This post began as a comment on funkefreak's blog. I couldn't post my comment for some odd reason.
I too saw that movie (The Phantom of the Opera) recently – on Christmas day, as a matter of fact. It was the first time I had ever seen (or heard) the entire thing, and I was astounded by ALW's libretto. Shoot!
And today, I was tra-la-la-ing my way through the very song mentioned in this post's title (not knowing all of the words). What is it in our brains that weds words and meaning so powerfully to melody? Not even knowing the words, I can feel in this tune a longing struggling against contentment in being forgotten. Learning the words will probably only make the melody that much more powerful – it's a spiral, all right.
That's all I intended to put in my comment, but since this is a post, I'll write a bit more. My housemate's immediate reaction: "Christine is such a wimp! How can anyone ever be attracted to her? I mean, she's hot and can sing. That's about it. What about loyalty and gumption?" I tend to agree, but I chalk that up to the musical nature of the movie. Despite having tools unique to the cinema at their disposal, POTO's director and cast failed to create movie characters. Instead, they left us with musical characters (like in an opera or something): men and women whose actions and feelings are generally two-dimensional, albeit compellingly conveyed in music.
At the same time, I'm willing to say that the characterization defecit was made up for by the music and sheer opulence of the scene. It was a stunning movie to watch and to hear.
And speaking of stunning sights, I saw two movies in a row that day. Right before POTO (I keep wanting to type p-o-t-a-t-o), I saw Lemony Snickett's A Series of Unfortunate Events. This little film surprised me with its gothic charm, style, and quick wit, a surprise all the more forceful for the cartoonish intro featuring the Littlest Elf. And stepping right into this complicated milieu walked three talented child actors – well, actually four, if you count the two twins who play the youngest Beaudelaire child.
Given the movies in the theaters today, I'm not sure if I could have seen two films more different from one another and yet both well above par. Or is that under par? I hate golf references.
The death toll after yesterday's earthquake in the Indian Ocean has climbed to about 23,000. The hardest-hit nations (India, Thailand, Indonesia) are also home to some of the poorest and most-densely populated people on earth, which makes this number merely an educated guess. Indonesian government officials have suggested that Indonesia alone may have sustained this many deaths.
And according to BBCOnline, about a million people are now homeless in this region. About a million. Million is a number. We hear about budgets and lawsuit penalities of $1.8 million or half a million. You can't just say "about a million." Saying "about a million" implies quite a large margin of error. Saying "about a million" means you don't really know how many people no longer have a house. If I say about 10, I might mean 6 or 7. I could even mean 12 or 13. How can we understand maybe 600,000 or maybe 1,300,000 people homeless? How can we put that number into our frame of reference?
"About a million are now homeless." It was the most compelling line in the whole article, I think. As the floodwaters recede, typhoid, dengue fever, dysentery, and a whole host of other killers will flow in to take their place. And they will begin with the homeless, of course.
Who was it that said, "weep with those who weep?"
Ok, living one's life in the past, the present and the future seems to be an important idea in A Muppet Christmas Carol, which I watched tonight in Chattanooga with Mike, my parents and my sister. (Ask me sometime about how I felt my way through this odd juxtaposition of history and context.) When Scrooge is pleading with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, he pledges to live his life this way, and to "keep" Christmas throughout the year. Can somebody tell me what this looks like? What are they trying to say?
Today we prayed for Cuba, from the front.
We bowed our heads and, sandwiched in between
Christmas and Alzheimer's, brought low our thoughts
to the twenty-first degree. I felt afraid
for the couple next to me as we moved on
to give thanksgiving for the Incarnation:
they know a thing or two about whence babies
come, a thing or two (or three) about
the stable scene. Were they afraid, as well?
It is a joyful fear to think of God
as human: prone to sickness, prone to war.
Lesson of the Day:
Lots of butter makes for soggy bagels.
Just when poetry became "modern" is not easy to determine.
today i sat complacent in my bathroom
It is necessary to pursue less a moment
when out of the mist loomed a sudden quote
than a context -- intellectual and social --
and i was thrown into a struggle.
in which the innovations we call modern have occurred.
i strove all day to tame imagination:
Such a search leads,
to work and back
paradoxically perhaps,
chopping hard-boiled eggs and peppers in my mind
back to the Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century.
wondering what it all meant
Romanticism was influential in the arts and in society as well;
and whether it said at all what it meant to say.
before it, poetry
is imagination individual or social? i too am a poet
more often than not
and think either idea may be some new social sin.
had celebrated the ideals of the society
why, for example, are those pre-romantics
to which the poet belonged,
seen and admired but subtly pitied
but Romanticism offered sanction
like pandas or boas at the zoo,
for a more copious and diversified expression of the self,
or who's to say this sanction
for more various relations between the individual and society.
is not a jail cell in itself?
