Music is a math problem without a calculator.  Or without a right answer.  Or without a remainder?  I don’t know what music is or how to solve it.  I quit my trumpet 10 years ago like she was cheating on me for my impotence.  It’s not my fault – I was raised on the B flat blues scale and could rif mindlessly on it like 2+2.  Then one day my 2-D world grew shadows and I saw angles that made no sense.  For the first time I was sincerely lost in the room I grew up in.  The piddly little scale sounded like Mary Had a Little Lamb.

This song introduced me to the 3rd dimension.  To shadows.  To real symmetry – that is to say, it introduced me to asymmetry because every note I played was over-thought-out and wrong and slow and behind and did I mention it was over-thought-out?  A7 means A dominant 7 which means A C E G-flat – is that right?  tickticktick G-flat sounds weird, should I think of it as F sharp?  What’s the normal way to call it? tickticktick How can I connect this to an F tickticktick shit.

This is another language problem.  So many problems.  Problems like arithmetic.  Problems with remainders.  Problems with formulas.  Problems with answers and guesses that are right and wrong.  Problems with answers I already know but can’t yet communicate.

I miss my trumpet.  I am sleeping with a 49 key Yamaha so that someday I can come back to her.  But this is going slow.  I’m playing Mary Had a Little Lamb in Bass Clef so that I can someday play the thing I am already hearing in my mind.  Same with Bangla – I am squeezing out elementary phrases so that someday I can say what I mean.  I know what I know but can’t communicate either of them.  It is a math problem – I have the formula.  I have the variables.  I even have the answer.  I have trees and squirrels and bad metaphors and brooks and beavers and beaver dams but not yet do I have a forrest.

That was horrible.

As I finger Mary Had a Little Lamb (single entendre) I listen to Mendelssohn.  I was just handed sheet music to a Chopin song I can play (ostensibly).  Playing it drops me in the shadows of this 3rd dimension.  I am touching the sounds buried in my brain – the sounds I can whistle but can’t play.  I am touching them through the finger tips on those 49 electric keys.  I am feeling the curvature of their geometry and I am surprised and confused by the shape of things.  I am not trusting that feeling yet scared of wasting even more time in this struggle.  Both of my linguistic battles are stuck in muck.  This is why toddlers scream when they can’t say what they really feel.

This is a language spoken by many many human beings on the planet earth that were not born and raised in Milwaukee, WI.  To be fair, I’m sure there are several such people who can contradict that generalization (I am not one of them…. yet).  It is Bengali (Bangla).  It’s the other mother-tongue of my household and the one I don’t know.  I have been teaching myself this language using the Teach Yourself Bengali book and CD set.  At this point, it’s been years.  I can repeat the same phrases and understand or misunderstand or not understand the same vast expanse of human communication in Bengali as before.  So I’m stuck – but that’s not very interesting nor is it the point of this post.  Every language student gets stuck and the solution to that problem is always the same – talk more.  Listen more.  That’s an easy problem to solve with hard work.  (Side note: if you know of a good Bengali class in the NYC area, please let me know).  The real point of this post is about the neural realignment that is slowly taking place deep inside my brain.  The Bengali neurons are clearing brush somewhere in my brain; cutting down trees, digging trenches, laying pipe for what ostensibly will be a new thought-center.  This foundation is coming at some destructive expense.  Before these foundations are complete, I’m working at half-speed.  There’s a bottle-neck in my brain and when it hits me hardest, I start to feel homesick.

I’m still here (here is not there and there is where Bengali speaking non-Milwaukeans live and work).  Homesickness is probably not the right word because it connotes geographical displacement.  What about mental displacement?  I can’t process thoughts the same way, so I can’t react to predictable circumstances in familiar ways.  The familiar is now unfamiliar.  I blame the grammar.

I’m not educated enough to explain Bengali grammar.  If you happen to speak that language (and English) you will notice that quickly.  But the grammar breaks my thoughts before I can finish them.  Quick example: Bangla does not specify gender in subjective personal pronouns.  There is no ‘he’ ’she.’  It’s all relative.  This makes things interesting in my mind when I consider notions such as God (”He” in English and “Or” in Bangla).  But my Bangla level is not deep enough for theology.  I also had to look up ‘pronouns’ before I could identify my point as specifically: subjective personal pronouns.

The point is this: each successive thought requires strenuous deliberation to complete.  There are no more reactions to things – there are contemplations of grammar rules, vocabulary restrictions, and speed.  By the time a thought is generated, it dies before it can go anywhere.  When I’m robbed of my internal monologue (robbed is too strong a word, I realize), I lose a sense of self.  Then I become unfamiliar to myself.  That’s when I feel homesick.  Is this why it’s harder for adults to pick up new languages?