Nate Knows Nada

It’s cold here today.  Low 50s.  And it’s mid-May.

Nothing I want to report for the time being.  Went to one of my professor’s houses today for his end-of-term barbecue.  Nice area of Brookline, and actual BBQ food (ribs, beans, pie, beer, etc.)  Ate a little too much, but since I don’t often eat ribs, I don’t think I’m gonna obsess.

Not much else I want to talk about now.  Like eveyone else, I found the new Matrix film unexciting….

June Carter Cash died yesterday.  The sweetest woman ever.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/obituaries/16CASH.html

It’s one of those lazy Friday mornings where it’d be nice to just sit around and do nothing.  But I have a big paper due in a week, so I suppose that it’s time to get in gear, go to the coffee shop, and get the reading done.

And I’ve tried to procrastinate already.  No one’s around.  Boyfriend is busy, internet friends are not around right now, West Coast friends are just getting up.

It came to me earlier today as I walked down the street toward campus — the unifier I have been looking for is a discussion of the role of “Duty” in TWW. I think I can write the paper now. And all it took was watching the show last night for this to come.

Make no sense? Doesn’t need to for now. As long as it does to me.

So now I’m at home, listening to the “sacrilege” that is Leonard
Bernstein’s *Mass*. The screeds of the congregation and celebrant run
back and forth to despair and glimpses of the holy — it’s one of my
favorite pieces of contemporary music. Faith is revered, reviled, torn
down, built up, and reknown in the course of two hours.

What I
love about the “theatre piece” is that it’s full of contradictions that
enrich its artistic tapestry. The congregants celebrating the mass (for
the piece is based upon the Roman Liturgy, pre-Vatican II, so it’s
appealing to little pretty-high-church Anglicans like me) are sinners,
drunkards, prisoners, swindlers, tricksters, believers, and doers. The
words and music vary between the structure of the Latin rite and
near-nonsense streams of angry consciousness, between formal riffs on
traditional church music and Beethoven on one hand and West Side Story
and cacophony on the other. The Celebrant presides, using the authority
of his office, of his moral stature, of his possession of the
sacraments, and ultimately his faith is broken, and he smashes the
transubstantiated Elements to the floor, where they break and spill.
But everyone is brought back together in the end by a simple song, a
“Lauda, Laudete Deum” (Praise, Praise to You O God), that grows and
swells to the full power of the choruses and the orchestra, a simple
melody and theme that multiply like loaves and fishes to feed
thousands. The “players” are broken individually, healed communally,
and brought into Communion with one another. Even more interestingly,
this work that on its surface is so Christian was woven by a Jewish
composer. But he obviously understood the heart of faith so well as to
be able to transcend the restraints of specific religion to engage the
universality of life in faith.

It’s probably this piece and U2’s
*All That You Can’t Leave Behind* that are the best contemporary
musical representations of faith, doubt, love, and grace.

UPDATE — 30 July 2004, 11.33.PM:  I have added the very few posts from my brief Blogger blog to this blog.  They’re available here if you have any interest (although it’d be beyond me as to why…).