Wedding Violinist

My cousin decided to inextricably meld her future to the future of Singapore by getting married today, our National Day. I’d been roped in to start the mass off by inexpertly and rustily playing Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desire on the violin, with another cousin on the organ and the groom himself on the flute.

I couldn’t hear how we sounded over the mikes. To my ears the squeaks as my bow crossed strings, and the occasional difficulty of keeping the flow of notes smooth while doing only three notes to a bow (to maximise volume) were fairly obvious, but my mother, who is admittedly not the most objective of critics but would probably have been listening more closely than anyone else, assured me that it sounded great, and even noticed my attempts at injecting subtle dynamics into what can otherwise be a rather monotonous piece. So I hopefully pulled off the proverbial achievement of fooling most of the people most of the time.

Other notable musical aspects of the mass were communion hymns by ever-reliable David Haas and Michael Joncas, who have individually managed to account for a fair number of musical highlights of my year in liturgical music. As I instructed my sister, perhaps a bit disturbingly, after the mass, if I die unexpectedly some time soon I want You Are Mine (David Haas) at my funeral, although I suppose they’d probably not want to sing the verse which ends with “Stand up, now walk, and live!” (Other hymns on that list: Be Not Afraid, and I Am The Bread Of Life. Those of you reading this who know me, tell my family if I die and they forget.)

From my seat in the choir I got a better view of proceedings than most in the congregation. I could see when the couple looked at each other, and when they were intent in prayer – it occurred to me that these aren’t necessarily separate in their focus and meaning. I can’t really pinpoint many of my goals in life but perhaps one of them is that unity of purpose.

Hall Chronicles: Theology Students

Being around theology students makes life that little bit more surreal. Two conversational snippets with my hallmate Stefan:

Me: You look troubled.
Stefan: Yes, I am trying to write an essay. The Trinity, it is annoying me.

*

Me: So how’s the studying for ancient Greek going?
Stefan: Oh, I decided to focus on human salvation instead today. I thought it was more important.

Ostensibly Holy Week

A week without Internet access leaves lots of blanks to be filled. More for my sake than yours, I propose to fill them. Here goes last week:

Ken has already given his/our impressions of Vertigo on Monday, except more coherently than we managed to express at the time through manic chortling on what I think was Waterloo Bridge.

Tuesday was a pleasant reminder of the fact that I’m still a moderately good debater despite a year of rustiness, and winning the friendly at QMW with Mark as partner was a fitting way to end our debating year. Dinner was my first ever carbonara, and then mixed-bag hip-hop and cringeworthy stand-up comedy at 93 Feet East. A sign attached to one of the bar tills said FUCK OFF in big red letters. It was a flyer for an upcoming Sonic Mook Experiment night. I brought it home.

Wednesday was the first day of the beginning of hell. Preparing music for Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday masses took the entire afternoon and most of the night. Choosing psalms. Compiling hymn packs for the choir. Practising everything on the organ. Photocopying, hole-punching, stressing, praying, cursing.

I realize it is probably inappropriate to describe making a joyful noise unto the Lord as hell, but even though the music all went splendidly well in the end and I’m actually really happy about that, I never, never want to go through that ever again. That is all I will say about the liturgical music aspects of last week, and, I suspect, more than anyone else would be interested in reading about.

At some point on Good Friday, at the same time as I was ploughing through Bentham as Proto-Feminist? in my room, Alec and Mark were apparently cosied up in Mark’s room having some lesbian tea. (On inquiry I was told lesbian=herbal in this context. Perhaps this is reassuring. Perhaps not.)

At some point on Holy Saturday, when asking choir members to get themselves hymn packs, which I had by now started referring to as fun packs, I nearly called them fanny packs. (Note: if you are American, your understanding of the term “fanny” is quite different from ours. Over here the fanny is the bit even bikini bottoms cover.)

Later that night my hallmate was using a window-divider as an improvised pole against which to pole dance. It was a ground floor window opening out onto Gower Street. Gower Street’s a busy street.

Alec describes the content of this site as “pointless meandering”. I’m beginning to see what he means, but don’t care. That was the week. Some called it Holy.

Reasons To Live

Anticipatory exam dread and its accompanying crabbiness seem to have arrived exceptionally early this year. I could say this is mostly because it’s my final year but must admit that it is probably also due in no small part to the strange coincidence between me deciding to give Coke up for Lent and everyone I live with suddenly deciding that Coke is their favourite drink, drinking it everywhere and leaving half-empty cans of Coke around the house.

Still, not all is glum. The early hours of this morning were spent worshipping at the altar of hallmate Michael’s colossal CD collection (which I subsequently plundered, and intend to thoroughly rape and pillage in future), then listening to some of the spoils (Mogwai: EP + 6, then Godspeed You Black Emperor!: Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven) while snuggled in bed with Cryptonomicon and peach mousse. It may have been a waste of two hours I should have spent working, but at least it didn’t involve Vegas-style Solitaire, which Alec evilly introduced me to last week and which I have been weaning myself off ever since.

Also, the Ali G movie is coming out soon. A reason to live if ever one was needed.

Going Down

If God has no sense of humour, you might want to keep an eye out at the Last Judgment for Alec and I trying to explain how exactly we came to be discussing the improbability of Mary allowing Jesus to go out into the desert for 40 days and 40 nights without insisting he bring some sandwiches and a woolly jumper, because just think how that would make her look in front of all the other virgin mothers…

Then again, given that my site seems to inexplicably, er, pop up, with frightening regularity and apparent relevance on searches of varying levels of moral degeneracy, I might have a lot more to explain to Him than just that.

