The ties that bind

In Kawabata’s The Sound of the Mountain, the main protagonist has a ‘senior moment’. As an office worker, he has been tying his necktie every day for years. One day he suddenly can’t remember how to do the knot.

In Boris Vian’s L’écume des jours, there is a lengthy description of a pre-nuptial bow-tying difficulty which ends with the would-be knot maker being bitten by the tie.

In the film Hotel Rwanda the main protagonist, having witnessed some particularly barbaric sights, finds himself in a similar situation; he momentarily can’t tie his tie.

Fascinated by this image, I woke up this morning with a clear picture of myself with a knotted tie just under my chin. Nothing else, just my face and the knot. Although the tie in the dream was not the right colour, it reminded me that I used to wear a tie to school, so long ago that it feels like another life.