I’m backdating this post to yesterday. Because while I am occasionally grateful for the shortness of February, sometimes I just need a little more time.
I’ve been reading a lot of poetry lately. And stories. And for February I was to read a recommended chapbook, so chose Pamela Johnson Parker’s A Walk Through the Memory Palace. I would like to be able to write a thoughtful commentary about it, but will have to simply say that I liked most of the poems. Quite a bit. I like the nature stuff & language, so that was no surprise, but there is one. One (at least) surprise.
I have a friend, who I am out of touch with, but who I adore, who will be having a radical mastectomy this month. Both breasts. As a radical cautionary, prophylactic measure. Her children never met her mother. I want to write her a poem. About her breasts. But Pamela beat me to it. My poem would be/will be different. But Pamela hit the subject as I would want to: “Breasts.”
(Who, whom. I don’t have time to be precise. She. You. Her. Breasts. Who has time?)
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March starts Daylighting the Rabbit Hole. Yikes. Yikes-a-mikes-a.
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I may have a little more time available to me in the next few weeks. That may not be a bad thing in any category but my checkbook.
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My chorus is singing a gorgeous requiem for Good Friday services. John Rutter’s version of Fauré’s. It is a glorious work, and we will be combining our 30 voices with another chorus and have an orchestra to accompany us. It will be a Tenebrae service, which I have never been to, not even in my saved-by-Jesus phase or in my Catholic upbringing (I was there for the transition from Latin to English, just to date myself one more time). I am not a believer anymore. But I love church music like crazy. Cra-a-Azy.
Tenebrae means “shadows” in Latin and many Christian churches have versions of the service, some performed since the 5th century. The service is marked by candles gradually extinguished while readings or psalms are chanted or recited.
“It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience.” — Gabriel Fauré
“The ideal Requiem version seems to me to be that of 1893. … [It] remains a liturgical work for modest forces to perform in church, which is how the composer conceived it.” — John Rutter
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I have been fortunate to read a lot of friend’s & acquaintances published words lately. And they are so fabulous I don’t know how to say it very well. I shall try. Another time.
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I am sending my words out in the world. Yay! They are not as good as my betters, but I am happy with them.
