Sunday 22 September 2013

Dear Clare

Dear Clare, In many relationships, a partner will see it as his or her role to encourage, support or even share the interests of their partner. They will see at as a way of cementing and fostering their relationship by developing what may be lifelong points of reference, a fund of knowledge and experience through which to mediate their mutual understanding. When I recently expressed an interest in what can loosely be termed ‘world music’ I felt I was tapping into the well-springs of authenticity, joy and colour, while giving economic succour to oppressed ethnic groupings. I listened to a Pakistani crooner singing the praises of a sufi saint, a Senegalese boy extolling the joys of Dakar, some belligerent Tuareg tribesmen moaning their defiance of the colonial borderlines imposed on them by the French and a revered Irish group documenting in song the tactics of British press gangs in the 19th century. To my surprise, my helpmeet and soul mate has shown no evidence of sharing my passion for this and, far from supporting my interest, I am beginning to suspect that she does not take it seriously at all. For example, sometimes, we will pass on the landing and, just as I feel she has passed out of view, I will catch her with a cupped hand pressed against her ear, her eyes rolled towards the ceiling while emitting a faint nasal drone. On another occasion it could be a barely sketched little skip made with a stiff back while one hand twirled over her head. Once, when she thought I had left the house to buy milk at the local shop, I observed her in the kitchen, dancing in a circle to my music while shaking both hands frenetically over her head and raising her knees to her shoulders like a witch doctor. Is our relationship doomed?

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