The antidote to now

I’ve been missing blogging so here I am again, with Some Thoughts. Or more accurately, some recommendations. The world is looking pretty grim right now. Despots, dys-bots, billionaire cranks, venal banks, climate shifts, social rifts … If you think about it for too long it becomes hard to breathe. So I am actively seeking out inputs and experiences that remind me there are still pleasures to be found in the Now, even if Later seems scary as all get out.

Art helps.

I’m reading a glorious novel by Niall Williams called ‘This Is Happiness’, set in a small Irish village in the 1950’s. The Electricity is finally coming to Faha and, while the poles and wires are going up, the narrator - a shy 17 year old boy - is falling in love with three girls, simultaneously. There’s an endless summer, a quixotic search for the best live pub music in county Clare, and an older mentor/friend who has come back to the village in search of the love of his life.

What IS happiness, you might wonder? In Niall Williams’ world it is love. It is community. It’s story, and history, and sex, and hope, and patience - and impatience. Williams’ love of language, his ability to embed nuggets of wisdom and sly jokes and mini-character-portraits in long rambling sentences, has had me laughing and sighing out loud. Why has it taken me this long to discover this writer??

Last night I saw a French film which offered another answer to the question “what is happiness?” ‘Divertimento’ is based on the true story of how 17 year old Zahia Ziouani, an Algerian-French girl living in the working class outer suburbs of Paris, became a symphonic conductor and founded her own orchestra. For Zahia, music is happiness - studying it, listening to it, making it, sharing it. So many personal reasons for me to love this film. I was transported back to my own early years as a teenage classical musician, as this film showed us the workings of several youth orchestras - the friendships, the power plays, the musical discoveries, the jealousies, the romances, the annoying brass players ;-)

I was also transported back to the time, 33 years ago, that I founded a trade union choir. In the final scene of the film an orchestral flash mob makes an appearance, and I remembered how that same trade union choir did a flash mob performance at the launch of my first book, ‘Shy: a memoir’.

This is a film about resilience, and the immense privilege of having parents who love and nurture and support you, who understand what gives you happiness, and make sacrifices so that you can chase down that happiness. In a gentle way it’s also about racism and sexism and classism. And, as in Niall Williams book, it’s about the love of community, and of music, and the importance of having an older mentor when you are young and uncertain.

I guarantee you there is also a happy ending - what a rare and lovely thing that is these days.

Check it out.