I don’t often read thrillers or horror stories, but when I do – and I can count them on a few fingers of one hand – they include music.
What is in a title? Sometimes a title gives a hint of the overall plot of a story. My favorite Dean Koontz novel is The City and it is, indeed about the city in more ways than one, but it is also about brotherly love and music and a talented piano boy turned piano man. What did I expect when I picked up a book titled Bel Canto? That the entire book would be about beautiful singing? No. If anything, I expected a one-liner somewhere deep in the book or at the denouement where someone sings an unforgettable song.
The book is just good enough, just well-known enough, that I am both ashamed and amazed not to have read it sooner. But had I read Bel Canto in 2001 when it first came out in paperback, would it have had the same impact as reading it in 2022. 2022 when the world has gone mad, yet I have been heard to admit I am happy, perhaps the happiest I have been in a long time.
I have always loved music. A piano has always been a necessity, but I learned to love bel canto and Italian pieces when my youngest toured and performed with Colorado Children’s Chorale. I was raised to be a musician, but a gospel musician only. Even though Granddad had a Victrola and a collection of Swedish chanteuses, I had little appreciation for opera until I became more intimately acquainted with it as a core knowledge music specialist.
In Ann Patchett’s finely tuned Bel Canto, opportunities to identify with the accompanist are plentiful, there are also long moments to identify with the hostages, to pity underprivileged child terrorists, to savor the deep, profound effect music has on our lives. And there are questions to ponder.
My ruminations are both satisfying and alarming. My thoughts have to do with:
Anthropological questions
Psychological questions
Ethical questions
Governmental and diplomatic questions
A new kind of normal
Adapting to one’s environment
Happiness in the face of captivity
Blooming where you are planted
Might there be anything dangerous with blooming where you are planted?
Should you let your guard down if you bloom where you are planted?
Can one be truly happy if one is always looking over their shoulder?
Might Happiness have a lot to do with working willingly with your hands?
Does one really want to exist in perpetual, blissful happiness?
Is music nothing more than the opiate of the masses?
I love a book chock full of food for thought. Particularly when it hits me with music and love and forced social distancing all at the same time! It reminds me why I write. It reminds me of Love in various shades and circumstances.
“We found love right where we are.”