Me And Stephen Fry

I'm listening to the audiobook of the first volume of Stephen Fry's autobiography, Moab Is My Washpot, while I'm here in the States, and there's a section where he raves about the joy that he gets from music. He talks about the ecstatic levels of wonder that music can take him to, the resonance it sets off deep in his mind, the universality of the experience and the million shades of pleasure it can bring. And then, in one exquisitely loud sentence, he bemoans the fact that despite appreciating it on so many different levels, he "CAN'T FUCKING DO IT!" He's not tone deaf, he just can't sing or dance in public...at all. It's a deep psychological issue and it makes his life more than a little miserable, because he'd love to be able to do it, and he just...just...can't.

Now when I first heard that, I felt deeply sorry for Stephen, because I...erm...can. I apparently have perfect pitch, and while of course, like everyone else, I have my range, I can follow tunes exactly, and have a pretty good sense of musicality. I can even dance in public, though I do tend to resemble a kind of love-child of Peter Griffin and Luna Lovegood, much, I'm sure, to the mortification of my wife. But the self-conscious thing? Not gonna happen. In fact, I'm never without a tune in my head, and they often leak out, even when I'm not intending them to.
"You're leaking, dear," d will tell me with an increasingly weary forbearance. I can't help it - it's a part of the irritating sod I am.

So there was I, feeling a little superior to Stephen Fry (which is not a sentence you normally get to use on any given day). And then this morning happened.

This morning, I struggled out of bed. We didn't have to meet the Hospice care team till 2PM, so I figured it was a good time to try out the treadmill here. d said Lori had already left for work though, so we could walk down to the diner, have breakfast and walk back (Lori, it appeared, was the mistress of the treadmill, and keeper of its mystical secrets). As we walked, d started up a running commentary.
"Japanese Maples there look. They're worth an absolute fortune. Those are lilacs....and dogwoods...and is that apple blossom? Oh look, a fir tree..."
She was gesturing vaguely at various bits of scenery as we walked, but as far as I was concerned, she could have been talking about Japanese Nipples, Lilos, Dogbreath and Apple Cider...It was like...you know when you buy a DVD and it gives you the option ot watch it in a long list of languages, and you always wonder what would happen if you selected "Suomi" but you're never entirely sure which part of the world exactly Suomi comes from, and a little bit paranoid that you'll never see the menu again, so you choose English and then forever wonder what would have happened? It was like somebody had selected Suomi as d's language track for the day.

And it hit me - I can't do horticulture. I mean, she pointed out a pair of Japanese Maples to me, but I can guarantee you, when we walk past them next, I won't think to myself "Oh look, Japanese Maples". I'll think "Oh look...red ones."

The more she tried to point out the identity of this plant and that flower, and some other tree, the more I realised that the world of instant recognition of all the fantastic wonder in nature is a land that is forever lost to me. And I don't like that fact because, quite apart from anything else, as an aspiring writer of novels, it would be much better to be able to write "the dogwoods nodded in the gentle breeze" rather than "the white ones nodded in the gentle breeze" - it's far more precise and makes people think you know what you're talking about - always an advantage in a writer. But more than that, I want to know these things, simply for the pleasure of being able to know them, to feel able to put a kind of kinship with nature into proper words, because without the words that identify them, my experience of the natural world, which I deeply love, feels half-blind and insensible.

I know, I know - plenty of people have real problems, shut the hell up, ya ponce. But to be able to look at an oak tree, and recognise it only as 'a tree' seems to me to be a particularly stupid lack of sensibility, and it annoys me rather to be cut off from the recognition of specifics in nature.

Still, on the upside, I suppose it means I have at least something in common with Stephen Fry. Result!

No blood results today, and no weigh-in for the first Tuesday in eleven weeks. The day's not out yet, and I sort of half-heartedly still intend to jump on the treadmill later tonight. No bloody trees to confuse me on a treadmill...