The Best Violinist Learn English through story level 2
irish music is well known throughout the
world
from sydney to benizzares from london to
new york you can hear an irish song
dance to a reel and take a drop of irish
whiskey
it is a sad thing though to see an
irishman far from home who is too fond
of his glass
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my name is michael coleman and they say
i am the finest fiddler that ever lived
they say i put a twist to a tune i add
something to it that no one else can
i have never been sure of where the
twist comes from
i play that way because it is the only
way i know
i play because i have to
i do not know where it comes from or
what it is going towards
my home is a small room in the south
bronx in new york
where the tall buildings shut out the
sky
i don’t understand the place at all
two of my nieces passed through the city
last week on their way to look for work
we tried to talk about home but i could
not nor about here either
i picked up the fiddle and played a
couple of tunes
and then there was no distance between
me and them or the bronx or killerville
and ireland where i was born
that’s what i have been able to do all
my life
i could talk to you forever and still
say less than you’d hear from the first
few seconds of a tune called lord
macdonald
it was a cam bright summer evening i got
the fiddle back once again
i’d had to pawn it because i needed the
money
times were hard as they have been for
years
i remember the days when we musicians
were paid a working man’s weekly wage
for half a morning in the recording
studio
an irish cop had hired me to play the
fiddle at his daughter’s birthday party
he had done well for himself since
coming to the usa
not only did he have money he was also
said to be honest
i spent the week before the party
drinking to his honesty
a lot of money had been mentioned
it was a short walk to his house in good
weather as i went up the wide grey steps
to the front door there was an uneasy
feeling in my stomach the same anxious
feeling i always have before i start to
play
some nights i sit up and play and then i
notice the sun has come up and is
shining in the street outside
then i find my face is wet with tears
lord mcdonald is the tune i play
i knocked at the cop’s door
and a beautiful young woman in a blue
dress opened it
she looked at me with a face full of
puzzlement
there were holes in the elbows of my
jacket
nothing was said for a while
i’m michael coleman the fiddler i’m here
to play at the birthday party
the girl still said nothing only looked
me up and down for a few more moments
then she turned and ran back inside
i still remember the face of that cop
it was the face of a man who’d take
terrible offense if you weren’t enjoying
yourself enough at his father’s funeral
party
a big man nearly two meters tall still
the color of a man who spent many a long
summer working on the farm
in a good suit and expensive shoes
he had more of the american accent than
he should have had
i could never manage that trick although
i’m not sure i missed much
the cop
rushed across the hall and tried to
catch me by the throat
i stepped to one side and he dropped his
hands
his right hand was opening and closing
he couldn’t keep it still
there was no sound in the neat and tidy
evening street
he was so angry that his tongue hit his
teeth as he spoke
well mickey and coleman the great
fiddler you dare to show your face here
i didn’t know what was annoying the man
at all
my daughter’s birthday was this day last
week i had 150 people waiting for you
damn it
where were you
it’s bad when you start making that sort
of mistake
i really needed the money he’d have paid
me
well coleman where were ye
i made a mistake
i thought it was today i was supposed to
be here
he banged his hand on the wall by the
door the man was nearly dancing with
temper there were a pair of young women
standing in the hall behind him now
they were laughing at the shouting and
that was making him even angrier
i’ll tell you why you weren’t here mikin
it’s because you are fallen drunk around
the south bronx somewhere i got plenty
of warnings about you but i didn’t take
them fool that i am yourself and your
friends are a poor advertisement for us
irish drinking and fighting and bringing
our name down in front of the americans
you think you’re something but you’re
nothing
i never aimed to be an advertisement for
anyone only myself
you may all be famous but did any of you
ever do anything to give us a good name
did you digi
on about the second digi he hit me in
the chest with his right hand and sent
me rolling down the steps
i was on my feet before i reached the
bottom one
i was always able to land on my feet
i didn’t say anything to the cop
i never even said goodbye
it was a grand evening
there wasn’t enough wind to move grass
