Peacock music for the bastard saint

“It is all connected through the gypsy part of town.  Let’s go” – Gogol Bordello

***

The artist is setting himself up to draw.  He’s positioned himself where he has the widest perspective and he can see the church at the top of the road and the sea at the bottom.  He’s nowhere near ready to paint.  He’s at the sketching phase; the phase where, for him, everything is possible.  Where’s he’s not committed to colour, or to shape or texture.  He’s not limited by these for now and his brain sparks with every potential colour.  He even thinks in colour and for him the sketch is his dream.

It’s 1888 and the artist sits on his fold-out stool in Saintes Maries de la Mer.  He’s not been well and the five hour ride from Arles has made him tired and bad tempered.  But he’s here to rest and to draw and in this week of summer, he plans to fill the three canvases he’s had precariously transported on the stagecoach.

The people are beginning to gather, colourful, noisy and chaotic, but the artist’s chosen spot is still good and he’s sure he’ll be able to catch the procession as it comes down the hill.

Anticipation and heat jostle the air.  The Camargue wind and the blasted sand crowd the grey light.  The artist picks up his reed pen and begins to outline…

…the procession is about to start.  The bells are ringing loudly from the tower of the large, pale church.  At both sides of its doors, the people are waiting solemnly.  The men on the white horses are a little way away, but you can smell the horses’ straw sweet breath and the tobacco richness of their saddles.  The people smell of lavender, of lemon balm and verbena, echoes of the surrounding fields where they’ve set up their camps.

When the doors open, the church’s beautiful arched roof can be glimpsed and then the four men appear, carrying the bier with the small, plaster figure, wrapped in white and gold material.

“Who is she, Daji?” the little girl asks her grandmother.

“Well, my Machka, my little cat”, the grandmother replies, “I’ll tell you a story”.

“A long time ago, Sara waited on the shore here because she knew a boat was going to come.  She’d seen it in her dreams and she knew it was sailing from Jerusalem, carrying Mary Magdalene, Mary Salome and Mary Jacobe.  They had been put on the boat and sent away and the men who had put them there had no care where they went or indeed whether they ever found land.

But Sara cared.  She knew the women who had been present at Jesus’ death needed her help and so she waited and waited.  When the boat appeared on the horizon, she took off her cloak and she spread it over the grumbling waves.  She used it as a raft and she helped the women to land and safety.”

The little girl looks wide eyed at her grandmother.  “But why are we here now?”

“We’re here on a pilgrimage to worship Sara.  Sara e Kali, Sara the black.  She is the saint of our people and every year on this day, we take her statue from the church and we carry it down to the sea, so we can cleanse and purify her.  As she moves, we touch her to connect with her.  She came from our community and she is still part of it.”

The little girl skips with delight.  “Can I touch her?  Can I touch Black Sara?” she asks.

Her grandmother smiles and nods, but she hides what she’s thinking.  That is the sadness she always feels for Sara e Kali, patron saint of the gypsies; her bones concealed in the crypt of L’Eglise de Notre-Dame-de-la-Mer like a dirty secret, while the relics of the three Marys flaunt their bones in the candle rich atmosphere of the apse.  Black Sara brought out to breathe once a year, to take the sea air before she’s hidden again.  Gypsy saviour, bastard saint.  The…

…music is soaring on the warm summer air.  Other men join the existing ones and play their guitars and their drums and accordions.  The music doesn’t stop, although the players of the instruments come and go.  It has a life beyond the existence of any one of them, its own crazy energy.  Its sound is ancient and bittersweet and raucous and insolent.  It makes you tap your feet and it breaks your heart.

The musician scrapes the sand off his boots and positions his violin under his chin.  He draws his bow over the strings and he’s transported.  It starts slowly, with the deep, creaking noise of the low notes.  Then it rises in tempo and volume and the musician feels he can see the swirl of the song around him as colours. Pink and cobalt blue and tangerine orange.   Gold and turquoise and purple.

