Staff Bonding

I feel like a real part of Trinity’s staff now: I bought the new U2 cd this weekend, No Line on the Horizon.

I think I like it.
every sweet tooth needs just a little hit…

Spring is Almost Here

I love springtime. Something about it makes me go a little crazy. After months of the world looking grey and dead (or at least in hibernation), new life appears.

The crocuses are almost finished, and the daffodils are out, with their bright smiling faces. The bradford pears are white, and the wild cherry trees are starting to be pink and white, contrasting with the rest of the trees that have not yet decided that spring is quite here.

There is a beautiful tulip tree on my drive to work that almost causes wrecks because it is showing off, and a few of the small shrubs outside my basement window are starting to turn pale green around the edges.

It’s so exciting! The weather gets a little warmer (but it is fickle — you never know what the next day will bring), and the sun seems warmer and brighter, somehow. Maybe that’s just because we had 5 days of rain in a row…I’m not sure.

Spring is so close; I know it happens every year, but it never ceases to amaze me that the world can explode with life again. Take 10 minutes, go outside on the next warm-ish day, and just look around you.
What do you see?
Look again. Now what do you see?

Handel’s ‘Messiah’

Tuesday I went with two of my house-mates to a Messiah Sing-in at Old Cabell hall at the University of Virginia. Tickets were $5, and once at the door to the auditorium we were provided with a score (if we didn’t bring our own).

Walking into that place was like entering another world, a world I hadn’t been part of for a while. People came from all over Charlottesville to play or sing this great music, and excitement was in the air. Instrumentalists sat on the stage, and singers sat in the semi-circle of chairs where the audience would typically sit. The seats were divided into 4 sections, one for each voice part.

We made our way to the soprano section, clutching our slightly dilapidated music, and sat down in the front row — the only seats left available in the front section. At least in the front we get the benefit of hearing all the people behind us, I thought. One of my house-mates isn’t quite as much of a singer, so we were sopranos because that part is easier to pick out.

The conductor came on stage, we all applauded, and we began with the opening orchestral Sinfonia. Next up was And the Glory of the Lord. I had forgotten that the opening choral piece went up to a b-flat for the sopranos. Oops. That was a stretch for me, since I was quite a bit out of practice.

How can I describe the experience? The two of us who were singers felt (and, I daresay, acted) like kids in a candy shop. To be reading music again and singing with people who to a greater or lesser degree knew what they were doing, to be in a room filled with musicians, to be lifting our voices to make beautiful music (though an impromptu sing-in is by no means polished music!) was incredible.

Though we did not sing all of the Messiah, we sang a good number of the choruses, and it was delightful to sing again; it was good for the soul. There is something about singing such great music that is powerful in ways I cannot begin to describe. In college I was one of those choir nerds, and I still am at heart. I love being able to look at notes on a page and, with a group of people, translate those symbols into beautiful sounds that pierce the heart.

When we finally exited the building two hours after entering, I was energized and slightly hoarse, and felt that my Christmas season was closer to being complete. For a few short hours, I had been transported to a beautiful realm where my cares did not intrude and where worry had no place.

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

E.M. Forster and Music

Last weekend I watched a movie version of E.M. Forster’s book, “A Room with a View.” I liked it more than I thought I would. There was something about the story that drew me in, and I identified with the main character, Lucy. It isn’t that I am in the same position of life as she, it is that I sometimes feel a bit like I could have lived in the Edwardian era: feelings should be somewhat suppressed, and certainly not expressed unless they are proper. There is some wisdom in not allowing oneself to express every emotion felt; that would be unhealthy. Nevertheless, I am wary of expressing too much emotion for fear I should get carried away… so I keep them rather under wraps and only occsionally they explode out of me. So I try to appear calm most of the time.

 

I found the text of a part I liked especially that expresses quite how I feel about the piano and my emotions. I almost think it could have been written about me. Almost.

 

‘It so happened that Lucy, who found daily life rather chaotic, entered a more solid world when she opened the piano. She was then no longer either deferential or patronizing; no longer either a rebel or a slave. The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected. The commonplace person begins to play, and shoots into the empyrean without effort, whilst we look up, marvelling how he has escaped us, and thinking how we could worship him and love him, would he but translate his visions into human words, and his experiences into human actions. Perhaps he cannot; certainly he does not, or does so very seldom. Lucy had done so never.

