MUCH has been said about the allure of a diamond. Diamonds are forever and diamonds are a girl’s best friend. I never thought I would say this but I have fallen for a diamond, too. This time round, it is Neil Diamond — the voice, not the man.
Truth be told, I was never quite his follower in my school years but tastes change with age.
Now, I think his voice is something else and even at 74, he can mesmerise 14,000 people, mainly older women. I know this for a fact because I was sitting there among the crowd at 3Arena, an amphitheatre located at North Wall Quay in the Dublin Docklands in Dublin.
I was there early so I had time to indulge in my favourite past time — observing.
There were two huge screens upfront that had a running commentary of the audience’s tweets. It was amazing how the tweets shared a common vein — every single tweet was about a daughter who had accompanied her mother or father for a never-to-be-forgotten experience.
When the man came on the stage, the atmosphere was electrifying. Suddenly the elderly people were clapping or waving their light sticks.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the very same people who came in through the doors of the amphitheatre with their walking sticks, spring up and dance! I thought it was all very spontaneous and graceful. Every grandmother or grandfather was a young person again that night.
As Diamond belted out the classics, the lyrics of I am I said struck a chord.
As the song goes, “I’m New York City born and raised... but nowadays I’m lost between two shores. LA’s fine, but it ain’t home... New York’s home but it ain’t mine no more...”
Very true indeed.
There are some who have been born and raised in a village and remained there all their lives, so they probably would not feel this predicament.
There are others like myself who have moved from towns to cities to countries. We have more than one place to call home, and yet, there is a feeling of being “lost between two shores”.
I remember participating in an ice-breaking activity where I was given this question: “What would you like to be said at your funeral?”
I thoroughly enjoyed that as I had been preparing all my life for this... sounds morbid... but that is one of the fun things the mind can do.
So, I said I would like to model it after Michael Hess’s headstone inscription (from the true to life movie Philomena). “A woman of two nations and many talents”.
And then I added, “For those who are here attending my funeral, who had never spoken or were kind to me when I was alive, what are you doing here?” This is especially so in a society where being seen at a funeral is of utmost importance.
In the context of a sense of belonging, I find that there is this phenomenon that I would call the “Ellipsis Effect”.
Ellipsis in the area of linguistics is the act of leaving out one or more words that are not necessary for a phrase to be understood.
It is very strange but when I stay in a place long enough, I feel that I have lived there forever and memories of other places where I had set up home before, fade over time.
It would seem that I have never left in the first place. It doesn’t matter whether the places that I have lived are as varied as night and day.
It doesn’t matter whether I have very good friends in any of those places. It doesn’t matter how many years I have spent in one place. Once I begin to settle, the Ellipsis Effect kicks in.
Apparently, I am not the only one who feels this way. Does this attest to the innate human instinct to survive and to put down roots wherever we are?
Home is where memories are made. Home is where we feel comfortable, loved, relaxed, peaceful, and contented. Home is where the heart is.
The writer was a lecturer at Universiti Teknologi Mara and now spends her days enjoying life as it is