The Heaven And Earth Show had a piece this morning on how the music of Mozart increases our spatial-temporal reasoning. Something they call the Mozart Effect. So I pulled out my only - to my shame - classical CD, something called 'the best CLASSICAL album of the millenium...ever!' (there's one for the Trades Descriptions people). Now I don't know if five minutes of "Clarinet Concerto' has made me that much smarter, but it was certainly a pleasant way to start a frosty winter's morning.
Especially as it was one of those perfect winter mornings. The river was as icy still as the air, as the early morning sunlight pushed through the clouds casting a steel-grey pallor across the sky. Fresh enough for the frost to remain crisp and invigorating, but not enough to draw me, just yet, from the embers glowing warm in the fire.
Pardon me if I'm taken to waxing lyrical about life on the mooring at the moment because despite winter's frosty fingers still keeping a firm grip on the weather, nature is waking up all around. At night the water echoes with the oddly whale-like singsong of the swans (ironic for a species we term Mute). It's a haunting sound, if not what you might describe as a pleasant. A little research on my fine feathered friends brings me the information that the term 'swan song' comes from the time of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates when they believed that as a swan approaches death, it's song becomes more powerful.
The day brings a greater cacophony of bird song: the shrieking of the gulls; the nasal honking of the geese and the unfussy chattering of the grebes; or the homely mallards quacking away against the glottal yelps of the Coots. Some of my neighbours find the chavs of the river less than endearing. I don't (although that's the last time you'll ever see me use 'chavs' and 'endearing' in the same sentence). Further down the river you'll also hear the happy squaking of the ring-necked parakeets (commonly mistaken for green parrots). Only the cormorants maintain an efficient silence.
Tunes: Mozart: Clarinet Concerto
Tunes: Sufjan Stevens: Seven Swans
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