Blog

After being home in NYC for just over a month, I’m back across the pond again, this time in Italy, for the Colombari/Monteverdi project, which began last summer and is finally coming to fruition. We arrived the weekend of Corpus Domini, a major milestone in the Orvieto calendar, with huge processions through the streets – similar to Semana Santa in Mao, but bigger and with more variety of costumes, thankfully – fewer drums but also bagpipes and many, many flags… lovely…

We are ensconced in Palazzo Simoncelli, a fabulous old pile where we both live and work (assorted convents have also been pressed into service for accommodations, since we are quite numerous) – the courtyard of the palazzo is where the performances will take place next weekend. We are attempting to pull a giant rabbit out of a very small hat… it is so beautiful here, when the usual theater hell threatens to overwhelm, one only has to look around to realise one’s good fortune… and it is, after all, a very merry band of magicians (American, Italian, and English) with a beautiful rabbit and elegant hat… my lack of spoken italian is frustrating, but the musicians are very willing and we muddle along with a mixture of french, spanish, italian and english. Every day brings new challenges and rewards – yesterday it appeared that there was not enough electricity in the old place to light the show, but last night, at the end of a long week, we were rewarded with deserts to die for at a local restaurant, washed down by their own limoncello – and today a bunch of equipment showed up (on a sunday, no less) and Peter and Nerina are busy figuring out how to make it work… the costumes are gorgeous, it would be nice to see them!

Before leaving the States, I managed a long weekend up in Maine, the first in many years – Biddeford Pool, to be exact, the summer home of family friends from way back when – I hadn’t been there since I was 7 – my childhood memories were of mud flats, lobster dinners, and learning the facts of life by eavesdropping on my sister and the eldest boy of the family, sitting in the dark under the house with the bright seaside world glimpsed through the slats of the siding around the raised foundations (the house sits right by the ocean). Zin was madly fixing and painting the place in preparation for the summer renters but refused to let me help, insisting that I serenade her instead – which I gladly did, sitting on the lawn with a spectacular ocean view, getting to know the mandola… the only time I left during the 5 days was to take a kayak across to various of the outlying islands one afternoon… what bliss, to wake up to the sight and sound of the ocean…

Done. We gave Liz a good send off – at the crematorium, at the church and at the village hall – her house is empty, and mum is finally laid to rest with her parents and her brother in the family plot in chicago – enough of being a Leishman! However, mum is carved on the back of dad’s memorial down by the river Tees, so they are together there – it all feels right… but what a huge hole Liz has left – I hadn’t realised how much she was the anchor of the family – everyone else came and went, but she has ALWAYS been there, all my life – I’ve never known the place without her…
but sic transit… it’s our turn next…

meanwhile, it’s time to turn my full attention to monteverdi and the mandola, and enjoy these days back in new york, before the next chapter… signing off for now…

Hooray hooray the first of may… and here I am back in cotherstone, not on a ‘plane back to New York as planned…

the sad news is the reason for the return: dear sweet Liz died a couple days ago, just as I had landed in london from menorca. I was planning to come up to see her for 24 hours before heading back across the pond today… so now I will stay on here for the funeral and thanksgiving service next week, after which I will hightail it back to nyc in time to do a quick recording session and then fly to chicago early the following morning to inter mum’s ashes… jeez…

But all in all, Liz’s timing was impeccable: she slipped away while I was still over here rather than back in nyc – a day later would have meant another very expensive and time-consuming transatlantic shuffle – but she also waited long enough for me to have those two beautiful weeks in menorca, for which I will always be grateful.

The other silver lining is that Sam and I get another week together. And if it ever stops raining (actually, even if it doesn’t), in between planning the ceremonies with cousin David and taking care of business, I hope to take some of Liz’s favourite walks around here – I have no car until Diana comes back down from scotland, so they will be local ones out of necessity, which is appropriate – and I will hang out with mr. monteverdi and the mandola in the evenings…

It’s truly the end of an era… she was the last of her generation, they’re all gone now. And it feels really different here, suddenly, really empty. I knew this was coming, but it’s hitting harder than I thought…

one week in, one week to go…

it’s more like June than April – hot sun, blue sky, hot days, cold nights – but so dry an island… I cannot complain, but I do wish rain for the island, we will be in deep trouble soon without it… traditionally it ALWAYS rains at Easter, but all we got were a few drops as the bells began to ring at 11.30 Easter Sunday morning, with the sun coming out a few minutes later… at least it was a nod to tradition…

