Mourning Doves
dyslexia, dysthymia, and strains of ancient music
In my family we all remember lying in bed in the children’s room at my grandmother’s house and hearing this sound.
I loved it then as I love it now. I gravitate to any music in a minor key. These sad, soothing sounds give me permission, for a moment, to feel something seductive but forbidden, a melody from deep underground, a whisper of the darkness I am not supposed to give in to, certainly not in public.
The other day I was chatting with a friend who is training to become a dyslexia tutor. “Interesting,” I said, “so you have to find some other way to connect a visual symbol to the brain. What’s the key?”
“Sound!” she said.
She only said that one word.
In my search to uncover and incorporate traditional rites of mourning, this seems like a significant lead. Maybe sound can also provide a way to connect the feeling brain to the thinking brain, bringing rain to the mind’s deserts. I could sit on the floor. And I could sing.
It is one thing to listen to sad songs sung by others, and the mourning of doves, but what would the impact be of singing my very own songs, while sitting on my own ground?
At around age eleven I wrote a poem that went something like this:
People have sighed
and people have cried
but too many have died
for me to care.
You see? I was already cutting off. I couldn’t care any more. My family was drowning in grief. It was too much for me. I eventually chose the intellectual road, the consolation of philosophy. I made my escape into the world of ideas. This actually turned out to be a very rewarding road, but of course, I didn’t really get away. Sadness stalked me always in the form of depression, that cloud without words or ideas or associations or cures, never triggered by a death in the family, but always present.
Fifty years later I think I’m grown up enough to go back to the crossroads and take the path I did not choose then. I have a strong intellect, but I’ve lost too much of tenderness, and connectedness to the world around me. Like Orpheus, I will attempt to go underground to rescue my soul from hell. He failed, Orpheus, but that doesn’t mean I will fail.
Poets say that Orpheus’ music and singing could charm the birds, fish and wild beasts, coax the trees and rocks into dance, and divert the course of rivers. The most famous Orpheus story concerns his wife, Eurydice. While walking among her people, in tall grass at her wedding, Eurydice was set upon by a satyr. In her efforts to escape the satyr, Eurydice fell into a nest of vipers and suffered a fatal bite on her heel. Her body was discovered by Orpheus who, overcome with grief, played such sad and mournful songs that all the nymphs and gods wept. On their advice, Orpheus traveled to the underworld. His music softened the heart of Hades, who agreed to allow Eurydice to return with Orpheus to earth on one condition: he must walk in front of her and not look back until they both reached the upper world. (Wikipedia)
As Orpheus was making his music, trying to lead his beloved bride out of hell, he couldn’t hear her footsteps behind him, so he looked back too soon, before she had emerged into the light, and his mission failed. I have no idea what this means for me, but I trust I’ll recognize my moment to refrain from looking back, when it comes.
“Beautiful Hekate, of the roads and crossroads,
saffron-shrouded soul of the tomb
seen only by barking dogs,
friend of the dead.
Queen of blackest night,
torch held high
you walk beside Demeter
searching for Persephone.”
