Love Is A Big Sack Of Salt

I'm feeling very cultured these days.  Last night I went to a lecture about Islam, at which a Sufi imam, a rabbi, and a Catholic scholar all discussed Islam and America.  Mostly over my head, but interesting. 

Then tonight I went to a lecture on Scheherazade herself.  The speakers were a visiting scholar from Bates, who spoke about the history of the 1001 Nights as a work of literature, about Scheherazade as a character, and about his interpretation of the Rimsky-Korsakov piece.  He was followed by the conductor of the Portland Symphony Orchestra, giving his interpretation of the Rimsky-Korsakov piece.  He would describe what he thought was contained within a segment of the music and then play a fragment from the CD illustrating his point.  It was fantastic: the familar explained and reinterpreted.  When I introduced myself and told each lecturer that my own name is Scheherazade they were both delighted -- the conductor gave me the CD he had used and his notes from the presentation.  I listened to them in the car on the way home and couldn't help feeling proud and a little amazed by my namesake. 

The evening was magical.  You'll have to forgive me for being a little swept up in it.  The music of Scheherazade begins and ends with the sea.  You hear the theme of Scheherazade -- feminine, patient, romantic -- and of the sultan -- impatient, commanding, brutal, but fascinated by her.  In the second movement you can hear the Sultan interrupt when the story gets dull.  Scheherazade has to turn up the charm, spicing the repetitive theme up with cadenzas and flourishes.  [My grandfather once had a boat named Cadenza, which I remembered fondly in the moment while listening to Scheherazade using them to cast her spell.]  There are the themes of the stories she tells and her own theme, a violin and a harp, lovely, enchanting, sweet.  And in the end she tames the sultan -- a "royal serial killer," as the professor described him.  You can hear a shipwreck in the fourth movement and the sultan going down with the ship, while Scheherazade floats above on a calming sea, her sweet violin rising in victory.  And the sultan's theme comes back in, low and deep, far below her soaring voice, but tamed, calmer, and under her spell. 

The professor said that Scheherazade was fertile, wise -- booksmart and intuitive -- and rebellious.  I asked the professor why Scheherazade rebelled from her father and married her Sultan in the first place.  He said, well, she labored under the yoke of saving her gender, and the kingdom -- she had to.  It was a sense of destiny and duty that compelled her.  I asked whether he thought she fell in love with the Sultan by the end.  He shrugged.  In his mideastern accent and stilted English said, "Eh. What is love?"  He came over to my seat and looked at me, wondering how to explain his ambivalent indifference.  "My mother, she used to say -- she was married to my father...he was...he was a hard man -- she say to me 'Love is like a big sack of salt, you carry it around and it last a whole lifetime, but you never know how much to put in the soup.'"  I nodded up at him as if that made sense. 

Now I'm home and perplexingly, can't find my copy of Scheherazade.  Listening to it will be different, and marvelous, now that I have some names and landmarks for what I'm listening to. 

Comments

[The Other Scheherazade]

How exciting! I am so jealous

[A. Rickey]

OK, now you're really making me jealous. I'd pay good money right now for a nice sound system, a set of headphones, and the time to put my head back on a pillow and listen to it with my eyes closed...

[matt]

s -- i'd love to know what's your take on the Renaissance version of the story

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000073BG/ref=m_art_bow_2/104-7099886-9445530?v=glance&s=music

matt