Love in the time of Corona – looking out

What a paradox, to feel connected and belonging to the sky and cut off so completely from the earth. I have a home and must cover my face to leave it. You have a sheet of cardboard on the grass. You sleep bare-faced beneath the stars and the sun but may not enter any manmade place.

We all live on the edges of our lives. Lost to each other without the meaning made of mutual recognition.

During the first Covid lockdown, I heard a haunting cello performance that sounded like Bach. I did not know what it was called but as I listened and looked out of the window of my 9th-floor flat opposite Durban harbour, the notes seemed to stretch across the sky and the ocean. I fancied them carried on the wings of small pigeons and great white pelicans, to all the people I loved and all the ones I didn’t know, sick and dying, in isolation, everywhere.

A Catalan anthem

Then I learned that the melancholy piece was ‘Song of the Birds’. Originally a poem, it was sung as a traditional carol in Catalonia. After it was set to music by Pau (Pablo) Casals, ‘Song of the Birds’ became a Catalan anthem during the dictatorship of Spanish Nationalist leader General Franco. Casals went into exile to Prades, France, from 1939.

He gave up playing in public in protest at support for the fascist regime but was persuaded in 1950 to  conduct and play in the Prades Festival organised to celebrate the bicentennial of Bach’s death. At the end of the festival and every concert he gave after that, Pablo Casals played his arrangement of ‘Song of the Birds’ lamenting the continued oppression in Spain.

I read how Casals became depressed in his youth about the violence and evil he saw, long before the Spanish civil war and the rise of fascism in Europe. Cesare Civetta quotes Casals as saying: “How much ugliness there was that I saw! How much evil! How much pain! Injustice and violence revolted me. I could not understand why there was such evil in the world…I could no longer lose myself in my music… Music must serve a purpose… A musician is also a human, and more important than his music is his attitude toward life…What brought me out of the abyss…was the hope in me that would not be destroyed.

“If there is in man infinite capacity for good, there is also infinite capacity for evil. Every one of us has within himself the possibilities of both. My mother used to say ‘Every man has good and bad within him. He must make his choice. You must hear the good in you and obey it.”

Hearing the Good within You

This notion of  ‘hearing the good’ within you and obeying it remains critical. We find ourselves separated by a contagion, divided, turned upon ourselves, by avaricious and egotistical politicians, and exploited and excluded by a few individuals who accrue the whole world’s – indeed the whole solar system’s – resources to themselves. It is easy to be buried alive in the struggle to survive and support each other. We risk being paralysed by propaganda and deceit, especially when we cannot reach and comfort each other.

We must hear and obey the good in us, overcome the impulse to blame or to despair.

Music of Catalonia

Casals played ‘Song of the Birds’ at the White House for President Kennedy in 1961. He played it at the United Nations in 1971, saying “The birds in the sky, in the space, sing ‘peace, peace, peace’ ” and he said of the music “It is also the soul of my country, Catalonia.”

Casals died in Puerto Rico in 1973.

More than 40 years after his death, Catalonians held a referendum and unilaterally declared independence from Spain in 2017. The Spanish government responded by imposing direct rule and imprisoned separatist leaders. Recently there has been news that these leaders have been pardoned. In September 2021, it was announced that talks may start about the political future of Catalonia.