Moth Music

It's the 2009 ABC Young Performers Award Grand Final. The stage is brilliant with a crimson and bone backdrop and crimson and brain cell wings. The audience is sitting on cerise seats, with their feet resting on polished wooden boards.

The first young performer Bo An Lu begins his piece, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto Number One. Two white moths fly into the stage space, and hover above the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.

Beethoven!! whispers Moth One. No silly, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto. Weeee! isn't it lovely! cries Moth Two, sailing up into a square of concentrated light. Oowaah! It's HOT! And he sails down again twisting and fluttering his wings on a draft of dazzling notes. Moth One floats gently upwards and swings on an invisible rope, then drops in a breathtaking dive to somewhere behind the first cello.

Now here comes performer number two, David Papp, to play the Oboe Concerto by Martinu. Oooh! Exhilarating! shouts Moth One, dancing madly back and forth before rising with polka-like movements over the heads of the winds. Don't get too excited, the lights are really hot now, warns Moth Two, before being carried away himself in an ecstasy of soulful bucolic bliss. Watch out!!! Too late! Moth One disappears inside the bright square of light and immediately divebombs to the floor landing ignominiously at the feet of the conductor. Followed, moments later, by Moth Two. Sadly there are no moths dancing to the glittering second movement of Martinu's Oboe Concerto.

Finally Ji Won Kim takes the stage. She begins to play the Sibelius Violin Concerto. The two moths ressurrect themselves, and rise sinuously towards the lights but stop short of being sizzled. They dance to the beautiful and heartbreaking notes. They do not hear the deeper oceanic notes played by the ASO. They do not listen to the sounds of polar bears thumping and lumbering from side to side in their own clumsy dance. No, they are in love with the wild heavenly notes emanating from the violin of Ji Won Kim. They think that she will win.

Now it is judging time. The ASO play Mendelssohn's Overture to A Midsummer Nights Dream. The moths are nowhere to be seen. They are somewhere behind the curtain, listening to the conference of the adjudicators.

This is a very difficult decision, says one of the adjudicators. It is, says another. But I am going for Ji Won Kim. I find moths to be an invaluable guide.

Sea Silk

I am a visitor, said Pliny the Elder. Yet you have never offered the use of that jacket to me.

It is a ladies jacket, I replied. But you are welcome to wear it whenever you like. As for me, I shall only be wearing it on very dark nights from now on.

It looks alright to me, said Pliny. I don't understand why you've taken against it.

The baleful child, I said darkly.

There could be many reasons why a little girl might grimace in the circumstances you describe. Her mother may have placed her on the stool in order to punish her, or she may have had an itching sensation in her nose.

It doesn't matter now, I said. She was simply the means by which I became aware of my own feelings towards the jacket.

Well, said Pliny, I still think it's a fine jacket. A Roman woman would have envied you for possessing it. It appears to be made of sea silk.

Sea silk. No, I think it's made from polyester. What's sea silk, Pliny?

A luxurious fabric highly prized in my day. It was obtained from a mollusc, the pinna nobilis, that attached itself to rocks by means of fine strong fibres, called byssus. These were collected, treated with lemon juice, and woven into a cloth with a beautiful golden sheen that would never fade. Unfortunately it used to attract moths.

If my jacket had attracted moths, it would have saved me some embarrassment, I said. But tell me Pliny, how would you feel about wearing this jacket yourself?

Well, said Pliny, it is not what I would normally wear, but late at night it would certainly keep out the chill. I shall borrow it sometimes, if I may.

Fine Pliny, but remember, it's a slippery slope.