August 2021: covid-delta, inspiration-drain, beluga-song

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Fourteenth Pandemic Post August 2021

Dear Family and Friends:

Just as many of us thought we were coming to the waning period of this pandemic, the Delta Variant made itself known. Now there is no chance of even a possible time when this pandemic will cease. There have been so many changes in our society, several of them constructively promising. Other changes have been negative. One of the changes I’ve seen are those of communicating accounts of mundane or things and events we have usually taken for granted.

The Sunday before last, (August 8th), we finally were able to visit Peter’s sister and partner in Kingston for lunch. I have been a travel letter writer to a longtime friend when we go on car trips for an hour or more. I was so pleased to be able to write to her, but I couldn’t see to write in the same spirit I used to compose. It was not the highly ‘creative’ one I had no problem writing. I realized that this pandemic has affected me in that I feel often somewhat numb. I know that not only my age and chronic health issues are one of the reasons, but this long pandemic has undermined my inspirations. My imagination feels subtly trapped. When my friend and I conversed last evening, she mentioned the noticeable differences in my letter from how I usually write.

I believe many of us have felt these changes within ourselves in diverse ways. The challenge we face now is how to overcome them. How can we triumph over this force of nature which has managed to infuse our minds subversively for so many months?

I have no answers to this problem. I hear from family and friends the fears and apprehensions that I also feel. Perhaps I can make myself decide that there is no ‘when’ about the ceasing of this virus, and that I can then rid myself of the fear of it. I don’t know, but it is the only possible ‘solution’ I can believe in right now.

I would enjoy hearing from you how you are coping with this and what you have tried to plan for the next months and years to do with your life and how you wish to try to go about it.

I am sending you a poem of mine written in 1988 to a former friend who was a performing dramatic mezzo-soprano. I was researching cetaceans (whales, belugas etc.), and felt strongly that they are one of the mammalian species which helped us to evolve to sing. One of the periodicals to which I subscribed had several articles on belugas. Those articles inspired the poem I wrote. I sent it to them and it was published. I also trained as a soprano, (but haven’t felt much like singing during this pandemic). I’ve composed songs and have only recently begun to sing while I play songs on the piano. I gave my last public performance including my singing November 23, 2019. Being 77, I don’t think I will be self- producing concerts anymore. Below is a paragraph I sent with the poem to that periodical:
“I really enjoyed the article, and , because I am both a musician (singer, keyboardist, composer), and poet, I decided to send you this poem I dedicated to a friend of mine, who is a mezzo-soprano, in 1988. Both she and I love animals. It was her personality shown in her behavior, which enabled me to compare her to a beluga. We are both of an age now, where we have noticed great changes in the way voice students are taught to be professional singers. Yes, there are some good strategies used, especially with the emphasis on much more sight reading, but, learning to really integrate material is often , now, not stressed. We mourn this, and I believe young singers will never achieve integrity , as the belugas do, in their ‘inner song’, unless they go on th e personally ‘spiritual’ journey of listening to every other singer’s ‘inner song’, and learn to remember it.
So, here is my poem.
If you decide to publish it, please let me know what format to send it in.
Thank you for your wonderful article.
Diane Stevenson Schmolka.”

Requiem for a Beluga

There is before me a tundra
which will likely remain barren
the ocean which has become
the cistern of time
has known only grief since you left
I see you now
a figure beneath the moon
presiding over your children
I remember when we created language
which biologists could only cite with
dashes and bleeps
your lips pressing against warm currents
met the trough at surfaces they could never reach
while we chased paradigms of shadow
creating a whirlwind of new phrases
krill and algae your applause
in the vibrations of fresh water
Now you are ordered into the aquaria of culture
barred and observed as each movement
changes your dimensions
contracts them into statues
They see now only a specific foreshortening
to them you are merely an emblem
of what real dance was before
You are my presence - your swiftness
sweeps the carcasses of bears aside
and lion-hearted you stalk the hidden places
of your dwelling to sustain
the ballet of sequences
Your mind swims continually
through bannisters and windows
in salt and sunny air
Though you cannot now return home
a fragment of song emerges
continually reworking your positions
to skip in living waters recycled
to complete apothegms for new heirs
Around my neck I will wear you always

Page last modified on August 17, 2021, at 04:42 AM