Force of presence

Let's begin with an image. 1985, I think. I'd just bought Mr. Mister's Welcome to the Real World, on tape, at University Mall. Walking back home, along Willow Drive, I popped the tape into my cheap cassette player, which I'd scored at a yard sale on Long Leaf, and turned the volume up.

Way up. Way, way up, because there didn't seem to be any sound. Until, suddenly, there was - and not just sound, but a sheer sudden painful wall of sound that seemed to occupy the very core of my head. The album begins, I suddenly realized, not with a soft and subtle grace note, but with a violent sustain. Mr. Mister, in da house.

Four years later, I was in a music appreciation course in college. We listened to a wide range of pieces from the Western canon, and learned to pick out minor modes, and differences between movements. But one of my clearest memories of that class involves a curious composition that was, I believe, a French baroque motet or cantata and that began with a uniquely bright and forceful proclamation. "C'est mai," perhaps? I can't recall, exactly, but what I do remember was the streamlined boldness of the male voice singing the line.

Why the memories? Because they evoke, or resemble, how I've felt about Cleo the last few days that I've spent watching her. She currently seems so remarkably present, so wholly here, that I can't refrain from shaking my head at her, at times. If playing with sand, she's wholly focused on the tasks of pouring, and patting. If eating, she meditates on the taste; if steering a wheeled toy horse, there are no distractions worth mentioning. Bullet-shaped, and the weight of a generous sack of rice, she's a solid, real thing. She's a conversational partner, as well: we can ask her if she wants some milk, and receive a vigorous head shake in return. And she's autonomous; already she's walked up to us at several points, with a book version of Old MacDonald in her hand, and proclaimed, Aye Aye O, to get the singing started. Or paused, in a playground, and gestured upward to a quietly whispering airplane overhead.

So sing bright, troubadours. Turn up your knockoff Walkmen. Cleo is present. And presence is grace.