Carrots

May I ask, enquired Pliny the Elder, how one hears, or imagines one hears, carrots in a piece of music?

You mean in the Walton at the Lunch Hour Concert? I asked.

Yes. I can understand that you may have heard traffic, chipmunks, bees, and even the motion of curtains, but I fail to understand how one imagines one is hearing something that neither moves nor makes a recognisable sound.

In other words you're asking me what I think carrots sound like?

I am.

Well, you have to understand the process. Do you remember how I became confused because they changed the order of the program?

Yes.

This meant that I never really got into the second, genuine Walton. I was full of chagrin, and self-reproach. The repetition of the chipmunk and bee sounds held an interest for me only insofar as they proved that in music you can hear almost anything you want.

And so you thought of carrots?

No, no, not like that. My mind drifted off. And since I was planning to go to the Central Market at half past three, it drifted towards a shopping list of the things that I might buy there. Not oranges, I thought. Perhaps a pineapple. Not bok choy. Maybe some carrots.

Aha! Carrots at last!

Yes, and I was thinking of the two limp carrots in the fridge at home, and that I might not need a whole bag of carrots but could probably do with about four large ones which I could buy from the Seven Sisters. Four carrots. Then my attention returned to the music. Don't ask me why.

I expect it was guilt.

Maybe it was. And I thought, is it possible that as I'm thinking of carrots I might hear carrots in the music? It had certainly been possible for me to hear other things which hadn't been there.

The reverse process, said Pliny sagely. This time you are thinking of something beforehand and then searching for it within the music.

That's right.

And did you find it?

Yes.

So, the question is, what did it sound like?

It sounded like four orange notes, rounded, but pointy at the end.

Remarkable, said Pliny.

Ignorance

At the Lunch Hour Concert I was sitting behind four middle aged people who were together. Something nasty had happened in the garden of one of them. One said, Have you seen The Shining? No, said another, have you seen Eyes Wide Shut?

The Chamber Ensemble came on stage in twos and threes. As they appeared some people at the back would clap. This continued disconcertingly as the stage filled up.

The first piece was by William Walton. I don't know a thing about William Walton, except what was in the notes. He wrote some music for a Shakespeare film in the 1940s. A Shakespeare film. Classy.

So, I'm listening. I hear traffic. Sigh. I hear chipmunks. Yuk. I hear bees. Hmm. I hear spooky noises, like the movement of curtains in a dark house at night. William Walton must have written this one for a film as well, I think. A multi-purpose piece. And very 1940s-ish.

They stop playing. The conductor indicates a young man sitting in the sixth row on the left. The composer. He is Stephen Tanoto. He takes a bow.

Thus I realise, and so do the 4 in front of me, that we had not been listening to William Walton.

Ha Ha they laugh. Ha Ha Ha. We didn't think it sounded much like Walton.

Well, I did. But now I know it wasn't. I am miffed, and can't get into this new Walton which they are playing now. Sure it has chipmunks. And traffic, and what's this? Carrots! But I feel cheated. I had been looking forward to the Tanoto. It was based on a chipmunk-free madrigal, and I missed it.

This new Walton madrigal piece was in 4 movements. The people at the back clapped in between, with decreasing confidence.

It ended. The people in front of me clapped ostentatiously, turning towards one another and nodding. That was the Walton alright. We always knew.

Easy Mo Bee

Pliny the Elder saw me reading Aesop's Fables. These tales are meant to be heard, not read out of a book, said he. They are oral tales. That is all very well, said I, but I have borrowed this book from the library.

Perhaps you could google up a site where someone speaks the stories, he suggested helpfully.

So I found a site and listened to several of the fables read by a child who did not read very well. Not all the fables could be listened to. I decided to give up on the child and read Jupiter and the Bee.

It was exactly the same story as the one in my library book. The Bee brings Jupiter some honey. Jupiter is pleased and offers a reward. The Bee asks for a sting to kill men who want to steal its honey. Jupiter is angry, and grants the sting, with the proviso that if the Bee uses the sting it will die. A good story. I suppose the moral is: Always ask for nice things.

But the moral of my story is yet to come. You can double click on any word in the fable you are reading and you will get an instant link to a site called ANSWER, which will tell you the meaning of the word. You can double click on Jupiter for instance, and learn that he is a God. I clicked on Bee. Imagine my surprise when I learned that Bee was a famous New York rapper, whose full name was Easy Mo Bee. I passed this on to Pliny who shook his head in disbelief.

The moral of this story is : The path to enlightenment is littered with red herrings.

Suspicio

You can admire and mistrust something at the same time. For example Pliny admires and mistrusts bees.

Today he was walking to the shops with Nostradamus along a path that was strewn with crunchy jacaranda flowers, which had attracted some bees. The first bee Pliny met flew off immediately to the right and into the road. The second bee did the same thing. Pliny thought that was interesting. He expected the third bee to do the same. But the third bee didn't really want to leave the flowers. It flew around in a circle humming, just in front of Pliny's approaching legs. Only at the very last minute did the bee veer off into the road. The fourth bee did what the third bee had done. Pliny was wearing shorts. He hoped he wouldn't meet any more bees.