An old woman next to him has begun to clap the syncopated rhythms that are always so unexpected and always so right.  The musician feels the blood of his people moving through him and dancing in his veins.  He closes his eyes and in this moment, he’s connected to everything in the universe and…

…the young thief has eyed his prize.  He’s starving and he’s been up since dawn.  The rest of his family have left their caravan and are somewhere in the procession taking Sara down to the sea, but he’s seen the water melons and they’re green and shining.  He knows he shouldn’t really steal, but he has no money.  And besides he’s thirsty as well as hungry.  His plan is to saunter past the melon seller’s cart, double back on himself, snatch a water melon and run away as fast and lawless as the mistral wind.  He wipes his snotty nose with the back of his right hand, then stuffs both hands into his pocket before…

…the dancer begins to twirl.  Her feet are bare and calloused and her face is pretty, but dirty.  As she turns, she raises her arms above her head and twists her hands, summoning whoever will come.  The bottom of her skirt has three rows of peacock feathers sewn on to it and as she dances faster, the feathers look like flashing, provocative eyes, winking at whoever wants to be winked at.

The dancer has taken her own space and she is no longer aware of anyone else who passes her because the music has gripped her by her hips, her breasts and her feet.  She’s been dancing since she was born and she’ll be dancing forever.  From his viewpoint, the artist watches her and he wonders…

…why.  Why can’t he capture her image?  The breakfast of fish and bread he’s had at his lodging this morning is repeating on him and he feels most uncomfortable.  The artist is still, with his reed pen hovering over his sketchbook, but he’s not made a mark on the paper.  He tries to remember his training, the learning of his craft and his education.  The learning that should allow him to create by rote.  But all he can think is who was it that educated the dancer to dance?  Who crafted the musician’s music?  Then he wonders oddly and fleetingly, was Jesus a gypsy?  The…

…horses wade into the sea.  They’re so wonderful and unlikely.  The seaweed wraps round their white legs and the salt from the waves spits up and makes them blink.  The crowd following Saint Sara is beside itself and men and women are crying and shrieking with the fervour of the moment.  The gypsy hymns are banged out on battered guitars as Sara is lowered into the water.  The sea knows she’s there and it remembers what she’s taken from it.  Its waves are crashing and resentful.  Then…

…the musician plays with heart breaking recklessness and…

…the dancer dances with abandon, on the needle thin line between frenzy and rapture and…

…the young thief runs like it’s the devil’s own watermelons he’s stolen.

All faster and faster. Wilder and wilder. Faster and wilder.

But the young thief outruns himself, trips over his own feet and knocks the dancer over.  Straight in to the arms of the musician as his violin crashes to the ground with a ludicrous groan.

Convergence.  Connection.

For a second in this world, there is silence.  Broken only by the suddenly calm lapping of the waves on the immersed statue of Sara e Kali.  The artist…

…is the observer only.  He sees the scene in front of him, but he’s no part of it.  No part of the beautiful dancer in the arms of the musician.  The man’s gaze is electric blue as he looks at the girl’s ancient young face.  The pink flamingo heart of the watermelon is shattered on the floor and the artist can see the young thief looking at it with both regret and the beginnings of a plan.

The artist can’t capture any of this.  It’s too rich, too real and vibrant.  In his mind, he’s already on the reverse pilgrimage from Saintes Maries de la Mer to Arles; the grey artist with his sterile canvases.  But he remembers something he’d heard one of the gypsies say as he’d passed him earlier.  “The sky is my ceiling.”  And he’s going to try to take some of this wonderlust spirit.  He’s going to at least buckle down and draw some of the village’s picturesque cottages.  Or the fishing boats bobbing on the water.  The summer sea a winter charcoal, the watery no colour of dead mackerel.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYx-ZtbRPg0  – Gogol Bordello’s Super Taranta.  Wonderful to listen to whilst reading this story :)