Title: Off the Record

Author: Samara McDowell

In: Sport 32: Summer 2004

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, December 2004

Part of: Sport

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Sport 32: Summer 2004

Naming

Naming

It's mid-afternoon, and already mostly dark in the Bodega, where the musicians are packing in for the night's concert: there will be at one point fourteen musicians and two vocalists on stage at the same time. Everyone seems tired, listless; they mooch around, not really talking.

Outside on the street there is a sudden screech of brakes. Someone looks up, and names it—names the note. The others nod, not making much of this.

In the loony half-dark Lucien is about to grumpily pace, where Miguel's sharp profile gleams as he drowses with his head tilted back against a pillar, in the afternoon bargloom mostly lit by the white glint of your laptop, with the named note shimmering and disappearing in the air, you are silenced, astonished and ashamed.

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What it reminds you of is the twins in Oliver Sacks, in The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat. The twins who were autistic, whose only communication was with each other, whose only conversation was to sit passing prime numbers between them, back and forth, savouring each tiny explosion of flavour against the palate. The good doctor decoded the conversation, he briefly joined them, he named the right numbers; and the twins briefly turned to him, in pleasure and surprise. Come over dere, the twins might have said. —Oh it could make you weep, mathematics, music, the way the rest of us stay, wondering, outside, listening, struggling for the right note.