An element of subversion is probably present
(of course it's present!)
in all great poets, but not until
you do not know, dear authors
individuality came to be seen as positive,
the celebration neccessitates a certain distance
rather than eccentric or antisocial,
potentially subversive in itself and of itself
did the conception of the guerilla poet --
and why does levertov ring in my ears?
outcast, victim, misfit, radical
just the other day, on page 1058 of this self-same anthology:
-- achieve heroic consequence.
"what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth?"
~ Richard Ellman and Robert O'Clair, Introduction,
i know that you are wise
The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.
perhaps i simply have not seized your distinction.
W. W. Norton. New York: 1973
Sometimes, sin is something that we do when we are lonely and refuse to rest in our aloneness. We can distract ourselves, somehow, with lust, slander, control, deceit, malice, gluttony – distract ourselves from knowing our position in the universe, our pain, our identities, our hopes. The burden of these things somehow seems too great for us to bear, yet it is a weight which can be carried (must be carried?) only during seasons of solitude. And it graces these seasons with fruitfulness, I think – the fruitfulness of doing some good work, like carrying water or carring wood for the stove. The weight of knowing breeds strength when borne willingly and repeatedly.
...just a few things for you to ponder. Winter is here, and she has brought time for reflection.
In a poorly-written and somewhat meandering article today, BBC-online attempted a report on the immediate relational context to the EU summit scheduled for the upcoming week. Cyprus and Turkey will both come up, it seems, in nearly every important conversation in Brussels during the summit. Can anyone donate a little more explanation to the empty coffers of my understanding? Well, to the nearly-empty coffers, I should say.
(I have many friends who go by M. There is one of these in particular whose comments I desire, but then again, helpful comments have been known to come from all letters of the alphabet. So fire away.)
Home is a concept into which we are grown, I think. In the same way that believers learn over time the merits and nature of Jesus Christ through our sanctification, so also we learn about home. Is this extraordinary? God himself has promised himself as our portion, our dwelling place throughout all generations. Jesus, our elder brother and great high priest, has secured home for us. So then, just as the Holy Spirit conforms each of us individually and all of us corporately to the image of the Son, we can see our understandings of home growing and being conformed to reflect that home which Christ has prepared for us. Our comprehensions of the unseen reality of that future consummation manifest themselves now, in the Christian home and in the Christian church. Emmanuel has come and will come again, O Israel. Blessed be the name of the Lord this Christmas season, and may this advent season profit both our homes and our churches to the glory of his grace. Amen and Amen. Maranatha.
Your house is full of wind, my Lord.
My heart is full of wind.
Windows and doors are
opened wide, and from within
a touching but incomprehensible
melody wells forth.
The wind blows in and out
in and out
in and out –
the wind's irrhythmic rhythm
swirls strains together.
I cannot tell the wind
from the singing.
Ah! Dear hiding heart,
what terror! What careful,
careful pain to have
thy tender secrets heard and known
heard and known
heard and known
by wind.
I was thinking today and yesterday that I need to write a poem about the ladybugs that infest our kitchen: they're slowly dying. Pondering the ladybugs has tuned my senses to a frequency quite conducive to observation, and coming home tonight stopped me dead in my tracks. No dishes unclean. No counter unwiped. No clutter in the living or dining rooms.
My housemate is under lots of post-season academic stress from this semester and is warming up for even more in the pre-season training period for next semester. Even so, he finds time to clean. All I do is entertain in a desperate bid to affirm key relationships. This friend of mine, on the other hand, calmly and contently manages to spend time with certain people on a regular basis, teach twice a week, grade papers, plan a massive career change, organize and orchestrate all kinds of non-traditional academic experiences for students, represent a faulty organization to other organizations, and build new bridges and contacts for his employers. Oh, and don't forget serving as standby academic, romantic, and emotional counselor for a campus of 900 collegians. Sheesh. He even finds time to read his Bible and maintain ties with out-of-town friends and family.
And the funny thing is, I don't feel intimidated or belittled by the obvious contrast. M makes his presence and encouraging one. I hope I get to be that talented, someday.
Saturday I was scheduled three shifts in a row at work: an 8 am classroom session, a 12 pm lunch shift, and a 5:15 pm dinner shift. Sheesh. I did have nsome spare time between class and lunch, so I rushed by Wal-mart and Target, sped to the post office, and stopped back by my house before returning to the restaurant. As I drove, I listened to a sociologist, working woman, and NPR commentator discussing living at the poverty line in America.
At first, I heard the woman say something which I thought was a sound clip, since the two men began to discuss her words and her situation. Realizing that she was actually there with them in the studio gave me a rather violent turn, since the men kept talking as if she weren't there at all. How much she must have felt like an objcet, a case, a study! The conversation began to focus upon the details of this woman's life: her large family, her status as sole bread-winner, how hard it was to keep insurance, how hard it was to keep cars running, etceteras. I would have been quite embarrassed.
What really got to me, though, was the fact that towards the end of the interview, they asked this woman what she had to do without. The reply was mild-mannered and summery: "Well, we go without sometime, sometime. But we're fine. The kids are in school aren't they? Things ain't so bad."
