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May. 5th, 2007 08:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pallas_athenaYesterday evening, off to Brighton for a party thrown by my good friend D, on the occasion of the premiere of his radio play. D is one of the finer people I know: we met on the night of the Soho nail bomb, and his emails kept me sane through the most boring office job I ever had. Later, there was a period when a succession of awful things kept happening to him; just as he recovered from one blow another would land. A lesser person would have shut down and become bitter and twisted, but through it all D managed to remain absolutely openhearted, kind, caring, considerate. He's enjoying some well-deserved success now, which he wears with grace.
I was planning to go straight from the party to the train station, but my music-college friend Pete (a fantastically gifted baritone, also one of life's lovelier souls) insisted we walk down to the beach and "say hello to the sea." So we did.
Flashback: It's four years ago (or so), and I'm house-sitting for D and his partner, looking after their bird. Every morning I go out on the balcony to look out at the sea, hear its song, note its mood, smell the air. Walking along the shore, I think of Tolkien and Elgar, and say to myself "I ought to learn the Sea Pictures."
Flashback: It's the November before last.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
speedlime is visiting, and we've gone down to Brighton for the day. Night has fallen, and we walk out to the end of the Pier under the lurid lights. Beyond, the night is black; the sea is unseen, but its sound is all around us. Brighton is a shingle beach: the waves come in and break with a great grinding roar, and withdraw with a long sigh, a death-rattle. Speedy's on the phone to her boyfriend, wanting to share the moment with him; I'm listening to the sea and thinking "You know, I really need to learn those last two of the Sea Pictures."
And so Pete and I stand on the shore at dusk. He sings a snatch or two of Dover Beach, which makes me smile; I respond with a verse of "The Swimmer," last of the Sea Pictures, which I'll be performing for the first time in Oxford in June. The sea's own song is unchanged, and considerably outdoes Barber and Elgar. Venus brightens in the west as the colours of sunset fade on the horizon. On impulse, I bend down to to dip my hand in the water of an incoming wave, staggering ineptly back so it doesn't drench my shoes. Walking like drunks on the shifting pebbles, we turn back towards the station, for London and for home.
I was planning to go straight from the party to the train station, but my music-college friend Pete (a fantastically gifted baritone, also one of life's lovelier souls) insisted we walk down to the beach and "say hello to the sea." So we did.
Flashback: It's four years ago (or so), and I'm house-sitting for D and his partner, looking after their bird. Every morning I go out on the balcony to look out at the sea, hear its song, note its mood, smell the air. Walking along the shore, I think of Tolkien and Elgar, and say to myself "I ought to learn the Sea Pictures."
Flashback: It's the November before last.
speedlime is visiting, and we've gone down to Brighton for the day. Night has fallen, and we walk out to the end of the Pier under the lurid lights. Beyond, the night is black; the sea is unseen, but its sound is all around us. Brighton is a shingle beach: the waves come in and break with a great grinding roar, and withdraw with a long sigh, a death-rattle. Speedy's on the phone to her boyfriend, wanting to share the moment with him; I'm listening to the sea and thinking "You know, I really need to learn those last two of the Sea Pictures."And so Pete and I stand on the shore at dusk. He sings a snatch or two of Dover Beach, which makes me smile; I respond with a verse of "The Swimmer," last of the Sea Pictures, which I'll be performing for the first time in Oxford in June. The sea's own song is unchanged, and considerably outdoes Barber and Elgar. Venus brightens in the west as the colours of sunset fade on the horizon. On impulse, I bend down to to dip my hand in the water of an incoming wave, staggering ineptly back so it doesn't drench my shoes. Walking like drunks on the shifting pebbles, we turn back towards the station, for London and for home.