Onomata - Me & My Cello
Monday, February 02, 2015
As an early teenager, 15, I fell in love with Anna María
Ramos in Nueva Rosita, Coahuila in Mexico. I was in the 8th grade in
a room that also accommodated, in parallel rows, perpendicular to the large blackboard, the 7th and 6th
grade, My mother was our teacher. The
school, I believe had two additional teachers and rooms for the
other classes.
When I first gazed on the apparition, she had large black
eyes and dramatic eyebrows; I knew I first had to know her name. Once I did I
would think of the name and daydream. The name became the apparition of my delight. It was
impossible to separate the name from the person. Anna became her name or
perhaps it was the other way around. I was not yet aware of Plato’s forms so I
had no idea on how naming things and persons is an exclusively human (very
human) endeavour. To know more about this read here.
I have a new friend. His name is Curtis and he plays a
baroque bass. He is most pleasant, he is intelligent and he is a warm person.
But there is something that sets him apart from all the people I know. He is
either unable or unwilling to name things.
He told me that if he ever had children they would remain unnamed. Could
the naming of things somehow make them ours and his reluctance to not name be a
demonstration of a free spirit willing to live and let live?
I have another friend, a baroque cellist and her cello seemed to be unnamed. In facebook postings I would read “Cello and I …” I enquired and I was told that cello was called Grace.
I must now confess that when I photographed a fine female
librarian with her cello I did not ask for the cello’s name. Certainly, the
pattern shows, that it must have one. I wonder.
