Fabulist!

From an e-mail last night, with thanks to Jason, who made me think to write it.

I took a taxi home from my friend's house tonight. Getting in, without thinking, I let out a half-sigh, half-cry, this involuntary release of joy, because he was playing Nina Simone. The driver's a quiet 50-something year old guy. He's not the chatty type, just a quick smile and looking for the address. But suddenly, we're talking about Nina, and he's excited that I love her too - there's no flush of words, but you can see it in his face, the way everything becomes filled with movement and intent, even before he says something, even if he doesn't say much. Have you heard...? Oh, she ...!

And then he asks about Sinnerman. I nod, and he flips the track. It starts, and he jokes that I'll be well home before it finishes.

We drive down long, darkened roads. Nina's voice fills the car, pushing over every chopped piano line, everything a push and pulse.

When we reach my house, the song has quietened. It's the lull, where everything fades to a single piano line and hand clap, a false ending. I look at the radio - it's not just her voice, I say, it's how she sings - she's carving it out of herself, wrenching it out of her very centre. He nods, and puts his palm to his heart. It pulls at your chest, he says.

We sit in silence, listening. He knocks the cab fare off. The song builds again, and we sit in the dark, the light spilling out of the porches on our left, and the orange glow of streetlights overhead. A cab pulls into the street in front of us - it's a narrow street, and the driver can't get past us, and for a minute I feel awkward - should I leave? I ask. Sure it's only Stranmillis, he says, don't mind them. I burst into a laugh, and he does too - it's a rival cab company - and the song bursts too, alive and straining and urgent. We sit in the half-light, the engine rumbling gently, and let it play.

When it's over, I shake his hand. We smile, but don't really say anything; I thank him, but it's like I don't want to throw too many words around. It shouldn't be stripped bare. I thank him, leave the car, and step into the night. Every part of my heart is stretching as I open my front door.

I think the brightest parts of my life, the tallest and strongest and most deeply true, will be shaped by music. Sometimes, the shape is a map, outlines and gradients and a little marker for where I am now, a trail of colour for where I was before. The shape of past songs cuts a dotted line through my life. Sometimes, it's a pounding out, an interruption to argue and open things up, to open me up. Songs can shock me into wakefulness like nothing else can. Songs can get through. They shape me by force. They shape me by interjection.

And sometimes, just sometimes, a song will shape me by carving out the space for a moment like that. Sometimes, they let me sit outside my house with a stranger, and listen to a woman sing about desperation and salvation. I sit in the shape of the song, the shape the song has opened out, and I can breathe.

Nina Simone - Sinnerman