All Things Must Perish

[rabidsamfan]

I have seen his fingers twitch across invisible strings as he listens to me, and deduced that his own instrument was another casualty of the Afghan campaign. When I offered him the use of mine he said nothing; but tonight I returned unexpectedly and found him deep in his own world, trying to force his weakened arm to support the violin and his unpracticed hand to find the chords in timely fashion as he bowed. Too soon the pain of his wound defeated him – that shoulder will never be strong – and I slipped away again unseen.

Some losses require solitude.



The title is from a round we used to sing in Girl Scouts:

All things must perish from under the sky
Music alone shall live
Music alone shall live
Music alone shall live
Never to die

Once, long ago, I used to know the words in German and the composer, but I've forgotten. Can any of you help nudge my brain?

Comments

[siouxieq.livejournal.com]

I have no idea about the round, but German sentiment always amuses me, it's always that little bit off centre and they have a name for every permutation of emotion especially the more perverse ones.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Well it may be an Austrian composer. Or even an Italian or French composer whose work I only ever saw in German. I really have forgotten, having learned the song more decades ago than I care to admit to.

I do love a language that lets you create portmanteau words as easily as the Germanic languages do, though. Anyone can create a word for absolutely anything and be understood, just by putting bits together, although non-native speakers may not get the gist quite right when they are translating words literally. Icelandic does it too. I was once told by a fellow student from Reykjavik that the word for "lawnmower" in Icelandic was more accurately translated as: "thing with which you use to make the grass shorter"...

[surgicalsteel.livejournal.com]

Don't know the composer name, but googling around to try to nudge my brain I found this collection. The song you've got there is on page 25.

Otherwise - well. I love this muchly. For some reason, it reminds me of an attending I had in Tampa - he'd had a fractured cervical vertebra as a resident (trying to restrain a psychotic patient) and had two vertebrae surgically fused to treat it. Over two decades later, traumatic arthritis caused nerve entrapment - and one neurosurgeon wrote a report on him referring to him as a 'formerly right hand dominant surgeon.' He was trying to figure out how to adjust to not having the finesse in his right hand any longer.

Makes me wonder about Watson - if he'd trained to do surgery and had trouble with his arm/hand... that could be fairly devastating.

Anyway. Loved this.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Well, if Watson's right hand dominant, he could probably manage some things -- but I imagine a shaky/weakened left hand would be a disadvantage, particularly in that era's kind of surgery.

Thanks for the link to the collection by the way. I know quite a few of those!

[surgicalsteel.livejournal.com]

Oh, gracious, yes. Your non-dominant hand actually becomes sort of the 'power' hand, sometimes a bit stronger than the dominant hand - you're using it to hold things out of the way while your dominant hand does the finicky dissection. There's a story that I heard at Lahey: One department chair started losing strength in his left hand. They hired another surgeon specifically to be his 'left hand' in the OR. There's a maneuver named for the two of them in trauma surgery: the Cattell-Braasch maneuver.

/rambling.

[lame-pegasus.livejournal.com]

In surgicalsteel's link the text says Musici (which would mean "musicians"). The version I know says Himmel und Erde müssen vergeh'n, aber die Musica, aber die Musica, aber die Musica bleibet bestehen (which would mean the music, not the musicians).

[lame-pegasus.livejournal.com]

Oh - and very moving drabble. Your Holmes is beautifully different, I must say.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

My Holmes? Different? Just observant, and not always willing to share what he observes.

[allisona.livejournal.com]

Just want you to know how much I'm enjoying these small moments. You have totally made me want to pick up my Holmes and re-read it all during my March Break.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

You should. I'm having a lovely time rediscovering them, with all their inconsistancies!

[dreamflower]

What an amazing deduction!

This drabble makes one wonder: how could a man as amazingly observant as Holmes be so seemingly "cold and calculating", and the answer of course, is that he was not. But it could have been very difficult to live with someone who could read all the nuances of one's feelings so easily--and that he kept his observations mostly to himself, except when they were called for.

And it explains some of the occasional wistfulness in Watson's words, when he describes Holmes' playing...

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

I think of Holmes as someone who was raised to think of emotion as infinitely inferior to logic -- perhaps with a touch of Aspbergers to make things complicated. He keeps a lot of things to himself, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have eyes to see.

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

I had never thought about Watson playing. Lovely and painful.