The sociologist INTERRUPTED her to tell us that this was just her being too proud to share the details, which he proceeded to do. He and the commentator then commenced to try to convince this noble woman that she was doing something hard and difficult and had every right to take it out on the establishment ("the establishment" being our last two presidents, Bush and Clinton)! What?!
I was mad. I was ready to call up my local NPR affiliate and let them have it. But then this lady replies, again just as breezy and warm and mild as an early summer's day, only this time her words are tinged with some sorrow, as if the corners of her eyes have gone moist: "Oh, you're sweet. You're really sweet. The only thing is, is -- you've got too high expectations. You just talkin about things because that's the way you was raised. A body don't need all that much. Somebody like me just needs to know that things are gonna be better, maybe better for her children. That's all I need right now."
Expectations, huh? Well shoot. Shoot, shoot, shoot. The men seemed to sit back, somewhat abashed, quickly making obligatory thank yous and giving a plug for the sociologist's new book about this woman and low-class America. I turned off the radio and began to hum a little.
You'll never guess: the 7th annual EU-China summit! That's right, December 8th will see lots of meta-communication and polite diplomacy going on in Holland.
This is what I should have been reading, all about the EU constitution. Instead, I became sidetracked by Thing 1 and Thing 2. Thing 1 is a description of EU-China relations. Thing 2 is the first Chinese foreign policy position paper on the EU. It was published in October of last year. My favorite part was the bit about human rights:
"There are both consensus and disagreements between China and the EU on the question of human rights. The Chinese side appreciates the EU's persistent position for dialogue and against confrontation, and stands ready to continue dialogue, exchange and cooperation on human rights with the EU on the basis of equality and mutual respect so as to share information, enhance mutual understanding and deepen cooperation in protecting, inter alia, citizens' social and cultural rights and the rights of the disadvantaged."
All that doublespeak fits in just two sentences. I'm afraid I'm skeptical of dear old China, even though things are getting better. Sheesh. Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?
Hark! "No one sleeps," sings an alien singer.
No one sleeps and one non-sleeper sings.
Oh! How he sings, this unknown prince,
an epic hero pouring forth a stream
of epic themes and epic notes.
His heart beats through his golden voice.
No one sleeps and one non-sleeper hears.
Oh! How these words,
of hope and warmth, of daylight
pierce her like a brick through storefront glass.
This bright new language shatters her.
The song is his to sing and hers
to hear, far cloistered in her keep.
Also awake and cold, she wanes.
Her task is but to hear and thus to know
this rising sun, audacious prince.
It falls to him to send across the land
quick rays of hope, to wake the dawn,
for no one sleeps yet no one knows
his name. The night runs late.
The people of the moon, all swept away,
begin to sing, caught in the epic sway.
Someone shall die, come dawn.
"Pertelote lifted up her voice and began to sing on the battlefield. She sang as though she walked the rim of the universe, like the moon, a pale and lovely presence everywhere on earth.
"While she sang, the grey wolf Chinook left the form of Boreas and came to Pertelote and bowed her head and listened, and then there were two women together to make a common memory of the ones they loved. The women bore the same things in their hearts.
"While she sang the Animals lifted their heads from sleep and looked at the sky and saw the stars, and these became the blanket for their beds, and they resolved never to forget the song nor the singer.
"And far, far away the Brothers Mice pulled their noses from the circle in which they slept. 'Listen,' they said. 'Do you hear that? The dear Lady Pertelote is singing Compline. Oh, she remembered us with a Compline.' "
Walter Wangerin, Jr. The Book of Sorrows. Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 1985.
Here is what the BBC news division says about the French Socialist party. Any thoughts? And where can I find a copy of the proposed EU constitution, anyway? I'm glad I'm not in charge of drafting that document. It's gotta be difficult to write something that everyone can sign on to without writing a powerless something, a la Wilson's Lague of Nations.
French party holds EU treaty vote
By Caroline Wyatt
BBC Paris correspondent
Francois Hollande and Laurent Fabius take opposing views
France's Socialist Party is due to vote on Wednesday in an internal referendum on whether or not to say "yes" to the European Constitution.
France is due to hold a referendum on it some time in 2005. Opinion polls show the French are undecided.
The man leading the "no" campaign is former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, now deputy leader of the Socialists.
He has tried to rally supporters by saying he loves Europe too much to let France sign up to a bad treaty.
For him, the European Constitution is simply too Anglo-Saxon, too much about free markets and competition, too little about workers' rights or full employment.
Finely balanced
But others in the French Socialist Party have been horrified by his campaign.
Socialist leader Francois Hollande agrees the constitution is not perfect, but insists that a "no" for the party and the country that helped build Europe will be catastrophic.
And there is a real risk that if the Socialists vote "no", the rest of France might follow suit in the national referendum next year.
At the moment, more than half the French say they have no idea which way to vote, which makes the Socialist decision crucial in swaying public opinion in France.
A decision by the French Left to back a "no" vote in this finely balanced referendum could scupper the EU constitution.