletic ambitions. I plough the length of it in methodical front crawl. The goggles fog up quickly. Then the view toggles between: Blur above. Murk below.
“God placed danger and the abyss in the sea,” Pessoa wrote elsewhere, “but He also made it heaven’s mirror.” (Here is the full poem, redolent with colonial longing.)
As my puppy reminds me each time he bounds past our entryway mirror, it’s only humans who pay heed to reflections. We have no trouble being both: the subject that sees and the object it looks at.
Yet there’s the seed of trouble in there, or at least alienation. Hence Zoom and the selfie stick. Hence Pessoa and his heteronyms.
Actually, I wonder whether Pessoa was right about lakes being the only good mirrors because they force man to bend down. Maybe what makes them true are the ripples in the reflection, which animate the picture. Anima being the soul that is irrational — but knowing.
On August 22 you can reflect on this and other mysteries at a lakeside concert meditation at Teatown Lake Reservation in Ossining, just north of New York City. Beginner’s Ear is piloting a Sunday morning outdoor session there with two wonderful musicians, the guitarist Jordan Dodson and the cellist Gabriel Cabezas. As always the program will begin with a short guided meditation that leads into a half hour program of free-flowing music, designed to hone deep listening skills. The rain date is the following Saturday, August 28.
If you’re in the New York area, please save the date and visit www.beginnersear.com for ticket sale details in early August. In the meantime, here is a Spotify playlist inspired by musical mirrors, including flutist Claire Chase’s hypnotic rendition of Marcos Balter’s “Pessoa”(with all the splintering of the self you’d expect), an arrangement of Schubert’s “To Be Sung on the Water,” and a token of Portugal’s obsessive love for the sea, courtesy of the great Fado singer Mariza.
Other upcoming live Beginner’s Ear events include outdoor live music meditations on August 15, August 29 and September 12 on the grounds of Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, NY.
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Corinna