Nonfiction | I Watched A Man Sing in Winter

The sun on water at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday in winter. On a chair outside a bar, a man is singing a Neapolitan song looking out towards the bay of Naples. It begins slowly, quietly, long ahhhhs, a soft soleeee out into the voices, the steps, the slowly passing cars beside the sea. Behind him the city rises up to the old Carthusian Monastery; rising in little washing-out, scooter-shot streets, streets in shadow, big doors clicking closed, tables flung out in front of chairs, fogs of cooking. The city rises above the great Piazzas and newspaper stalls, in men dressed like princes to serve coffee beside freshly carved figurines waiting to be bought, passed by faces, by sunglasses, leather bags held sure beside the thigh, coloured rucksacks and white scarfs with tassels. Passed by blood red I-promise-you lips. The city rises in espresso sunshine eyes at tables in the strange tingle of little singing Christmas trees in twenty degrees, on a morning in Naples, as a saxophone player beside a pulsing road, pulsing like the water by the singing man, takes up a note that is blue, becoming sexy, power blue as Carabinieri edge past smoothly in their car, hard faces inside, staring through glass at the soft pizzettas, cornetti, babà beside hands sunk in pockets, cigarette smoking women perched on bollards; someone glances away and goes. Stefano aspetta! A woman in black coat will cry.

And then it quickens, the song, in a gush of life in front of him, between his chair and the sea, a little pulse of people pass and his song speeds up, as Vesuvius in the distance stays the same. He begins in joy: he taps his knee, his voice gets louder, breaks, he coughs, and out, out, a faster song! A marching Masaniello revolt or, as if the audience, looking into mirrors had seen the first clap of the King, and there, the booming applause of San Carlo! Marching bands and Spanish kings! A great return from the hunt, kill in hand, towards a garden full of music and mosaics and naked statues, oranges, lemons, grapes, a playful dog beside the tree that shades the king’s feast overlooking the ship splattered sweep of a magnificent bay, OOOOOO! Tatida Ahhhh! Tatadi daa daa sooobaba! The man with a song is like a rejuvenated ancient stone, a block from ancient times careering into the future, a source of wonder for sweating tourists from colder places who can't keep up. The sounds are vibrant and unfamiliar, chaotic, new, moved by pulses and waves, for a moment so interesting! Then it is gone.

He stopped, the man, as randomly and surely as he began, led by a score that was known and immediately forgotten. He hummed a little and petered out as the pavement stilled. He was quiet.

Then he just sat in a usual manner for a man on a chair by the sea in winter on a sunny morning.