Fiddle Reincarnation

 

In my next life, I want to come back as Michael Doucet’s fiddle. What could be better? We’d have the perfect relationship. Laugh together. Cry together. Ça c’est tres bon!

I know it’s a crazy idea but Cajun fiddle music does something to me. My family’s not Louisiana French. I’ve never been east of Cheyenne, Wyoming, (let alone Lafayette,) and I don’t know how to Two-step — yet. But Doucet’s music rearranges my stiff modern psyche into something deliciously malleable. I love surrendering to the ancient conversation between Creative Source and human hands. I’ll do almost anything to follow that musical trajectory.

I used to think the solution was to marry a fiddle player. Immerse myself in the music. But I realized, sooner or later, I’d grow jealous of the fiddle. Why just listen to those melodies? I want to make them.

So let me be the fiddle — poised between the impulse and the note — singing that sweet, soulful song.

 

(Photograph of Michael Doucet courtesy of the Rosebud Agency.)