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epitome of incomprehensibility
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Tonight I had two, making the concert slightly like an airplane ride. When I entered Bourgie Hall, a woman was sitting at the inside end of the left row, seat D15. My ticket said D17, which was right next to her, but the rest of the row was empty, so I thought it more comfortable to leave a space and park my bottom in D19. Then a tallish grey-haired man came in, asking if I was maybe sitting in his seat. I more-than-maybe was, so I moved. But he was friendly, looking at the seats and making an excuse for me: “It’s confusing that it goes by odd numbers.” Then he wondered if I was with the musicians somehow; I answered no; the lights dimmed.
There were only two musicians onstage, baritone Wolfgang Holzmair from Austria and pianist Olivier Godin. Also, two people to introduce the event and one to turn music pages. A quiet but indispensable neighbour, the page-turner. The audience had sheets of LES PAROLES / THE LYRICS and we tried to turn them quietly too.
My D19 neighbour followed along, his finger often on the lyrics page. He was confused when one piece, a lullaby called Ukolébavka, didn’t have the words that were printed. He whispered something about it and I whispered something back, but nothing very comprehensible.
At the end, he looked at my program and had a question, but it wasn’t what I was opening my mouth to explain. It was why other people had a program and he just had LES PAROLES / THE LYRICS. Ah, but he had a program after all, he’d just placed it on empty seat D21.
“Another thing,” I went, “the one where the lyrics weren’t the words on the page, I think there was mistake and they printed it in the wrong language. They said it was a Hebrew lullaby, so maybe it was in Hebrew, but the words here are, I don’t know, Czech?”
See, LES PAROLES / THE LYRICS had three columns:
1) French translation
2) original language (or earlier translation, in the case of two songs from Chinese poems)
3) English translation
All the pieces were written and/or set to music by prisoners in Theresienstadt, in what used to be Czechoslovakia. I think the composers were all Jewish, but not all were Czech, so some of the third column was in German and Yiddish, which I could sort of understand.
Anyway, after I expressed uncertainty about the Czech, he nodded, “Yes, it’s Czech, I can speak it a little, my parents were from the Czech Republic. But the singing, it didn’t sound that much like Hebrew either. Shape of the mouth is different. Well, it’s different anyway when you sing than when you speak, so I’m not sure.” He turned to another song. “These others are in German…this one’s in Yiddish…well, not with the [Hebrew] alphabet. I learned it when I was young. It’s a lot like German actually, they’re closely related… But I’m going on. What about you, are you a music student?” – while perhaps glancing at my note-writing.
I shook my head. “Linguistics student, actually.”
“Oh, that’s interesting, what made you want to come to the concert?”
“I just heard about it and it sounded interesting.”
“Had you heard of Theresienstadt?”
Hesitation. “Yes.”
True, and also in a musical context: Oratorio Terezin sung by the McGill Youth Choir. By then I’d graduated to the Adult Choir, but I went with Mom to see the concert. What I remember is hearing them sing “ghetto” crisply, with an aspirated T – “ghet-to” – and mentally contrasting that with the way Aaron from Cedar_Christian_Academy would say the word when insulting stuff: “That’s so ghetto.” The school in particular was ghetto (SO ghetto). Later I wondered: did he mean to be racist, calling the school that? White Aaron, about a school with a lot of Black and Filipino kids? Or did he only mean that it was a small and “random” institution?? If “ratchet” were in circulation then, he might have used that – it’d have the “shabby” connotation without the racist one, maybe. (Random ratchet memory-racking.)
“Anyway, anyway, thanks for listening – have a good evening.”
“Good evening.”
Before leave-taking, after being asked about studenthood, I could have asked a friendly, reciprocal question – e.g., And are you in the music field? But I’m often tongue-tied in dialogue, even with people I know well.
I did wonder about his parents from the Czech Republic. He called it Czech Republic, if I remember right, and the current name is that or Czechia. On the other hand, his language inventory suggests Jewish, and his grey hair might indicate old-enough age for his parents to be Holocaust survivors. But you don’t just go, “Oh, did *both* your parents survive the Holocaust, is that why you’re here??”
(Well, their surviving WOULD be why he’s “here” – as in, Existing-in-the-Present, not just Attending-a-Concert. But that could be surviving anything that happened to them before he came on the scene.)
I cannot talk to people. I mean, I can. I did. That’s not important, anyway. With the chance to read and write, to live freely enough, I’m better off than many people from many ages of this world (she said with a Lord-of-the-Ringsian flair, and immediately flopped into caffeine-crash sleep).
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