Wow! You are awesome! You are a true Biblical scholar, not just a hearer but a personal reader! The books, the characters, the events, the verses - you know it all! You are fantastic!
Why do so many people feel it necessary to describe themselves as "open-minded"? What the hell does it mean? Usually I think it's just a code for "progressive lefty".
Are people here in SF, for example, really open-minded?
"Capital punishment should be increased, not restricted. Discuss."
Exhibit A. After I somewhat embarrassed my ex the other night --so what else is new?-- by flirting with a waiter who turned out to be slightly less than one and twenty --how was I to know? the kid is mature for his age!--, I turned to his (the x's) boyfriend and said, "You know, I used to be deep." His deadpan reply, "So I've heard."
Exhibit B. Was doing an internet search for my friend L recently, while she was getting things ready for us to go out and do a set of errands.
"Have you found that information yet?", she inquired.
I had, however, wandered off the reservation and into other more interesting websites. Cyberlinks. Links will be the death of me.
"Oh, sorry. I got distracted." "Men?", she asked. "No." "Theology?"."Uh huh".
...Damn, the girl knows me well.
(PS. Exhibit C. Even though it's anticlimactic...how many people do you know who can blog a post about trivialities and give it a title in Latin that is both scripturally referent and mildly humorous. I mean...how often do you hear the Vulgate Psalms being used to be droll? How often do you see anyone even trying to be droll anymore. Do you even know what droll means? All right. I'll stop now.)
PPS. The De profundis part of the title is line 1 of Psalm 129: Out of the depths. Olim means...once-upon-a-time.
PPSS. Gratias tibi ago, Emailior Fabbro, propter claritatem orthographicam tuam.
While giving a course to straight therapists on working psychologically with gay men, I showed some clips from Brokeback Mountain, including one of the most moving screen kisses between men that I know.
After class, one of the therapists came and told me that it had been very revealing, because it had never occurred to this person that men could make love face to face. Doggie style was the only way they had ever imagined it and it had been a question for this person how intimacy could take place that way. Leaving that (incorrect) assumption aside, I assured the student that it was true: men can and often do have intercourse face to face, and even kiss while doing it.
I was at the gym a while back, gabbing with my friend BH, who works there. He's a former bodybuilder and fan of existentialism, now in his 60's. We were remarking how men start to look familiar after a while and how the gender can be reduced to several types.
I wandered back into the locker room and there were two guys in their thirties, getting changed. One of them, whom I'll call A., is a stunning looking guy. Nordic, built hard as a rock, with a very easy personality and, what makes him even more interesting, either some kind of accent or speech defect. I once had a pleasant few minutes when, dripping with sweat, he asked me to spot him during one of his routines. (I later discovered that he is a stripper/dancer). Both guys were in their original skins, so I took my time getting changed, exchanging pleasantries, navigating the pleasantly tight space.
Then BH shows up again and says, "I came up with another type of guy". I say, "Well, we have made a category for the old hunks, like you, and the young hunks, like these two. What else is there?" A. looks at me and says, "Oh, I know. Clark Kent. Like you." Smiles and laughing all around.
I wander out onto the floor a while later, and A is sitting there in his prime-of-life glory, lifting something or other, and as I walk by, he says, "I wasn't kidding".
Partly to distract myself from my melancholy thoughts about the issues of the day, I went looking for some examples of "shape note" or "sacred harp" music. In "Some People Change" the sound of the black women's choir, who come dancing into the tent, continues to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up every time I hear it. It led me to thinking about indigenous forms of sacrality in America. Which led me to this:
Last December, in a happy frenzy of listening to holiday music, I asked myself which sense I would choose to lose if I had to decide, hearing or sight. I chose to lose sight, even though I live so much of my life by reading, watching. But I could create a lot of remember sights now by combining other senses. But the sounds in my ears...these I cannot hold so well. Losing hearing would mean losing music. I couldn't. My choice to keep hearing over sight rather astonished me, but six months later, I feel the same way. Chatting on IM with a deaf friend back East, I cannot imagine what his world is like. He knows he can't hear, but since he never did, I wonder what possible conception he could have of sound. So,on to the shape notes.
Sacred Harp music: see what the wacky Wiki says about it, if you like. It is both entirely American, and entirely primitive in the way that chant music is. It is the music of deeply religious people who lived tough lives. I really paid attention to it when I watched Cold Mountain, and searched for the musical background to one of the most searing battle scenes in movie history. It is a tune called Idumea.
Here are the lyrics. (The first round consists of the sol-fa exercise, then these words).
And am I born to die? To lay this body down! And must my trembling spirit fly Into a world unknown?
A land of deepest shade, Unpierced by human thought The dreary regions of the dead, Where all things are forgot.
Soon as from earth I go What will become of me? Eternal happiness or woe, Must then my portion be!
Waked by the trumpet sound, I from my grave shall rise; And see the Judge with glory crowned, And see the flaming skies!
And here (soon) is the music. The video is irrelevant and I would recommend closing your eyes or reading they lyrics. I found other videos with Idumea as the background. One was a lament for American Indians. Not on my agenda. The other was a replay of 9/11. I couldn't watch it. I still can't. I don't need the video...the images are in my head and I remember them every day.
Haunting, rough-edged, roaringly powerful harmonies, deeply human, dark, defiant, ancient and local, archetypal, trance-inducing...American sacred music:
