Happiness: Fiddling & Sketching

The Belfast Bay Fiddlers welcome an audience to their weekly rehearsals. I thought I'd died & gone to heaven, attending for the first time. About 20 musicians played tunes like Saint Anne's Reel, Golden Slippers, Angeline the Baker, Whiskey Before Breakfast, Boys of Blue Hill & Reel de Montreal. I used to kind of play guitar & then tin whistle until a wrist injury changed things. And I used to contradance before my knees started creaking. But how I still LOVE to listen!!

Their stands were ipads on which they downloaded the tunes! The smiles on some of their faces as they played were like mirrors for my own feelings. A few of the slow waltzes made me cry. A roomful of joy, you see it, & you feel it vibrating deep in your core. Out the windows the trees were swaying to the music, & whole families of children were dancing on the lawn.

I was shy about taking out my sketchbook. Then, a regular audience member, wife of a guitarist, whipped out a Moleskine. So I whipped out my Moleskine. I almost exclaimed, "Look! We're twins!" As we shared our books we discovered that we are/were both art teachers. Then we hunkered down to sketching as the the fiddlers went on fiddlin'.

Fiddlers & sketchers, working out, practicing, immersed in traditional music...I became a part of a lucky group of people in that room that evening...