Dear reader,
I recently stumbled across this clip of tap dancing noses from Shostakovich’s opera The Nose which is about a nose that detaches itself from its owner’s face and wanders off to live its own life.
It put me in mind of my late mother but not because there was anything wrong or strange about her nose – she had a cute little noggin that functioned as it should.
Rather, this clip of a body part leading a wayward existence of its own reminded me of my mother’s left arm.
Mum had a stroke on 2002 which caused severe paralysis to the left side of her body. She reclaimed a lot of function of various body parts, by dint of much determination, but the most severely impacted was her left arm which remained in a state of near complete paralysis until her death in 2019.
This did not mean that the arm lay attached to her body like a lifeless lump of wood; pain would shoot up and down it at random moments. Mum still had to tend to it carefully so that it didn’t get damaged; she had to take care that the paralysed muscles that could no longer support its weight would not cause it to self dislocate by pulling itself out of the shoulder socket, or that the skin in between her fingers would not painfully crack as they curled in on themselves.
Mum sort of hated her arm at times because of the discomfort and trouble it caused but she also had to tend it like a baby, massaging it, arranging it tenderly into safe and comfortable positions, moisturising that clawlike hand. It seemed to be living some strange alien existence from the rest of her, subversive but needy. She called it Armanda. By giving it a name, she tried to reclaim it as a part of her and as something deserving of consideration.
And this memory of Mum reminded me of this clip of Australian composer and comedian Tim Minchin singing his song Not Perfect (a personal favourite of mine), recorded here in 2010. In it you’ll hear him refer to our then Australian Prime Minister John Howard as “radical of eyebrows” – another body part with a personality all of its own, apparently. And later in the song the body gets a whole verse to itself. Even if you’re not Australian, I recommend you get past the brief local political reference and listen to this song because it’s witty, quirky, and conveys an attitude of forgiveness and loving acceptance. Enjoy!
So, tap dancing noses, fretful arms, and politically radical eyebrows. This fortnight’s creative prompt is about body parts.
Creative prompt
Imagine one of your body parts had a life of its own (keep it clean, folks*).
If one of your body parts could detach itself from you while you slept, where would it go? What adventures would it have? Why would it want to return to you?
Have fun!
Regards,
Meredith
*Or not. Who am I to get in the way of a good time?
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Meredith, you write so well…fresh, uncluttered, and you always add a spark to my imagination when it’s burning a little low.
This reminds me of the time I suddenly became aware of my hands!