‘She was no dazzling executante; her runs were not at all like strings of pearls, and she struck no more right notes than was suitable for one of her age and situation. Nor was she the passionate young lady, who performs so tragically on a summer’s evening with the window open. Passion was there, but it could not be easily labelled; it slipped between love and hatred and jealousy, and all the furniture of the pictorial style. And she was tragical only in the sense that she was great, for she loved to play on the side of Victory. Victory of what and over what– that is more than the words of daily life can tell us. But that some sonatas of Beethoven are written tragic no one can gainsay; yet they can triumph or despair as the player decides, and Lucy had decided that they should triumph.

‘A very wet afternoon at the Bertolini permitted her to do the thing she really liked, and after lunch she opened the little draped piano. A few people lingered round and praised her playing, but finding that she made no reply, dispersed to their rooms to write up their diaries or to sleep. She took no notice of Mr. Emerson looking for his son, nor of Miss Bartlett looking for Miss Lavish, nor of Miss Lavish looking for her cigarette-case. Like every true performer, she was intoxicated by the mere feel of the notes: they were fingers caressing her own; and by touch, not by sound alone, did she come to her desire.

‘Mr. Beebe, sitting unnoticed in the window, pondered this illogical element in Miss Honeychurch, and recalled the occasion at Tunbridge Wells when he had discovered it…. But before he left Tunbridge Wells he made a remark to the vicar, which he now made to Lucy herself when she closed the little piano and moved dreamily towards him:

‘”If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting both for us and for her.”’

 

–E. M. Forster, “A Room with a View”

Sonnet 116

-William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! It is an ever-fixéd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ nor no man ever loved.

What Would Your Mind Look Like?

What if people’s minds were like rooms? Each person would have a room, and different people’s minds would have different things in them and would be organized [or not] in their own way.

My mind would probably have lots of charts in it and lists and would organize things by systems. I would have spaces for current projects, where I would attempt to get to the bottom of something. Once I had it mostly figured out [or as figured out as I wanted], I would file the project in a large cabinet with a colorful heading, in case I wanted to pull it out and look at it in the future. There would be a file of large words I don’t use very often but are interesting nonetheless, and one wall would be devoted to art and music. I expect my background music would vary according to mood. At times there would just be some peaceful silence. Some days it would be kind of quiet, but other times someone might be doing an experiment on emotions and there would be some explosions in the middle.

Some people would have post-it notes stuck all over the walls in a haphazard fasion. Other people would have lots of bouncy balls and probably some fun music with only a few boxes off to the side with ideas and serious thoughts in them, to be examined infrequently.

Some people would have lists of their thoughts in piles, with a corkboard above them when they find something else that should be noted. Still others would be a profusion of colors and images, with thoughts in a very non-linear fasion scattered about the room. Many of the the pictures would be representational of things they have in contemplation; their minds just work better with images than words.

Anyway, I think it would be fun if everyone had a room to represent their mind…. If you had a mind room, what would it look like?

Art Looks Forward

“Here is the challenge, I believe, for the Christian artist, in whatever sphere: to tell the story of the new world so that people can taste it, and want it, even while acknowledging the reality of the desert in which we presently live.” –N.T. Wright

I think Wright is correct in his assessment of what it is artists who are Christians ought to be doing. I also think that this is an extremely difficult thing to do. It is much easier to live in a dualistic world which either focuses on depravity and brokenness or overemphasizes the beauty of the world around us [or seeks to escape altogether] than to embrace the tension and pain. To step into a broken yet beautiful world and see what is here and imagine what is to come is almost more difficult than we can bear… almost. To embrace the tension and the pain and offer it up without despairing completely, while still holding onto hope, however small – this is what true Christian artists should endeavor to do. And to produce not just anything but to produce excellent art, something of great value, is a difficult thing indeed.

One who gazes at the present while looking ahead to the future — this is an artist and a Christian.