by Linda Neil
Can I help you? he asked.
I held my hand out, formally, as if to signal that I took him seriously.
You work here? I said, as Gabriel looked around.
Yes, he replied shyly. I’m the manager. Welcome to Studio Acoustica.
He couldn’t have been more than eighteen. Back home in Australia he would have still been a gangly boy, probably going to university or living at home with his parents. Here the boy was a man in charge.
I shook his hand. Hi, I’m Lily. This is Gabriel.
My name is Bizou, madam. Sir. Are you French, Lily?
Why do you ask if I’m French?
I thought you might be.
No. But I know bisous means ‘kisses’ in French.
I had embarrassed him. And myself. I could feel Gabriel’s smile warming me from behind. We all paused, realigning ourselves to the new parameters of our interaction. I wondered how many other westerners had wandered into Bizou’s studio.
You have recording facilities here? I asked him. For acoustic instruments?
That’s our specialty. Come. He gestured down the corridor. I’ll show you.
He led us down the narrow passage into a side room where a twenty-four-track desk was set up in front of a glass partition. I could smell not only the fresh paint of the room but the effort and ambition it must have taken to set it up.
I only need a few tracks, I told Bizou. I have some songs I would like to lay down. Just simple things.
He nodded, eagerly. I enjoyed his immediate enthusiasm.
If you need other musicians, we can provide that too, he offered.
Gabriel was still nosing his way around the facilities. He had walked behind Bizou and me, unobtrusive yet present in the discussion as we all walked into the main part of the facilities. I had been in numerous studios around the world, and I could sense the care that had gone into setting up Studio Acoustica.
You did all this yourself? I asked Bizou.
I’m not the owner. That’s Jack. He imported the desk and the microphones from America. They’re state of the art.
He said it with such simple pride that I felt overwhelmed with emotion. Kathmandu was such an impoverished place, but here in this clean, newly equipped studio, one could sense how young Nepalis like Bizou reached out into the world.
That’s fantastic, I said encouragingly, wondering at the same time whether I sounded condescending. I was surprised more than anything else. And delighted.
I was also curious, though, at the proximity of the studio – and its technology and western-inspired rock’n’roll – to the vibrations of the monks.
How did you end up here? I asked.
Bizou scratched his head, trying to find the right words to explain.
It was the cheapest place available in the area. We also think it brings us good luck. And so far it has.
I turned to Gabriel, who was standing behind us, discreetly allowing me to make my arrangements in private. Perhaps it will bring me luck too.
Someone down the corridor was starting up a grungy riff again. It sounded like AC/DC’s ‘It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock’n’Roll)’. In the spaces between the out-of-tune chords, I thought I could make out the drone of the monks emanating into the studio. It made for a strangely poignant tapestry of sound. We listened for a while until even Bizou looked pained.
We love our rock’n’roll in Nepal. And our blues, he explained with a kindness that would have seemed impressive even from a much more mature person. I gestured in the direction of what I could only – even euphemistically – call a cacophony.
We rent out the back room as a rehearsal studio, he continued. Most of the kids here don’t have the money to pay much. But like everywhere else in the world there’s always someone dreaming of being a rock star.
I was impressed again at how articulate and compassionate he was in depicting the music scene of Kathmandu.
Nepal is a very poor country but we love American music. Not just rock’n’roll bands. Songwriters too. We love our singer-songwriters, like Norah Jones and Jack Johnson.
The Js, I joked.
Bizou laughed. Yes, we love them.
It was true. That summer in Kathmandu every second shop had Norah Jones or Jack Johnson playing from their loudspeakers. In contrast, I’d never heard their music, or anything that sounded like them, in India. In Paharganj, for instance, the backpacker area of New Delhi, Bollywood music blasted out day and night. You rarely heard anything western in India and the idea of a solo singer-songwriter writing about her personal experience as she moves through the world would have seemed almost infantile there, in a land of one billion people struggling to find formations that made them unified rather than individual and separate. But it was obvious that the Nepalis were at great pains to differentiate themselves as much as they could from their southern neighbours.
I felt in some ways that I was, even temporarily, at home in Studio Acoustica. I was certain I had found a place to record. Gabriel and I briefly discussed timetables, but it was up to me to decide what days I would book in. Bizou and I ambled back into the sound booth and looked through the booking sheets.
There was time available in just under a week, during the last two days before I was due to fly out of Kathmandu. It seemed clear that I should lock in a booking as quickly as possible – it was now or never, as my grandmother might have said. But as usual, when it came to recording my songs, I procrastinated. I never felt I was ready. Never felt I was good enough. My voice needed more work, more strength, more power; it wasn’t acceptable the way it was.
Gabriel appeared behind us, encouraging me to make a firm commitment.
He didn’t stammer at all as he spoke quietly to me. Perfect, don’t you think, Lily? Just perfect.
I realised with a shiver that it was the first time I had heard him say my name. Lily. In his deep hesitant English it sounded as gentle as the caress of a flower. I felt ashamed that I had never formally introduced myself to him, that he had found out my name only when I introduced myself to Bizou. Considering how significant names were for me, and that I had been boldly calling him a name of my choosing since we first met, it was strange that I had overlooked mentioning my own name to Gabriel.
