Easter Morning

Peter Verdin

Memorial University of Newfoundland

As the sound of the mandolin fades you feel the absence of the strings in the minute grooves dug into your fingertips, a faint warmth flushing beneath the calluses, your skin already beginning the process of reconstitution and imperfect erasure. You consider a groove intersecting your fingerprint, worn gray from the metal strings, as the last glimmering of “Lark In the Morning” slips out of physical existence and into memory—a two-coursed open A, an unresolved Sol, laden with the weight of every plaintive note behind it. The late morning sunlight casts wan shadows in the corners of the rented room and carries the promise of afternoon heat; a memory from a recent excursion into the wild hills surrounding this fabled metropolis cautions that this promise is faithless, that there is no reprieve from the ubiquitous chill that engulfs both coasts of the continent this time of year. As the final traces of the jig are subsumed into the quiet urban din humming at the cusp of perception, as the lying sunlight seeps through the thin windows, you hear—as if in response to the wistful air that had just filled the room—an insistent syncopation, felt, more than heard. Within that pervasive whispered thrum bounces a jaunty duple meter and you raise your eyes in an arc across the spartan room: up from your callused fingers, across the pressboard desk where your notebook sits open to a manic poem about the slumbering leviathan that rolls languidly in its sleep nearby, over the tangle of cords that drape at odd angles from the forlorn television on the southern wall, finally coming to rest on the window that overlooks the front yard. (In future recollections, you’ll entertain the fancy that your pupils dilated ever-so-slightly as you crossed into this new awareness). That way. Out the window. Somewhere nearby. The pulse is coming from there.

As you set your mandolin down on cotton sheets and raise yourself up to identify the pulse’s source, you remember the epiphany of the previous night: oceans sound different. To the south the great water lies tranquil, its dreams gentle, pacific (fittingly), so different from its mercurial sibling gnashing its teeth against rock five time zones away. The ocean had snored the other night when you and a couple folks from back in the day walked its sandy shores in search of grunions. The mist from the susurrating waters had risen up so high that it blotted out the stars. A knot of awe turned deep within your being as you gazed up at the impossibly high wall of ocean spray and fancied that there might be something even larger behind it, waiting to be dreamt into being. 

It was here, awash in a night mist glowing with the siphoned luminescence of distant streetlights, that you had the realization. The song of either ocean was composed of harmonies and rhythms born from a particular interplay of wind, water, and firmament, as distinct from one another as a slip jig is from a samba. You wondered if a similar dynamic existed within the songs of humans, if the different sounds used in the expression of humanity are simply reflections of the different material conditions of human existence. A memory from childhood emerged in response: you, upon being presented with a globe, realize that, despite what your teachers told you, there were not really five separate oceans but rather a single massive one, encircling the earth, unconcerned with the arbitrary divisions that humanity imposes upon the natural world.

Reaching the window you peer down onto the modest yard. The pulse is louder here and you can make out the strains of an accordion pirouetting on top of the shuffling beat. Your ears prickle in potential recognition and you cross the room again, pick up your mandolin, and head towards the door, pausing briefly to slide your feet into the sandals resting by the exit (ever the optimist). Through the mudroom, past the minifridge, out the front door, and onto the deck, the morning air greeting you warmly, carrying with it a floral scent, the chill you remembered from the earlier excursion as much a memory as the erstwhile tunes you had charmed from your instrument. Out here you can make out the melody the accordion is playing: a sinewy cumbia, dreamt into being on a coast even further south, a tune that traveled across the continent, hitching a ride on radio waves and vinyl records, through the bodies of the musicians who heard its hypnotic cadence and echoed it. These countless performances over the years provided provender for this sonic egregore, sustaining, transforming, multiplying it, leaving vestigial traces in the minds of those it encountered. Traces that might one day blossom into the surprised recognition you are experiencing now. 

You echo a phrase from the accordion on your mandolin—a habit acquired at late night trad sessions—and realize with pleasure that your intuition has proven correct: the tune is in D minor. The melancholic Sol that had faded out of existence earlier in your room will not go unresolved. You remember an interview from the previous month: a musician and producer from New York jadedly opining about his preference for Latin music over Celtic trad, the modal nature of the latter eliciting inchoate, complicated feelings about his European ancestry. You smile over this sentiment as you stumble over a few notes of the tune, the strings re-furrowing indents in your fingertips as you mimic the accordion—the button accordion, a staple instrument in both the cumbias emanating from the neighbor’s backyard and the modal jigs and reels that flit and skitter about the wild North Atlantic, a common element uniting these two seemingly separate musics. Like that long-ago realization that the ocean was only divided by mortal vanities, the fundamental interconnectedness of human musicality hits you with profound weight and a familiar knot of awe stirs again deep within you.

A door creaks open. You look to see your neighbor step out onto his porch. He has a can of beer in his hand and a relaxed smile on his face, his steps bobbing in time to the beat slinking out from his backyard. Your eyes meet and you raise your right hand in greeting, index finger and thumb gripping your pick, three free fingers pointed upwards like a salute. He turns his smile towards you.

You smile back. “I dig the tunes.”