The Lyre of Orpheus, by Robertson Davies (1988)

Should I ever become rich and famous (insert laughter here), this is one of the many posts some readers might wish to use against me for the purposes of blackmail. Not that I’d ever want to become famous. Rich? Sure. Famous? No. My delusions of grandeur, pretentions, confessions, and other miscellaneous mischief are here for your exploitation. I sue for your discretion, since I evidently have none. The content heretofore and following hereinafter is grist for your personal mill.

My avocation, as you might’ve guessed, is writing. It doesn’t pay the rent, but it keeps me sane. Fiction, excessively lengthy philosophical correspondence with flaky friends, grocery and To Do lists, this blog, angry letters to manufacturers of faulty merchandise, ransom notes – I enjoy it all. 

My vocation, on the other hand, the job I do to keep the lights on, without getting specific, involves traveling a good deal. Initially, I did this in silence. Well, apart from the roar of the tires against the highway or the purr of the air conditioning. Eventually, though, I decided to dust off the three CD cases I’d stored in my closet twenty years ago and select a handful of plastic disks for the daily needful.

I’m not ashamed to note my stellar tastes in music. They’re both impressive and diverse, and, yes, I do say so myself. My interests began shortly before I was caught slapping Lincoln Logs on my mother’s dining room chairs at the ripe ole age of 12. I’m told I conducted imaginary symphonies from the privacy of my parent’s den around the same time. I was only 15 when I joined a professional rock band of 20 something year-olds. So I’m not just a fan of the medium, I’ve participated in the profession – playing drums, guitar, writing songs, and performing for audiences. I never made enough to pay the rent, of course, but I went so far as to study music in college with the naïve notion that I could make a living at it. I’m by no means a connoisseur, but a certain independence from peer pressure, pop culture, and bad taste allows me to hold my chin high while the tone deaf blare hip hop from their low riders.  

Still, like any other fashion, looking back at yesterday’s tastes are, or should be, a source of embarrassment for anyone making strides to better oneself. I bear no indignity admitting my love for much of the Baroque, classical, and romantic European music of the seventeenth and eighteenth century I possess and genuinely enjoy. The operas, symphonies, and concertos of the masters deserve repeated listens, and I’m here to oblige, despite the nasty looks I get from society. I get goosebumps and sometimes even shed a tear throughout some musical passages. But never mind that. I’m a manly man. Can’t stress that enough.

After cycling through everything in my CD collection from Bach to Verdi, not to mention the great body of work from the classical guitar masters Fernando Sor, Carcassi, Giuliani, and others, I sampled from my old jazz purchases, too, stuff I’d bought before the days of Pandora and Spotify. Old, poorly remastered Louis Armstrong and The Hot Fives, delightful Pat Metheny and Jim Hall, thrilling Wes Montgomery (still one of my favs), and a few more obscure jazz artists of a bygone era.

Sure. Like anyone else, I’ve got those Guilty Pleasure collections that serve as a sort of tell-all about a given guitar player’s influences: Kansas, Kate Bush, The Police, Sting, U2, Sheryl Crow, King Crimson, Yngwie Malmsteen, and Eric Johnson, much of which, admittedly, I’ve outgrown. Then there’s the collection I refer to as What-Was-I-Thinking? Crash Test Dummies, Yellow Flag, The Art of Noise, Alanis Morissette, and Third Eye Blind. Okay, so I’m susceptible to peer pressure after all.

Within the course of a few weeks on my job driving, I went through most of the 120 musical CDs I own. Many of these, as mentioned, I could’ve done without having heard again, much like I can do without looking at old photos of myself wearing what I’d never be caught dead in today. In short, my musical interests have changed. Part of this is due to the advent of electronic delivery. Thanks to services like Youtube and Pandora, for example, I’ve been exposed to a musical menagerie I wouldn’t have otherwise heard. This is a good thing, especially since I love to experience new things, preferably without the benefit of a crowd.

Thirty years ago, I used to check out vinyl records from my public library. That’s how I got exposed to Mozart’s brilliant collection of concertos, among other musical delights. The public library’s CD collection isn’t enormous, but as collections free to public access go, it’s more than ample. It was only after I’d selected a handful of CDs – Beatles for Sale (the band’s fourth studio album), Bing Crosby’s It’s Easy to Remember, and Big Band Era Vol. 1 with Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, and others – that I learned patrons can check out 15 CDs at a time.

While there, I returned an overdue volume entitled The Lyre of Orpheus, by Robertson Davies. This is book three of the Cornish Trilogy. It so happens my friend Brad introduced me to Davies over 20 years ago with book two of this trilogy, What’s Bred in the Bone (1985), see blog. I was instantly impressed with Davies’ masterful style and would later read The Salterton Trilogy: Tempest-Tost (1951), Leaven of Malice (1954), A Mixture of Frailties (1958). Davies is a rare breed. His stories entertain while providing real depth of vision and memorable characters. He always has something to say, but this never gets in the way of the story. The result is a satisfying, engrossing read that manages to touch both your heart and your mind. He’s one of my favorites – up there with Nabokov, Salinger, Twain, Dickens, and Wodehouse. Five out of five stars. PG-13