Music Soothes the Savage Beast

We're showing our resourcefulness in sussing out activities to keep the grump gorilla in his place. Everyone we talk to has had it with the weather, harder to take than perhaps in a climate like Seattle, beecause it's so unexpected here. To keep, as the old song says "On the Sunny Side of Life," our diversions the last few days have spread to music.

Friday evening, raincoat and umbrella in tow, I jumped into Steve and Jo's little white car and set off to Avignon with them to hear our friend Jean-Claude sing Verdi's Te Deum with his choir in the Avignon Opera House. Since everyone's on a budget these days, we chose the cheap tickets up in the nose-bleed section. Dangling over the edge but protected by a metal railing, our bleacher-style seating far above the velvet seats and boxes below, still allowed a fairly clear view of the orchestra but, unfortunately, obscured all but the feet of the male portion of the choir. An amalgamation of two amateur groups, they'd all been rehearsing mightily for a month and did an admirable job. After a brief intermission, the orchestra returned and launched themselves into Mahler's 1st Symphony--thank goodness more lyrical and less morose than his 8th. Back in the car, we motored home through the rain and fog, spirits more than soothed by the evening.

Saturday, we snuck in a walk and a visit to our local candle producer friends down the road before the thunderstorms rolled in. Business is slow for them and the price of parafin is rising steadily. After mutual grumbling, we consoled ourselves with the fact that we still had each other as friends, exchanged the three air kisses of affection and said "A bientot," or I'll see you soon. Later, we took ourselves out for a decent if not fabulous dinner as a small treat and snuggled under the covers in our rooms with good books for an early evening.

I'm reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, an appropriate book for what I do and who I am and just finished the second section about the author's trip to India. She talks about meditation and chanting in that section--the Pray of the title. In turn, that reminded me of the monks in nearby Le Barroux who go through their prayer offices each day in Gregorian chant. At our dinner party on Thursday, the mass they say--unusually,in Latin--came up and that was omen and suggestion enough for me. I mentioned to Hallie that I wanted to go and she said she'd come too. When there's a mass in our village church we go for the social aspect as much as anything and I explain what's going on in small whispers to Hallie. We've got a nice Catholic-Jewish vibe going on between us and now my conversation is studded with Yiddish and she knows a fair amount about the Catholic mass.

Anyway, we drove up to le Barroux, passing the most spectacular poppy field along the way--pulsing with red-orange life against the well-watered green hills behind it. We pulled into the monastery parking lot shortly before the service and found ourselves a pew. The main portion of their austere stone church is the altar and choir stall section for the monks, sectioned off limits to the public by a traditional railing. French of all ages, including a fair amount of families with small childred, filed in, genuflecting and crossing themselves in a way I remember from my Catholic childhood but haven't seen much of since. They were the most consistently well-turned out crowd I've come across in our area ever. Dressed in the French preppie style, with only the occasional working class version of dresses and suit coats present, I again thought of my mother and I dressing in our Sunday best for a trip to church. The only thing not dredged from the past were head coverings for women and one older lady did have her hair wrapped in a shawl.

At home, I attend an extemely liberal Catholic church, about as far to the other end of the same faith as you can get without becoming Unitarian. Going to a Latin mass is quite a departure from my current life. But, as I said, I've always loved Gregorian chant and expected the ritual and beautiful voices to be a truly spiritual experience.

I was fine through the Alleluia of the mass. Four monks with gorgeous voices stepped forward and praised God as He/She should be praised. Then things fell apart. The further into the mass we got, the less I felt a part of the process. It was a mass for the monks, not for those of us inferiour beings from the world outside, and we just bobbed and knelt at appropriate times, saying nothing except for the "I am not worthy" bit before communion. The Latin mass is, by it's very nature, exclusionary, with the congregation looking at the priest's back throughout while he intones in a very dead language. But, even in my childhood, we, the laity, chimed back with a few responses. Here at the monastery, we all stayed mute while the monks hoarded their gorgeous song for themselves and their God. The music seemed to stop at the railing instead of spilling forth to fill all our souls. We, barred from their gated community, were like voyeurs to their experience. And communion! I haven't knelt at a communion railing and stuck out my tongue to receive the host for over 40 years. Talk about not worthy. At the very end, as the dark robed, tonsured group filed out, they avoided eye contact at all cost and I felt as though my presence was a minor disturbance rather than an additional testament to our supposedly community of faith. The monks themselves were like sad automatons,with only a few showing any signs of peace that a life of prayer should bring.

I left thinking that it was no wonder so many of my friends had left the church when we were all young.

So the two musical experiences were quite a contrast. At the concert on Friday night, while I was also a spectator, I felt envelloped by the experience, a welcome and necessary participant in the performance event. As the conductor mentioned in a short speech, we were the cher public,the dear public, in other words appreciated and welcome. The music itself took all of us, performer and audience alike, out of ourselves and to a higher level, like a true prayer. There was nothing "dear" about my experience at the monastery, but rather a glum example of a miserly, pinched faith that I was perhaps better off for not sharing.

Next: Time grows shorter.