In 50 years, this is the first time I have been here for Semana Santa… I went to watch the processions Friday evening and Sunday mornings, both at Santa Maria in Mao – with the main street in Sant Lluis being torn up at the moment, nothing much going on locally, but the rites in Mao were fantastic…

Friday night was hordes of klu-klux-klan-hooded priests carrying effigies, accompanied by massed drummers in similar garb and phalanxes of Roman centurions, slowly wending their way through the narrow streets of central Mao – all very medieval… they process with an extraordinary side-swaying gait that has the effigies also swaying massively on their perches – muy impressionante…

Sunday morning was altogether cheerier, with the same drummers amplified by brass bands, and the same Roman centurions, their armour and multi-coloured helmet feathers blazing in the sunshine, but now only two effigies, those of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, who after doing the tour of the backstreets, accompanied by their individual coteries, approach the plaza of Santa Maria from opposite ends, meet in the middle in front of the cathedral and bow 3 times to each other to great applause – and then every bell in every church in town started to peal – it was deafening, in the very best possible way. On Friday night I had found myself a perch on the balcony of the Bar Nou overlooking the square and so got the birds’ eye view, but it was closed on Sunday morning so I perched on the corner of the wall at the top of the road leading down to the harbour, from where I could see the whole length of the square, up the side of the cathedral to its entrance and up to the Plaza Colon where I could see them processing away and then back… all very satisfactory… there were times when I could hear three different bands playing at the same time – yes…

Other than holy rites, I have been engaged in not much other than eating, sleeping and gardening – the things I most like to do here. I did baptize myself in the sea on good friday – god it was cold, but so clear I couldn’t help myself. I took a walk along the cliffs past Rinco Fondu to the caves, where there were a couple of guys perched on the top step. As I stood on the precipice looking down, one of them shouted across (in spanish) “do you live in biniparrell?” when I said “how did you know?” he said “I sold firewood to your sister”… It was Antonio, from the Biniparrell farm, whom I have never met, but who recognised me as diana’s sister – good lord… and who should he be sitting with but a young american.. talk about a small world…

An email from David saying Liz is fading fast… oh dear… but I actually hope that she is – having made it to 90, and having seen us all, she really has nothing left to look forward to, and the quality of her life has taken a massive downward turn, so I hope she gets out as quickly and painlessly as possible. We had a wonderful conversation the day I left – she was more present than she’d been the whole 2 weeks… talking about all my traveling, she said “I don’t know where I’ll end up – after all, I’m 90, and I don’t suppose they’ll give me a job.” God bless her, I do love her so, and wish her god speed…

And so the 2 weeks are up, and tomorrow I move on… talk about event density… we have sorted the contents of Fern House , the potting shed is bursting at the seams; Diana and I did our gig at the Village Hall; and I am the proud owner of a brand new Fylde mandola – what a beauty… quite the star of the show, even if I don’t really know what I’m doing yet… plus the day I went over to Penrith to pick it up I asked Roger Bucknall and his wife where I could go hiking around there and they recommended Aira Force, off Ullswater – fabulous ravine with a series of falls – a lovely day all ‘round – happy birthday to me…

the village hall concert was a great success – we had a good crowd, about 50 or so, any more would have been tricky with the purely acoustic set-up, so it’s just as well there was a coach trip to darlington that evening to see ‘Grease” at the Civic Theatre! It was mostly friends but some strangers, a good mix; we raised a bunch of money for the Hall and one and all had a really good time. Might try for an annual event… btw, the backdrop in the photos is a fabulous mural of the Balder viaduct, just up the river, that used to adorn the sitting room wall of the house next door to Saltoun (where lovely neighbours Jeff and Carol now live). It was painted by Maxwell Fry, a noted architect and old friend of the family from the Tehran days, who many years ago came to stay the weekend with my folks (along with his wife Jane Drew, also architect and generally mad-wonderful person) and they ended up buying and moving into the house next door! quite a flamboyant addition to the village and source of much gossip… after they died and the house was sold, the mural was rescued and put into the village hall – a wonderful memorial to Max and Jane and the perfect backdrop for an intimate “living room” concert…

The downside of the week has been that I did something seriously wicked to one of my knees moving heavy furniture on Friday and I am a total gimp at the moment – not ideal for traveling, but oh well… poc a poc… don’t want to think about leaving sam again, but I’ll be back, and sooner than I think, possibly, depending on the state of dear aunt Liz… diana went up to scotland this morning to face her old home – what a pair of yo-yos we are… god speed…