i just walked off with the fiddle under
my arm
safe
it cost people a lot more than their
fare for the ship when they came over
here
some of them lost all sense of who they
were
the cop wasn’t the worst of them
a lot of them wouldn’t let you near
enough their house to be able to throw
you off their steps
they’d be ashamed in case someone caught
them listening to old irish tunes like
the sligo maid or the carrieman’s
daughter
the same people even tried to destroy
their accent cutting bits off it like a
man trying to give a block of wood a new
shape
at one time there was always a place for
us a place for those who made others
dance
maybe people don’t want to be reminded
about what they came from
because they’re frightened they haven’t
moved as far away from it as they think
they have
the fiddle was pawned again and i was in
a bar a quiet bar drinking whiskey
i learned to drink at those dances where
you’d accidentally break a string on
your fiddle if they weren’t refilling
your glass quickly enough
i used to take my whiskey with friends
and laughter then
now
i like to drink alone
the drink only makes me feel okay these
days still
in bad times okay is good
the twist
that’s what they say i have
what i put into a tune that the others
can’t
you can’t try to put the twist into your
playing it has to be part of it
some days i think i know what the twist
is
but i can never catch it
because it is inside me
it is what i am
the drinking
the way i could never stay in one place
the blackness i see in front of me some
days the dreams i have in the night
all there in my fiddle
whatever it was that was wrong with me
leaked out through my fingers and they
heard it as the twist
and sometimes i think i have nothing to
do with it at all
when the first records were sold 78 they
were called i saw men and women dancing
and laughing and crying at the same time
at my plane
i’m a farmer’s son from killerville
how could it be me that did that
maybe the fiddle wasn’t the instrument
at all
i heard there are men at home who
wouldn’t eat for a couple of days so
they could buy those records
men who knew me did that
we had come to america to record this
irish music to be sent back to ireland
for people there to buy and yet we’ll
never see ireland again
things are wrong in this world
so they are
i was never too eager for work
that was well known around the place at
home
all i wanted to do was walk the
countryside and play music
some men will kill for land others will
die for a woman
i lived for the music of the dance fast
and slow sad and sweet
everything else
on the face of this earth was forgotten
when i picked up a fiddle
the coldness of the city meant nothing
to me when i was playing well
if i could hear the twist it meant the
life i was living was all right for me
i’d only just got back to killaville
from london when i came to the usa
big cars and bright lights a law against
drinking theaters full of girls singing
and dancing and dollars
you couldn’t feel right in it unless you
were born in it and even then you might
not
you’ll always look back
at the place you came from and think it
was better
at home we started with an innocent life
walking home from village dances across
pale wet fields
looking at birds on the moonlit lake
playing a tune across the water in the
early morning with no other sound in the
clear cold air
but it was a false life
false because it wasn’t right to let
people live a life like that if they
weren’t going to be allowed to stay in
it
if they were already marked to go
someplace else
they didn’t prepare us for new york or
london boston or manchester
there was bitterness and jealousy and
hunger at home that’s true i can’t say
it isn’t
but is it fair to be punished with a
slow death from a bleeding wound
i look at people’s faces when they hear
the names of tunes from home
the boys of ballas adair
and the plains of boyle
and i know they are dying inside
the night the cop threw me down the
steps i called at seamus anderson’s
house
i was full of whiskey but i knew he had
a fiddle in the house
i wanted to sit up and play music all
night
i needed to feel that moment in the back
of my head when i would know i’d got
there
and then it would disappear before i
could catch it and i would have to try
and create it again
sheamus owned a bar
like the cop he lived in a good house in
a good area
i managed to open the garden gate
although i couldn’t see straight
but i could hear a tune in my head that
would cure me if i was only allowed to
play it i never played a tune badly in
my life
the drink would change everything around
in my head but i would still play the
same as ever
the twist would always be there
i knocked on seamus anderson’s door
there was light inside but there was no
answer there were plenty of voices
a light came on in the hall so i tried
to concentrate and look sober
