—1 —
Out of the people who still live here, one is at a lake house with friends, another is way out West, embarking on a several-day backpacking trip today, and neither of those are me!
So, yeah, it’s just me and Bruce Willis, hanging out here in Birmingham. If I see him, I’ll tell him hi for you.
Wow! Look at the pretty pipe organ!
Deep in the installation process at the Cathedral of St. Paul here in Birmingham. It’s gorgeous.
You can follow the installation at the Cathedral’s Instagram page.
— 2 —
Fascinating and strange and eye-opening, in the sense of: what weird things happen around the world and obsess folks from other countries that we know absolutely nothing about.
Four bodies remained missing. In early May, when the snow began to melt, a Mansi hunter and his dog came across the remains of a makeshift snow den in the woods two hundred and fifty feet from the cedar tree: a floor of branches laid in a deep hole in the snow. Pieces of tattered clothing were found strewn about: black cotton sweatpants with the right leg cut off, the left half of a woman’s sweater. Another search team arrived and, using avalanche probes around the den, they brought up a piece of flesh. Excavation uncovered the four remaining victims, lying together in a rocky streambed under at least ten feet of snow. The autopsies revealed catastrophic injuries to three of them. Thibault-Brignoles’s skull was fractured so severely that pieces of bone had been driven into the brain. Zolotaryov and Dubinina had crushed chests with multiple broken ribs, and the autopsy report noted a massive hemorrhage in the right ventricle of Dubinina’s heart. The medical examiner said the damage was similar to what is typically seen as the “result of an impact of an automobile moving at high speed.” Yet none of the bodies had external penetrating wounds, though Zolotaryov’s was missing its eyes, and Dubinina’s was missing its eyes, tongue, and part of the upper lip.
A careful inventory of clothing recovered from the bodies revealed that some of these victims were wearing clothes taken or cut off the bodies of others, and a laboratory found that several items emitted unnaturally high levels of radiation. A radiological expert testified that, because the bodies had been exposed to running water for months, these levels of radiation must originally have been “many times greater.”
— 3 —
A different kind of mystery, from the 6/21 issue: The musical mysteries of Josquin Desprez:
Josquin’s works fall into three categories: masses, motets, and songs. The masses don’t depart radically from the pattern set forth by Dufay and Ockeghem, although their refinement is extreme. The motets experiment with arrays of five and six voices, balancing density and clarity. The songs, known as chansons, are settings of secular texts. Despite their sometimes saucy or mundane content—“Faulte d’argent” begins “Lack of money is sorrow unparalleled”—they adhere to cultivated techniques of canon and imitation. (Incidentally, David Fallows, in his painstakingly researched 2009 book, “Josquin,” suggests that the composer himself suffered no financial hardship: having received a substantial bequest from an uncle, he may have been able to write “when he wants to” because he could afford to.)
If Rodin had to select a defining characteristic for Josquin, it would be obsessiveness—a mania for the working out of musical ideas. In “Josquin’s Rome,” a study of the composer’s Sistine Chapel period, Rodin notes the predominance of “circular, recursive” melodic lines, and observes, “Obsessive repetition of this kind often generates a heightened sense of tension that can only be resolved with a significant point of arrival. Indeed more than any of his contemporaries, Josquin’s music is characterized by tense, pregnant moments that demand resolution, sometimes in the form of extraordinary climactic passages.”
Josquin’s supreme ritual of repetition comes in his “Missa La sol fa re mi,” the title of which specifies the five-note motto of the piece: A G F D E. That pattern appears in the mass some two hundred and fifty times, although it undergoes enough variation that it never grows dull. In the latter part of the Credo, during sections describing the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, the tenor repeats the motto relentlessly, yet swirling activity in the other voices distracts the ear. The feeling of unity becomes subconscious—and thereby all the more potent.
The “mystery” is about attribution and authorship. Of course, what is never mentioned in the discussion of the gradually growing importance of individual creative attribution is the spirituality of creative work that up to this point that had diminished the importance of the identity of the individual creator.
— 4 —
We watched Minari the other night – got it at Redbox, although I think it’s streaming on a number of platforms. Just cheaper on Redbox (all library copies were on hold).
It’s a lovely little film. In case you don’t know the plot – set in the 80’s, it’s the story of a Korean family that moves to Arkansas from California in an attempt to make a go at farming – specifically produce for the Asian market. Two parents, a daughter about 12 years old and a son of maybe six or seven – with a heart condition.