It was a day of such strangeness. But at least we were now formally introduced. Gabriel and Lily. Lily and Gabriel. At the top of the world.
I didn’t overthink my reply, as I had many things in my life.
Okay. Bizou. I held out my hand to seal the deal. Yes. Let’s go for it.
I arranged the times and also the loan of Bizou’s guitar. He was puzzled when I said I strummed most of my accompaniment on the violin, but I had grown used to such initial confusion. We said our goodbyes to Bizou. As we walked out of the studio into the blue-black night, Gabriel turned to me and, without saying a word, smiled at me in such a way that I could tell he felt wonderment, the same wonderment I had felt when he showed me his photographs, the wonderment that made me recall the wonderment I first felt as a child. And I knew then that perhaps I was about to introduce him to something beautiful and surprising too.
The walk back to our hotel was like a dream. After the serendipity of our discovery in the Tibetan square, Kathmandu seemed carnivalish. The brightly coloured saris that adorned the Nepali women and girls were dazzling in the lights of the evening bazaars, and the profusion of merchandise, food and humans walking, running, cycling or driving recklessly through the cramped streets would normally have made me want to shut my eyes and ears. But I walked in a bubble of almost eerie silence as if I were listening very carefully for something.
Gabriel strolled beside me; I noticed how long his arms were in relation to his legs and body. How they swung slightly as they hung at his side; how his hands curved at the end of those overlong arms; how his head moved from side to side as if he were listening for someth
ing too, as if we had both heard something back in the square or the studio and it needed careful processing. Once or twice, I found myself staring at his hands, wanting to brush myself surreptitiously against them, or at least to move my hands closer to the space his hands occupied.
Almost involuntarily, I began to edge towards him in the crush of pedestrians.
Hands. For me, they carried the same kind of signal that a peacock carried in his feathers; I was, I often thought, a peahen for hands. I knew I was attracted to someone when I found myself stealing glimpses at their hands. There were no particular hands that I thought more beautiful than others. But as others might read the soul in a person’s eyes – or in a person’s photographs – I saw something inward in the hands: the way they occupied their space; the ease they might have as the fingers worked in relation to the palms. I could see more than what short thick fingers might mean, or long carefully manicured ones. What they did for work with those hands also mattered little, although I had once seen a butcher’s hands so thick and stained that I couldn’t help but envisage the dead flesh with which he worked for hours each day. Yet I had also observed hands that had toiled in the soil during years of manual labour that were as agile and elegant as a dancer’s hands might be.
I’d had a similar perception when watching the 1998 World Cup, in which the French-Algerian player Zinedine Zidane was the star player. Watching Zidane move the football around the field with his feet was like watching something deeply internal become manifest in action. It felt possible to perceive his life story in the movement of his legs and feet – the deep pride, the intense focus, the ability to slow everything down, to direct so elegantly the flow of movement around him. I thought of him then in Kathmandu because there were traces of Zidane about Gabriel: the same bald, oddly shaped head; the same internal drive; the same ability to move things around according to his rhythm. He had, after all, managed to move someone as stubborn and self-directed as I was for hours, over my protests and malingering, until his instincts had steered us to the temple, and then the studio. These same instincts now seemed to create that bubble of silence for our route back to the hotel, as he swung his hands unobtrusively at his sides in a way that made me want to hold them.
My own hands were, as my mother might say, nothing to write home about. The nails on each finger and thumb were bitten. I was ashamed of them and would often curl my hands up if I was talking to someone, or gesture so quickly that people couldn’t focus on my nails in the flurry of movement. It was impossible, though, to hide their scars from anyone for long. I used my hands in private and public: to play guitar, to type words, to strum my violin, to communicate to people.
At the same time, they were noteworthy for other reasons. They were small hands, almost tiny. And despite the hours and hours of creative and musical work my hands had done, they were not noticeably muscled, callused or distorted in any way. Their small size didn’t seem to inhibit their span either. I could easily stretch wider than an octave on the piano, and though fingered octaves on the violin had always proved difficult for me, it was more to do with coordination than hand span.
We stopped at a small footpath café close to Durbar Square for dal bhat, a local specialty. As we waited, Gabriel turned to me, his face creased into a smile.
So you see, you never know, do you? he said in his stumbling, cryptic way, as if he had just picked up a train of thought he had left idling hours ago, not so much pleased with himself as relieved perhaps that all the twists and turns he had led me through had ended up somewhere tangible. Didn’t I tell you?
Tell me what? I replied, not able to help smiling too.
He replied almost shyly. That I would show you somewhere beautiful.
Yes, you did. You certainly did tell me, I taunted him. Quite a few times actually.
Well then. What do you think?
You told me. And you showed me, I answered, suddenly re-energised by the thought of sharing a meal with Gabriel. Now let’s eat!
After a severe bout of dysentery, the thought of food still made me want to throw up most days, but now my mouth was literally watering in anticipation as I ordered a Nepali thali: a plate of dal, a selection of three vegetable curries, rice and pappadums.
