Intimations

by Zadie Smith

Mr. Rainbow In his classroom, what was on your desk, in front of you, was yours to perfect. To do as well as you were able. Handwriting—even back then, a dead art—was to be taken as seriously as spelling, as math, as memorizing the events of 1066. Joy and rigor were the same thing: if the whole choir was to get the benefit of “Bali Ha’i” it would be by way of a martial attention to each part of the whole. There was nowhere to hide in that choir. And no pride to be taken in the fact that we, “the singers,” were removed from the school as a whole every Tuesday afternoon and presented with this task. There was nothing special about us to be found in that fact, not even when, months later, we sang “Bali Ha’i” perfectly, just as he had trained us to do. Yes, we sang it well; the song was beautiful. We owed it to the song.