sheamus was a church-going man who was
strongly opposed to drink
although that didn’t stop him selling it
i held my breath and tried to force my
eyes to look in the one place at the one
time
all it did was make my head go round
i fell against the door
a woman’s voice shouted
who’s that at this hour of the night
michael coleman
tell sheamus michael coleman is here to
play a tune
to play
lord mcdonald
michael coleman has landed from
killerville
wait there she said
and walked away back into the house
i knew that if i didn’t get into the
light something awful was going to
happen
there was a lot of noise inside it
seemed a long while before she came back
seamus anderson isn’t home tonight he’s
out of town
he had been out of town the last five
times i’d been to the house still he was
a busy man
a businessman
i still felt bad so i leaned against the
door and hoped the black waves in front
of my eyes would disappear
i could hear a man’s voice inside the
house
is coleman gone
that man is nothing but trouble when he
has drink in him
the voice could have been seamus
anderson’s
but i was not certain
i banged on the door and shouted for
them to let me in
there was another voice
a harder one with an unpleasant laugh
get out of here
go on get out of here
and then to someone else you only have
to lift him and he’ll fall
in a narrow back street
me
lying on a pile of rubbish
and a good number of rats
you’ll always know rats because they sit
up and look you straight in the eye to
let you know that’s how carefully
they’re watching you
i thought these were real rats
not the rats i see when i’ve had a
couple of drinks
lord macdonald was playing in my head
there was a cop walking towards me
i realized my nose had been bleeding for
a while and the front of my jacket was
covered in blood
the cop was cautiously tapping his stick
against the inside of his left hand as
he walked slowly towards me
i stood up and stepped out from the wall
into the light
officer i was only taking a rest
they take drunks down to the police
station and beat them unconscious with
sticks
sometimes they kill them for the fun of
it
christ it’s michael coleman michael
coleman the great fiddle player we’ve
got a whole pile of your 78s at home
what are you doing here
if i knew that i wouldn’t have to drink
he smiled
and put a hand under my elbow to stop me
falling
good luck mr coleman it’s good to meet
you you’re a great fiddler when you’re
playing
and he walked off a good irishman
the rats were still there
so they were real rats
not my rats
the night was lovely and warm
and there was nothing to be afraid of
the drink is like music
how can you explain it to someone who
has not fallen in love with it
how it floods your head and pushes the
blood three times faster through your
body
the wonderful moment of the first one
the morning after when it starts to
clear away the fear and anxiety it put
there the night before
drink makes the world a place of
certainty in every way
i remember the day i played lord
macdonald
i sat in a small recording studio in the
south bronx at midday
played another tune for a couple of
minutes and then it started
i played the whole of lord macdonald
just once and i could feel something
running through me
every second was like an hour and the
music was coming from a place so far
back in myself that it was tearing me
apart
i followed the music chased the music
with colours going through my mind and
killerville and my dead brother and the
man who taught me to play and the end of
all this and the twist in myself and
green and brown
it was bringing me somewhere and i
finally got there
i walked away out from the studio when i
finished
and two men from the record company came
out into the street after me
one of them pulled a huge roll of
dollars from a deep trouser pocket
here you are michael a couple of hundred
dollars for a special performance no one
ever heard anything like that before
the sun was shining the way it does in
new york in the summer
the rest of the musicians were sitting
in the usual bar talking about work and
spending money
they didn’t know then they’d never have
that sort of money again
i tried to explain what had happened
my hand was shaking and the beer was
spilling onto the floor
sunshine was coming through the dark
glass of the front window
blue colored light with dust flying
round in it
i had got there
i looked at my fingers
and said there would be so many more
tunes that i would play like this
but it never came again
not that way
there was just that one day before it
all finished for me
lord macdonald was the tune
my name is michael coleman
and they say i’m the finest fiddler that
ever lived
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uh
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oh
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you