Once or twice a
year, sometimes once every two years, when I’m completely alone and need to
have a break from everything and everyone, I wait for the evening and put on
the Under Milk Wood CD, the one with
Richard Burton. I don’t try to listen, I don’t try to understand, I just sit
and look up at a wall or the ceiling or objects and the voices pass by. This is
my treat, sweet melancholy. Organ Morgan, Captain Cat, Myfanwy Price, Mrs
Ogmore-Prichard, how soothing it feels to hear their voices. Do you laugh or do
you cry when Captain Cat dreams?
To
begin from the beginning, I smile at that. No, To begin – I hold my breath during the silence – from the beginning… And as he continues,
his lips and tongue dance: It is
spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the
cobbledstreets silent and the hunched courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping
invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing
sea.
I always remember
the man who gave me the book. I read it and didn’t like it. Then it happened
that a few days later Under Milk Wood
appeared in the theatre of the little town where I was living. I went to watch
it and again, I didn’t like it. And maybe a few months passed, I saw the CD in
a supermarket. I bought it and listened to it and I loved it. Time passes. Listen. Time passes. Come closer
now. Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt
and silent black, bandaged night.
This is how
I count time. How many more times in my life will I listen to Under Milk Wood? Ten, maybe fifteen?
Come
on up, boys. I’m dead.
About
the reviewer
Pam Andersen was a
primary school teacher. She lives in Loughborough with her two cats, Ha and Ha-Ha.
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