FOR OLD CHIMES SAKE

Jul 27, 2009 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

Hangin’ down from my window

Those are my wind chimes

Wind chimes

(The Beach Boys)

It started for me with the Wind Chimes of Loon. Not Kow Loon or even the Loon, the provincial bird of Ontario and the state bird of Minnesota, but some individually tuned metal tubes that together make the most soothing sounds when the wind blows gently on the plains and you’re not even in Oklahoma.

Over the past year, I’ve had more time on my hands than a Swiss watch company during the global financial crisis. I’ve also spent more time at home than any previous period of my life except my infancy and that is so long ago that it has already started to feature in fairy tales beginning “Once upon a time when the earth and Tony were young and babies were actually fed on arrowroot.”

I had got a job in Barbados and was living in what is called a “studio” apartment in Worthing. The studio part of it was not particularly appropriate since my gifts are neither artistic nor photographic. But it served its purpose.

It was so close to the sea that the open back porch was often submerged by the surf; near enough to my place of employment that my little Moke could outrun the mastiffs that chased it trying to get a piece of me with neither of us suffering a breakdown; and just about level with my salary leaving me with just a wee bit left over for food but not enough to make me overweight.

There, surrounded by the sound of music from my loony tunes, I had the chimes of my life, except for one night when a hurricane was expected to hit Barbados and although it didn’t, the winds were so strong that they set my chimes and my nerves jangling like crazy.

Though it’s hard I try

Not to look at my wind chimes

Wind chimes

Wind chimes…

Now and then a tear rolls on my cheek.

Wherever I have lived since then the Chimes of Loon have been with me and over the years there have been more and more chimes. Now, we seem to have a chime for every purpose under heaven. I suppose this is less a fatal than an antenatal attraction.

According to several sources, modern wind chimes have their origins in Indian wind bells. It is highly likely that they are part of an ancestral memory and that the sound has stayed with me through my life, or for those of my ancestors who believed in reincarnation, my many lives.

One thing I know is that my daughter Jasmine had heard them so much while in the womb that even immediately after her birth, while other sounds startled her, she smiled and slept whenever she heard the chimes and Frank Sinatra.

The Sinatra story is simple. I used to play the Sinatra “Reprise” Album and for both Frank and me they were The Very Good Years.

Eventually the use of chimes spread out of India to China and other places where wind bells were hung on the corners of large pagodas to scare away birds and evil spirits. In thinking about it, and my life in Barbados, I am now convinced that the chimes, if anything, were too efficacious.

While evil spirits were nowhere to be seen and were conspicuous by their absence, there were also no birds in my almost monastic life. From temples, the wind bells were then mounted in homes and later the Japanese created glass chimes known as “Furin”.

For people who believe in Feng Shui, wind chimes are associated with good luck.

Close your eyes and lean back

Listen to wind chimes

Wind chimes

Wind chimes…

It’s so peaceful

Close to a lullabye

From Worthing we moved to the windy Chancery Lane in Barbados, then to Kendall Hill and finally to Groves in St George, almost as high as you could get in Barbados. From that vantage point Bridgetown way below is like a distant rumour. Barbados to Trinidad where our home sits on the top of a hill overlooking the sea and where the chimes had by that time multiplied in harmonious profusion – little tinkly ones, louder sonorous sounds, the clack of wood and bamboo, the clink of shells and the crinkle of glass.

From Trinidad to Belize and then to Antigua the chimes they were a changin’. This is a particular windy morning and I can hear the deep bass of the verandah chimes, the muted tones of several scattered everywhere in and out of the house, and the constant sounds of my Chimes of Loon.

As the “Whisperin’ winds send my chimes a tinklin’”, I hold up my cup of tea and propose a toast. For the good chimes, my friends, for the good chimes.

*Tony Deyal who has lived in many lands wonders like Tom Dooley, “This chime tomorrow, reckon where I’ll be?” Given that he grew up on Trinidad rum, he has no problems hanging on an Old Oak tree.

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