The Door Harp

The Door Harp

I have always been fascinated by these old world instruments, but I never bought one for myself until I first read this book…sometime in the late 1980’s after reading Davita’s Harp.

Nearly everyone who leaves my house feels called to drop the balls against the taught strings,  but the real gift is that every coming and going is punctuated by music. 

Door harps are not “played” directly, rather music emerges when the door is opened and closed. The “song” is always different, unpredictable, sweet.

Jakob tells a story about a bird flying across the ocean, but he is pained by “bits and pieces of broken dreams that kept piercing his troubled heart like shards of glass.”  

The bird hears music but then becomes exhausted, loses interest in the strange music and becomes diminished in size. When this small bird finally approaches land he is drawn to a new and enticing melody emerging from a house. The bird is greeted at the door by a little girl. Taking this as an invitation to enter her home, the bird flies inside and creates a nest inside the music making door harp.

The story concludes; “sweet but not false, a comfort but not a deceiving caress; a music of innocence.” The bird, now tiny, builds a nest inside the door harp, and “there he lives to this day…” 

I dreamt of building a door harp entirely out of glass. What was clear in my dreams….dissolved with the morning light and instead became Davita’s homework assignment.

Here is Davita’s Harp….as I believe she would have constructed it.