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The Artist’s
Almanac
April 2007
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The Present is the point at which time touches eternity.
- C. S. Lewis
Spring lasted about
a week this year.
We expect short
springs and long falls, but this spring was front-loaded. Winter
gave us no real snow, and by mid March we were having 70-80
degrees, using air conditioners, and hoping for rain. Cattle were
looking for shade under partially leafed trees. Daffodils and
dogwoods, tulips and wisteria, which we expect in sequence, all
bloomed at once, then quickly wilted in the heat. The trees shed
storms of pollen, which covered cars and carpets.
Artists often err in
ignoring their foreground in favor of distant clouds and
mountains. Yet it is here, in the midst of close and familiar
things, not on the faraway hills, where we live, breathe, and have
our being. Living in our imagined future or a savored past, we
fail to enjoy today.
Returning from my
walk I heard a mockingbird. Rather, I listened to him. On a
beautiful spring morning he was perched on the highest limb of the
highest tree, giving a concert for his female admirers, for his
rivals, and for me. His tail was cocked at a jaunty angle,
flitting like a weather vane as he hopped from perch to perch and
surveyed his territory on all sides.
He deserves a better
name, for while he can imitate the call of every bird, from quail
to jay, he is no mere copycat. I stood a quarter hour listening
for a repeated theme, and heard not one. Were he a composer, he
would be Mozart, Cole Porter, Stephen Foster, Verdi, and all we
know, rolled into one. Audubon says of him, the mellowness of
the song, the varied modulations and gradations, the extent of its
compass, the great brilliancy of execution, are unrivalled. There
is probably no bird in the world that possesses all the musical
qualifications of this king of song.
The cats listen too,
though they pretend not to. The mockingbird mocks their meow and
even growls at them. If they dare the open lawn during nesting
season he will dive bomb them, claws extended. He is of the shrike
family with sharp pointed bill made for spearing his prey. Some
cats run from him; others wait their opportunity. He is a daring
fighter, but an occasional white-tipped gray feather on the
driveway says he went too far.
The mockingbird
adopts a family and a house. The one that regularly nests in the
rose that covers our bedroom window awakens me in the middle of
moonlit summer nights to practice his repertory. They make fine
pets if taken as fledglings, but never sing so well as in the
wild. Yet he is fiercely independent and you will not see him at
your bird feeder.
April is a time of
beauty and courtship, for all creatures great and small. When next
you go out your door to a torrent of birdsong and discover it
coming from one tree, look closely - you may see there a gray
fellow whom the famous ornithologist and artist, John James
Audubon, regarded as the world’s finest songbird. Right in your
back yard.
The English poets
praise their nightingales. I have never heard one, but I’ll bet a
round of Guinness it doesn’t have near the tunes of our state’s
favorite bird. Our Music City composer is a true Tennessean –
versatile, daring, plucky, and ready to fight to defend his honor
and his family. Like Andy Jackson, Sam Houston and Nathan Bedford
Forrest, he is an original.
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