Last winter, my choir did a whole concert devoted to literary works, mostly poetry, set to classical music.
This is pretty much my peanut butter ice cream on a stupid hot August night, my puppy-snuggle on a rainy day, my arrival in a new city armed with a fresh map and comfy shoes. That is to say, this is my fusion of all that is good and holy and beautiful on the earth.
Yes, this makes me a big, huge mother of a dork but I don't care. I'm pretty sure that if all of our human bodies faded away into the ether one day, and all that was left of each of us was a little dust and grit in the shape of our most precious things, our most pure and holy and relentlessly beloved things, mine would be a wobbly musical note with an exclamation point fused into it. Or something similarly stupid and 14-year-old girlish. Hey, we all have our things, right?
Hearing eight professional hired soloists sing Tarik O'Regan's The Ectasies Above, an arrangement set to the words of Edgar Allan Poe's Israfel, is the kind of moment that makes you realize that music can be so beautiful, so relentless, that it actually feels like you are being attacked. It is somehow physically painful to be so close to such glory - it's the equivalent of auditory sun glare. In moments like that you understand that no matter how capable of a singer you might, on a particularly confident day, fancy yourself to be, you simply will never be magnificent. And this moment is somehow both one of the best and the worst that's ever happened to you.
These singers stand in front of you, four men and four women around 25-35, perfectly ordinary looking with their little cups of Starbucks tea and their music folders and their reasonable shoes. They walk around like regular humans, but clearly they were birthed under a musical star or some other explosive celestial event because there are actual golden violins humming away in their throats. Nothing has ever, ever, been as simple and clear and discordantly beautiful as them singing this song of poetry. In this blazingly clear moment you cannot help but be aware of what you are capable of as a musical person, and what you are not. The envy is so great it boils and cracks, and your self-loathing when you open your own wretched human throat to croak out the background notes is strong enough to knock over the entire cityscape.
But it's also the best moment because at least you get to be in the presence of this magnificence. On stage with it, even. You get to stand right there, on a stage/altar-like thing in New York City, in Greenwich Village, in a dress and sparkly jewelry and pretty shoes. You get to hold up your trusty black choir book and provide some good, solid background notes with a bunch of other talented folks who love it as much as you do. Who, by the way, also feel like big fat talentless lumps around this level of divinity, which makes you all laugh together, which of course makes it better.
This moment is the dream you conjured up when you were eleven years old, rocking out to Whitney Houston with your bedroom door securely closed. Back then you sat crossed-legged on the floor, hiding behind your bed, facing the back corner so no one would hear you try to hold the long notes in I Will Always Love You. It's true that back then you imagined you'd be famous one day. Saw yourself on a stage, sparkling and strong under hot lights, singing for an audience of thousands. And of course that never happened.
But at its core, the only thing that sweet childhood dream meant was that you wanted to sing forever. And today, even if you are not magnificent, not luminous and celestial and divine, you are still singing. This is important. Maybe the very most important thing. It's vital to hold onto the things that bring you joy and light.
So, I am not magnificent - which of course I always knew - but this still sort of sucks when you're an art-lover or performer of any kind. But I'm fortunate enough to be around true heavenly talent from time to time. I'm lucky to be a part of things, to be always learning new skills, new facts, new pieces and composers and styles. And in the company of friends who love it, too. I understand now that for me, this is enough. This is all that I need.
Listen here to a recording of The Ecstasies Above, if you have time and an open mind to classical music. (Skip around to minutes 6-8 to hear the best parts, and then again around 10-12, if you must. If you MUST skip the majority, then just listen to minutes 15-17. Yes, it's long. That is the classical way!)
And then. And then! In the very same night, we swung over into music by Eric Whitacre, the most mind-bending composer I've ever sung. We sang his composition The City and the Sea, five settings of poems by e.e. Cummings, one of which is Maggie and Milly and Molly and May.
The poem is simple and beautiful to begin with, of course. But if you set it to music what you end up with is an April who can't finish the piece because every time she tries to sing the second-to-last stanza she ends up choking back sobs. Listen to this one, which is blessedly short, here.
If you're not into clicking links, my dear audience of three souls, let's do this because I must, I just must:
maggie and milly and molly and may
maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)
and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and
milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;
and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and
may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as the world and as large as alone.
For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea.
Most people fall apart over the last stanza, but for me it's the one before it. Lovely to read, gorgeous to listen to in music, impossible to sing if you are weeping, wailing me.
That's it, that's all I have tonight. My enthusiasm this evening has exhausted me. Happy listening, if I've caught your interest.
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