The whole deal started to make sense the next day.
We were rocketing down the highway -- Heather was at the wheel, which meant we were edging over the speed limit -- and talking about the weirdness of casting floating poppers for largemouth bass.
"Hey, give me the "Carmina Burana" CD," Heather said.
I sighed -- just a little bit -- inside my head. Heather is from a family of opera lovers, and she loves that cultured music -- yeah, the kind where most of the singing is in German, Italian or French. I like the music well enough, but it's hard to figure out what's going on when someone -- usually a woman with leather lungs -- is hitting high notes in a language I don't understand.
Heather grew up in a family of opera addicts, and she is therefore comfortable with of having only a faint notion of what the singer is actually singing. I also suspect that Heather is trying to ram some more musical culture into my jazz-clouded head.
My position is simple: why listen to opera when you can listen to Ella Fitzgerald gliding over some fine jazz?
I guess we're both musical nerds.
Anyway, "Carmina Burana" -- which is mostly sung in Latin -- began swelling through the stereo speakers, and I couldn't help but notice the pattern of many of the songs. They'd kind of start out quiet -- and then erupt into a booming, pounding section.
"We are Oompaa Loompas, and you can't understand what we're singing," I sang over the music.
Heather smiled -- in the tolerant, semi-grim way adults use when an older child is misbehaving -- and told me to be quiet.
And, suddenly, the music settled back into a quiet section -- but I knew tranquility wouldn't last long.
I realized -- at that moment --that casting poppers for largemouth bass was kind of like "Carmina Burana." There are periods of tranquility -- even happy boredom and beauty. But boiling, booming music -- in the form of a bass hammering a popper quietly gurgling on the surface -- will happen sooner rather than later.
Sometimes, usually just before dark, the bass whack poppers in a flurry of boils. And that's kind of like the climax of a "Carmina Burana" piece -- where instruments, choirs and vocal soloists all erupt together into a surging, boiling piece of music.
I told Heather that "Carmina Burana" explains why we'll happily go out onto a bass pond on a late summer evening and fling cast after cast onto the tranquil water. Our poppers land with gentle plops on the still water, and they gurgle and burp quietly as we strip them back in. I strongly suspect that bass like a 4/4 beat on the retrieve, but a 3/4 beat sometimes works well.
We don't know exactly where the bass are -- although they're often along the shoreline weedbeds and willow-shaded banks -- but we know that, sooner or later, the gentle music of our poppers will vanish in the booming, swirling, splashing rise of a hungry bass.
Strangely, Berkeley the black Labrabor retriever -- who always joins us in the boat -- always seems to know when the bass are about to tune up and make a ruckus. Berkeley will stand up and peer at the water right before the fish start whacking the poppers. I have never known a dog that was so interested in fish.
So, when Berkeley stands up, I often think of a orchestra conductor's dramatic pause before the bombast rocks the opera hall -- and sometimes shakes me out of a gentle, hazy doze.
Then, each cast has drama -- as I expect a boiling rise at every chug of the popper -- and I'm hoping for 20 minutes of bass after bass after bass. I suspect I'll hear kettle drums rumble, massed voices roar and cymbals bash -- if only in my head -- the next time a bass wallops a popper.
I guess that's a kind of natural music -- to my ears, anyway.
