Fog & Moonlight

For many of us, being isolated at home with the news and our pandemic anxieties drives us more desperately than usual to music,

The other weekend Mike’s sister Jean and I were texting about music and one of the playlists she made, which she listens to during her hikes in the woods of Pennsylvania, just northwest of Philly, thinking of Mike.

The playlist finishes, she said, with a gorgeous rendition of Debussy’s Clair de Lune, sung by a boys’ choir.

“Did you know Mike loved Clair de Lune?” I asked her.

“Omg…really?…it’s my absolute favorite.”

To me, it’ s one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever composed. It’s widely known, of course, but Mike rediscovered it after we went to see a Japanese film, Tokyo Sonata, back in March 2009,

In this haunting scene, the son of a struggling couple performs Clair de Lune at a recital, playing for his parents for the first time after secretly taking piano lessons (against his father’s wishes) that he paid for with his lunch money.

Mike and I had just gotten back together after a painful three-week breakup, and he took me to a screening of this film in Berkeley. It was part of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (now called CAAMFest), which he used to volunteer for.

We were both still really raw from the breakup, and the film and the scene hit us both in an emotional way. After we saw the film, we both downloaded Clair de Lune to our iPods and played it often.

Now, when I hear the first soft notes of the piece, I’m transported less to the scene in Tokyo Sonata and more to one quiet, gray Sunday afternoon that same year in Mike’s room at the back of his upstairs flat — the “windward” side  — in the Outer Sunset of San Francisco.

For Mike, PTSD and severe tinnitus from his accident made it very hard for him to sleep, for pretty much all of his adult life. He was often awake most of the night then would crash during the day, wake up toward dinnertime, and start the cycle all over again.

On this particular day we were tired, likely also battling a post-brunch food coma after chowing down at the Bashful Bull down the street.

Mike put on a YouTube video, an hourlong audio loop of Clair de Lune. He drifted off to sleep pretty quickly, but since I can’t nap easily, I lay awake zoning out to the music and listening to his light snore with an unexplained lump in my throat.

Out by Ocean Beach in San Francisco, the fog is often relentless. In the summertime you might go weeks without seeing the sun (at least, that’s how it used to be … climate change is doing its thing). You feel like the entire world is enshrouded in gray. In the outerlands of SF, August is commonly known as Fogust.

I don’t know if it was Fogust, but the offshore wind was whipping the fog around the quiet neighborhood. A tinge of sad but not entirely unpleasant Sunday afternoon-ness. Gusts whistling in as the curtains flapped and the cold, damp Pacific fog invaded the room. Perfect napping weather.

It’s possible that my mind’s eye is mixing in elements of the scene from Tokyo Sonata … but when I hear Clair de Lune, that’s what I see. I feel his warmth next to me. I know he’s finally sleeping, at peace.

The poem

Jean reminded me that Clair de Lune (“moonlight” in French) is based on a poem, so I looked it up.

Clair de Lune

Paul Verlaine

Your soul is as a moonlit landscape fair,
Peopled with maskers delicate and dim,
That play on lutes and dance and have an air
Of being sad in their fantastic trim.

The while they celebrate in minor strain
Triumphant love, effective enterprise,
They have an air of knowing all is vain,

And through the quiet moonlight their songs rise,

The melancholy moonlight, sweet and lone,
That makes to dream the birds upon the tree,
And in their polished basins of white stone
The fountains tall to sob with ecstasy.

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