Revery and Semantics.

Some years ago I jotted a blog post about one of my favourite reveries. Today I was walking up my lane in the sunshine when I was reminded of it, so I’m going to tell it again but with a little addition at the end.

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I’m walking along a quiet country lane on a sunny day in June. The trees, hedgerows, and pastures are heavily dressed in the fresh bright green of early summer growth. No traffic passes me, the breeze is but a mild zephyr, and no place of habitation is evident.

And then I spy a lone cottage a little way ahead and hear the first hint of sound. As I come closer I make out the tinkling of a piano being played gently, and as I draw level with the cottage I note that one window on the ground floor is standing wide open. Beyond it sits a young woman evidently lost in her rendition of Debussy’s La fille aux cheveux de lin. I watch and listen until she finishes, at which point she turns to me and smiles demurely. I smile back and walk on.

And so it was that this morning it ran through my head again as I passed the small wood and approached the five old ash trees at the top of the lane. But as has become common these days, my mind didn’t stop there. It asked the question as it always does now: ‘Is this any more or less real than the woman, the piano, and one of the loveliest pieces of music I’ve ever heard? Is any of it, anywhere, real? Does any of it have any meaning?’ And then I came to the final question, the one that brings me to edge of that continental shelf beyond which I am not yet equipped to go:

‘What does “meaning” mean?’