My 75-Year-Old Boyfriend
Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 4:48 pm
From Lisa Holmes:
Follow this link: http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Program_RM.aspx to hear my essay "My 75-Year-Old Boyfriend".
It was aired on October 30, but you may still check it out anytime during the next two weeks, by hitting the play button under the show dated Friday, Oct. 30.
My essay is only 5 minutes long, but it's a fun homage to my favorite musician. And the rest of Tony's show will be fun too--Halloween themed. Ooh, scary!
My 75-Year-Old Boyfriend
LM Holmes
In an effort to impress my 75-year-old boyfriend, I signed up for fiddle lessons at the Old Town School of Folk Music, in Lincoln Square. You could say that my boyfriend’s taste in music, not to mention his sex appeal, have truly inspired me. Not only is he the most poetic lyricist I know—one who taps into deep sadness and pure joy with a single, nuanced note—but he also has the creamiest, most sultry voice I’ve ever heard. When he speaks, I feel it in my underpants … and when he sings, oh lord when he sings … it’s hard to believe that angels aren’t right there singing with him, or through him, or inside him … and however else those divine powers work in his tower of song.
When I registered for fiddle class, I learned that the violin and fiddle are the same instrument. The difference is in how you play it. If you play classical music, you call it a violin. If you play folk music, you call your violin a fiddle. I’m embarrassed to admit that my musical experience up until this point was limited, at best.
Sure, I took a few, half-hearted piano lessons as a kid … practiced my scales, and, at the pinnacle of my music career, could bang out “Für Elise,” “Chopsticks” and “Send in the Clowns.”
With piano, I suffered through mandatory practice hours under the unyielding tick of the metronome.
But now, I yearn to master my string instrument … to hold its curved body between my chin and chest, and gently glide the soft horsehair bow over the cool, metal strings. I get lost in this sound. My only metronome is my heart, and the music, my wings … my bird on a wire.
The fiddle speaks to me with a siren call, making me feel delirious and desirous, like all the dark, cramped crevices deep inside me—the forgotten masses—have been awakened, bathed in sunlight and reborn.
I know that my 75-year-old boyfriend understands this feeling. His golden voice has the same affect on audiences all over the world—men and women in equal measure.
Sure, it would have been terrific to meet him in the 1970s, when he was young, virile and gallivanting with musicians and groupies around the world. I would have loved to spend the night with him at the Chelsea Hotel. I would have loved to share a midnight swim with him off the coast of Hydra in the phosphorus-lit sea. I would love for him to play my fiddle … to cradle it gently under his chin. I wouldn’t even care if he called it a violin.
Afterward, we would snuggle on the couch and watch Madmen, munching on popcorn and sipping Chablis. During commercials, he would sing softly in my ear … and kiss my neck … and … and …
… It wouldn’t really be fair for me to hoard him … his butter-rich voice … his brilliant, bittersweet words … his gifts are too important not to be shared.
But when he’s singing me to sleep at night through my headphones and it’s just the two of us, I know the truth about everything. I know that I belong to him. I know that all things happen in perfect timing. I know that the world is made up of love and joy and longing.
So, I will settle for the fiddle at my neck, and my iPod pumping Hallelujah through my soul. And, those of us lucky enough to be at the Rosemont Theatre on October 29th at 8PM, will get to see my 75-year-old boyfriend, also known as Leonard Cohen, in his full, glorious form.
? Not unlike me these days... 
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I think I might need to trade in my violin for such an instrument! 
