Much has been said about the allure of a
diamond. Diamonds are forever and diamonds are a girl’s best friend. I never
thought I would say this but I have fallen for a diamond too. This time round,
it is Neil Diamond - the voice, not the man.
Truth be told, I was never quite his
follower in my school years but tastes change with age.
Now I think his voice is something else and
even at 74, he can mesmerise 14,000 people, mainly older women. I know this for
a fact because I was sitting there among the crowd at 3
Arena, an amphitheatre located at North Wall Quay
in the Dublin Docklands in
Dublin.
There were two huge screens
upfront that had a running commentary of the audience’s tweets. It was amazing
how the tweets shared a common vein –
every single tweet was about a daughter who had accompanied her mother
or father for a never-to-be-forgotten experience.
When the man came on the
stage, the atmosphere was electrifying. Suddenly the elderly people were
clapping or waving their light sticks. I
couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the very same people who came in through
the doors of the amphitheatre with their
walking sticks, spring up and
dance! I thought it was all very spontaneous and graceful. Every
grandmother or grandfather was a young
person again that night.
As Neil Diamond belted out
the classics, the lyrics of ‘I am I said’ struck a chord.
As the song goes, ‘ I’m New
York City born and raised...but nowadays I’m lost between two shores. L.A.’s
fine, but it ain’t home....New York’s home but it ain’t mine no more.........’
Very true indeed.
There are some who have been
born and raised in a village and remained there all their lives so they
probably would not feel this predicament. There are others like myself who have
moved from towns to cities to countries. We have more than one place to call
home and yet there is a feeling of being ‘lost between two shores’
I remember participating in
an ice-breaking activity where I was given this question. ‘What would you like
to be said at your funeral?’ I thoroughly enjoyed that as I had been preparing
all my life for this....sounds morbid...but that is one of the fun things the mind
can do.
So I said I would like to
model it after Michael Hess’s headstone inscription (from the true to life
movie Philomena). ...’A woman of two nations and many talents’. And then I
added, ‘For those who are here attending my funeral, who had never spoken or
were kind to me when I was alive, what are you doing here?’ This is especially
so in a society where being seen at a funeral is of utmost importance.
In the context of a sense of
belonging, I find that there is this phenomenon that I would call the ‘Ellipsis
Effect’.
Ellipsis in the area of
linguistics is the act of leaving out one or more words that are not necessary
for a phrase to be understood.
It is very strange but when I
stay in a place long enough, I feel that I have lived there forever and
memories of other places where I had set up home before, fade over time. It
would seem that I have never left in the first place. It doesn’t matter whether
the places that I have lived are as varied as night and day. It doesn’t matter
whether I have very good friends in any of those places. It doesn’t matter how
many years I have spent in one place. So when I begin to settle the Ellipsis
Effect kicks in.
Apparently, I am not the only
one who feels this way Does this attest to the innate human instinct to survive
and to put down roots wherever we are?
Home is where memories are
made. Home is
where we feel comfortable, loved, relaxed, peaceful, and contented,
Home is where the heart is.
No comments:
Post a Comment