NO SONGS TO SING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 884, 13 July 1956, Page 30

NO SONGS TO SING

by

SUNDOWNER

JUNE 13

today when a friend with a fine baritone voice, successful _and happy and still only 55, told me that he no longer wishes to sing. When we were neighbours 20 years ago he sang as naturally, as 'zestfully, and almost as frequently as roosters crow and magpiés chortle, and aI THOUGHT it a little sad

for the same reason: because there was something inside that had to

come out. Now he finds it easier to remain silent. He >is not old or beginning to be old. He has the same hearty laugh, the satne warm smile, the same -spting in his step and pressure it his hahd. But he does not wafit to sing. Over-production of energy has céased, He was healthy plus before; now he is healthy only. Time, though it has not yet overtaken him, has thrown a shadow his way. He is probably as comfortable as he has ever been in his life, as competefit, and as serene. I am sure that when he goes to bed at night he falls asleep as easily as a child. But he does not want to sing. He is no ailing knight at arms alone and palely loitering. He is the happy warrior with his external battles well won and his internal conflicts neither troublesome nor dangerous. But he does not want to sing. I once knew a blind woman who judged the health of her friends by the tone of their voices. After she told me this I began to be careful in her presence, to hold myself in hand when I was speaking to her, and to maintain a cheerful heartiness. But I never deceived’ her. She knew when my blood was singing and when it was merely making a noise. Though I never had a

voice, there was a time whén I Was ae frequettt and easy whistler. That time ended about the stage my friend has now reached. Fifty-five, if we live to seventy-five, is about the middle of our mental maturity. But it is a middle that is also an end. A cloud no bigger than a man’s hand has appeared on our horizon. We tay not fear it, but we look at it. Then we look again, ard when we have been looking for as long as it takes us to pass from youth to age we discover that we are looking silently. We no longer whistle or sing. ,

JUNE 16

* * % HAVE used many methods for con- . trolling dogs, but I have never — thought of calling in a dog psychiatrist. All the same, I hope it is trué that the United States Post Office has engaged "experts in the complex field of post-man-dog relationships’ to cut down

casualties among letter eartiers. It is time Washington had something to

turn its mind away from the President’s heart and ileum, and dog psychologists are more likely than party politicians to do that quickly. To ask people to put their dogs on the ¢hain before the postman calls would be asking too much. Whatever it did to the dogs it would impose great hardship on the men and wothen who have studied dog psychology and opened clinics to caftry researches further for a fee. IT saw one of these at work not very far from the centre of Washington, and remember how promptly he arrived when the cry of distress reached him, how soothingly he spoke to the sh6éckéd owners whose boxer’s toe had béen pinched in their cat door, how often he visited the (continued on eet. PRR) oo f*

patient afterwards, and how earnestly | he advised "keeping him quiet till his | nerves recovered." When I remember the dog, the owners, the doctor, the cars, and the dollars, I would be the last person to suggest, éven 8000 miles away, that discipline should be tried when brain-washing would be so much more profitable. But I hope New Zealand will not be left in darkness when the experts begin to report. Although one of them has declared already that "the average dog-owner can’t compete with the mind of a dog," that is not a reason why we should be refused the crumbs that must fall from these richly-garnished tables. The limits of bunk can never be reached, even at ten dollars a_ visit. But if I were a postman in Washington I would either pad my trousers or carry a repellant strong enough to make illmannered dogs think twice.

JUNE 17

me % * N Vienna, I heard the commentator say in a travel film, music is a state of mind. I think I know the state of mind of the man who said it. I think it was a shallow mind cluttered up with empty phrases. The man who said it first may have meant something, though I am not sure that expressed

what he meant, but it meant no more in the | film commentary than |

some of the other noises made in the studio. But I will not argue with the man who tells me I am wrong. He may be a wellSnformed man, and ignorance should not argue with knowledge. In any case, glass has to be very thick to resist stones. If we are to be taken up as often as we utter sounds without sense, speech will sink to the bushman level. Shakespeare’s songs, scores of lines in the Psalms, the most memorable phrase in Tam o’ Shanter, pages of Carlyle, a hundred things in Job, in Paul, in Blake, in Emerson, in Milton, in Wordsworth, in three out of four of all our immortals, will be fuel for the slush-lamps of logic. It is better, all in all, to remain imitators, catchers of echoes, blowers of bubbles, and spreaders of dust. An hour or two after I heard that comment on Vienna I was told a pleasant story which I adapt and repeat without permission. Two mathematicians were discussing the calculus when a child trotted into the room and stood looking at them. "Well, Mary," one of them said, "I don’t suppose you are interested in the calculus?" "No," she answered, "but I have my dolly." It is better for most of us to retain our dollies, (To be continued)