There are other characters, most notably a local fellow who comes to work for the father, and who is prone to speaking in tongues, praying over problems, performing an exorcism when needed and walking the roads on Sunday, carrying a large cross on his back. The family is returning home from church one Sunday and pauses to greet him on the road, “This is my church,” he says.
It’s a nice little film. Episodic and specific, but not the stupendous masterpiece some suggest. But also definitely worth your time, posing important questions in an engaging way about identity and culture and where to plant ourselves so we can flourish. With just the cutest child in the role of David, truly.
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We’re past this stage, but if we weren’t, I’d definitely be checking this out – a new homeschool catechetical curriculum called Into the Deep.
Into the Deep is thorough, Catholic catechesis aimed toward encounters with the Person of Jesus Christ and built on the beauty of the created world. Through beautiful art, music, nature study, handicrafts, and story, we’ll teach our children the truths of the Faith and the joy found in following the Truth.
— 6 —
Perhaps you are following some of the controversies that are starting to erupt in local school districts about both Critical Race Theory and gender theory. Kerry McDonald gets the core, fundamental issue just right:
Whether it’s yesterday’s battles over prayer in school or today’s conflicts over critical race theory, public schooling causes people to fight. It’s a struggle between values and viewpoints that ends with one group imposing its will upon others. The curriculum that is adopted or the one that is shunned inevitably creates winners and losers…
..A free market in education would dissolve these conflicts, as families and educators choose from an assortment of options through the peaceful process of voluntary exchange. If we had mandatory, government-assigned grocery stores based on our zip codes, you can bet there would be battles over what food is stocked and who decides. Instead, we can pick our grocery stores based on our individual needs and preferences, and select from an abundance of food items.
Similarly, a free market in education would generate a panoply of learning options for families. Without government coercion and interference, families would be able to decide for themselves what educational environment is best for their children. If they choose a particular school or setting and are dissatisfied, they can leave and select something different. This freedom to choose creates necessary competition among education providers, just as it does in other market areas. If I don’t like my local grocery store, I can take my business elsewhere. If enough people don’t like that grocery store, it shuts down. This market dynamism also triggers entrepreneurship and invention, as creative individuals introduce new products and services. In a free education market, the learning possibilities are endless.
Last evening, I watched The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
The angelically beautiful Catherine Deneuve was launched to stardom by this dazzling musical heart-tugger from Jacques Demy. She plays an umbrella-shop owner’s delicate daughter, glowing with first love for a handsome garage mechanic, played by Nino Castelnuovo. When the boy is shipped off to fight in Algeria, the two lovers must grow up quickly. Exquisitely designed in a kaleidoscope of colors, and told entirely through lilting songs by the great composer Michel Legrand, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is one of the most revered and unorthodox movie musicals of all time.
A mesmerizing title sequence:
I will admit, even being the film buff that I am, that I didn’t know a lot about this film going in. I clearly had it confused with The Young Girls of Rocherfert, since I spent the first few minutes expecting Gene Kelly to be involved somehow. After I recovered from that (Did I ever tell you about the time I learned that Gene Kelly’s third wife was only a year older than I, which means that in fact, I could have been married to Gene Kelly after all?) I then had to adjust to the surprise of this musical being entirely…musical. That is, no spoken dialogue at all. Per this original US poster, advertising it as a “screen opera.”
It was alternately effective and annoying – the latter mostly because of the nature of the female voices, which were uniformly high and tremulous. Not my favorite sound. But in the end, it worked quite beautifully.
I’ll also say that if you or anyone else you know is in the process of learning French, this film is an excellent study aid. The lyrics are sung rather slowly and quite clearly, and would be understandable, even without subtitles, by, I’d say, a third-year student.
Anyway, to more substantive matters. The most striking aspect of the film, of course, is the color palette, which is vibrant, gorgeous and distinctive. One could almost watch it with the sound off, just to drink in the colors.
But the story isn’t bad either, although since I knew nothing about it when I began watching, I was on the verge of turning it off about ten minutes in thinking, this is just a confection. Pretty, but I’d rather read a book. And then, Guy is sent of to Algiers and…well, things don’t get dark, but they definitely get more real, and the end is lovely, humane and, yes, emotionally grounded in reality.
(They say it’s an important inspiration for La La Land, which I haven’t seen. Can’t speak to that.)
Charlotte was Both 