Gabriel ate with his hands, Nepali and Indian style. I asked for a fork and parcelled the food carefully into my mouth, remembering the effects of the last full meal I had dared eat. To my surprise, though, the taste of the curries unfurled pleasurably.
Oh my God, I spluttered, shaking my head in wonderment.
See …? So beauty, he said, enjoying my enjoyment of my food. You eat like a bird. But perhaps this is okay? Perhaps you sing like one too?
I laughed, unable to make any coherent sound because of the food I kept stuffing into my mouth. As I ate my meal, I observed how Gabriel ate his. I noticed how his hands, covered in yellow curries, still managed to look clean and spatially elegant. Spatially elegant: I had never heard or used the phrase before. At least I didn’t believe I had. It was an invention inspired by my companion and his hands, as we shared a meal in the Nepali night.
So, Gabriel said when we had finished our thalis. How long are you in Kathmandu?
Ten days, I told him. I’ve been here three days, so seven to go.
Seven. It was a good number. The number of colours in a rainbow. The number of basic notes in western and Indian scales. The number of scholars and yogis. And, some say, the number of spiritual perfection.
Seven days was all I imagined I would have to get to know Gabriel. And perhaps all I would need.
And then, as I had many times with other travellers, I would say goodbye at an airport or a bus or train station. After our emotional goodbyes we would exchange emails, daily at first, then more sporadically, until their frequency petered out to nothing. There was nothing unexpected in such ebbs and flows of love and affection. It was the decorum of travel to understand the impermanence of connection – to not cling or expect anything long-term from these encounters, no matter how poignant or beautiful, but to celebrate and honour them, without hope or regret, as they arrived and departed. These were also the gifts of travel, the freedom not to possess or be possessed. To move, and love, as freely as a bird might sing its sad and joyful song.
My Summer of Peripheries
In the summer of 2005, I was staying in my friend Estelle’s apartment in Ménilmontant, in the twentieth arrondissement of Paris, north-east of Saint-Paul. The apartment was on the top floor of an old building about halfway along the narrow cobblestone street. As such, its windows were perfect for gazing onto the street or across the skyline of the city. One evening I was sitting in the window alcove, looking down towards the main road, when I heard some accordion music coming from the block of apartments opposite me.
I listened for a bit and thought I recognised the music, which in many ways sounded to me a lot like Paris. Or the idea of Paris that so many foreigners have, of somewhere poetic, romantic, wistful, charming. You know that place: Paris, where gypsies play in the Métro, and the bateaux glide under bridges that double as outdoor stages for an astonishing array of musicians from all parts of the world, sometimes playing end to end on a Sunday when all the tourists crowd around Notre Dame as if they were walking in a dream.
After a few more fanciful minutes, I realised I wasn’t listening to original or improvised music but something I had heard before. I listened a bit more until I recognised it as the accordion music from Amélie, the quirky film set in Paris starring Audrey Tautou, which had been a hit in Australia a few years before. I remember what a delight the film had been and how everyone wanted an Amélie haircut after the film came out. They wanted to dress like her too. I also recalled reading that tickets to Paris had experienced an upsurge after the success of the film. It seemed for a while then that everyone wanted that cinematic experience of Paris – nostalgic, retro, beautifully lit, with a denouement where love, despite all odd
s, wins out.
It was kind of a weird postmodern moment, being perched on the window ledge of a Parisian apartment listening to the accordion music from a film that constituted so many people’s visions of Paris. Apart from the accordion music, the elements of the movie form a checklist of ingredients for ‘a soufflé of Parisian delights’, as one critic described the film:
characters whose lives revolve around a café (check)
in Montmartre (check),
an eccentric young woman (check)
with love (check!)
in all its permutations (check)
on her highly imaginative mind (check)
who acts as a love catalyst for an array of odd and/or sexy and/or curmudgeonly French people (check),
but who is challenged to open up her own heart to an equally adorably awkward boy she worships from afar …
even though he works in a porn shop somewhere in Paris.
Check!
Check!!
Check!!!
Ah Paree, enchanté! Ooh là là!
You can almost hear the bad French clichés emanating from foreign tongues – mine included – when you watch it. It was the kind of film foreigners loved, but which many Parisians I knew were ambivalent about. They worried that it contained the same kind of caricatures that I cringe about in comparable Australian films, like Crocodile Dundee:
the cork hats,
big knives,
alligator skins and
taciturn men of the land.
That evening the music from Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain, the film’s original French title, was coming from an upper-storey apartment across the narrow street. I followed the sound carefully and decided that it originated in the third apartment from the left on the fourth floor. The occupants obviously loved the music – and probably the movie too – because they played the CD often.
The night I first heard it, they were playing it when I went down the road to buy a felafel roll from the Turkish restaurant on the corner, and they were still playing it when I climbed back up the narrow staircase into the tiny but perfectly arranged apartment I’d been lucky enough to sublet for the summer, while Estelle was working on her PhD in Australia. They had it on repeat as I unwrapped my roll and savoured it slowly by the most subtle moonlight I had ever witnessed.