There’s also this cartoon on my room door, just below the slip of paper printed with “Where am I going? And why am I in this handbasket?”

I think the evidence is mounting up. Ulp.

Hymn

In church yesterday, while we were singing Let There Be Peace On Earth, a fighter plane passed overhead, emitting the sort of absolutely earth-shaking roar that reverberates in your sternum and the bones of your face and compels all life beneath the plane to stop during its passage because of the sheer impossibility of doing anything else while the air is pure noise.

So for about ten seconds, there was nothing but this uncompromising swell of sound, ravaging pristine church air while the mouths of the choirmembers doggedly continued forming the words Let There Be Peace On Earth, and I started giggling helplessly.

Easter 2001

Guiltlessly missing mass on Maundy Thursday to go see Stephen Malkmus (with the excellent Calexico thrown in for good measure). Getting home and spending an hour in the room set up as the garden of Gethsemane, surprised by a sudden and unfamiliar feeling of prayerfulness.

Spending Good Friday at choir practice, service, and Stations of the Cross, interspersed with periods of genuine study (an equally sudden and unfamiliar phenomenon). Listening choices throughout the day varied from Beethoven’s Ode To Joy to Hefner’s May God Protect Your Home. A song about joy, and a song about a vagina. I suppose a case could be made for connecting the two, but perhaps not in a way that would be quite appropriate for Good Friday.

A feeling of disconnection and malaise on Holy Saturday. I didn’t go for choir practice, or help with preparations for the Easter Vigil. I went down grudgingly for the Vigil and was amazed by two and a half hours in church that flew by, and left me with a strange sense of exuberance and joy which I still can’t really explain. To say it was happiness in celebrating the resurrection of Jesus would be pushing it. I still grope for that sort of faith, for that sort of ability to feel. But something was there, and I hope it comes back some time soon.

Nibbles and wine after the Vigil turned into all-out partying. There was lots of cheesy music. There were lots of us making absolute fools of ourselves. It was all incredibly uncool. It was all incredibly enjoyable.

Mass on Easter Sunday and lunch. Attempts at studying, mostly unsuccessful due to the embarassingly crushing grip of a, er, crush. More cheese and wine at night, Father John outlasting all of us on the dance floor.

Most of Easter Monday taken up by contract law and the Classic FM Hall of Fame countdown. Most of early Tuesday taken up by Coldcut’s Solid Steel on London Live, an Atmos mix set on Radio One, and quality time with my laptop.

Lenten Logic

I know this is completely missing the point, but indulge me for a moment: if you’re supposed to give up something you really love for Lent, then shouldn’t priests and nuns and all really religious people give up God, and praying?

It was just a thought.

It never worked on my mother when I tried it, anyway. Along with all the other things I unsuccessfully suggested giving up for Lent, like liver, drinking water (am I the only person alive who hates the way it tastes? AND IT DOES HAVE A TASTE, DAMMIT…) and practising the violin.

God Is Glove II

I am confounded. Either the Lord giveth, taketh away and then…returneth, or there are some weird glove-abducting aliens about.

Shortly after Christmas Eve I lost a glove after midnight mass somewhere between Westminster Cathedral and Newman House, and then, through a happy coincidence, discovered that the remaining glove matched another odd glove I had remaining after I lost the other side of my previous pair, the two pairs of gloves being identical.

This morning, my lost glove came back. I was tottering down the stairs for breakfast in my usual morning subhuman fashion, and there it was. Lying on the second floor landing, looking for all the world like it’d been discarded only minutes before, when I knew the truth – that it had been missing nearly three weeks.

I snatched it up and scrutinized it. Black PVC, bulkyish, Thinsulate inside, altogether not too fashionable…it certainly looked and fitted like mine, so I figured it was. Either that, or there’s a murderer with rather small hands for the profession walking around with one icy hand, which is, I suppose appropriate in terms of dramatic effect.

The Lazarus glove. The prodigal glove. I am overflowing with biblical allusions. God, if you’re behind this, perhaps you could also get my scarf back here from Glasgow? Or just make me less of a scatterbrain, I suppose…

From Club To Cathedral

It’s been an interesting weekend so far, which probably means it’s going to be a terrible week. This year I still haven’t managed to find that fine line between unwinding from the week and getting so completely unwound that you can’t get yourself together for the next one. In case my mother is reading this, I have to clarify that I don’t mean that in a drinks, drugs and bad, bad men way, I just mean it in a not doing my work way. Which she shouldn’t have a problem accepting, given that I’ve been like that my whole life.

The Gallery at Turnmills on Friday was well worth the eight pounds (the best thing about getting on the guest list, given that their members’ bar vibe was more like a slightly run-down sandwich shop than anything else. Note to whoever does the music: Playing Air, good. Just chucking the entire Air album into the player, not so good.) We were a slightly disparate group united only by the fact that we were all Vish’s friends who all enjoy clubbing, but given that conversation isn’t exactly a factor that defines the success or failure of a club experience, it felt far less awkward than any other kind of social event would have been. Less enjoyable moments of the evening included losing Russ for an hour, which was stressful given that he had my money and keys, and I didn’t fancy throwing myself on the mercy of the various dodgy characters who tried equally dodgy pick-up lines on the nearest lone female they could find. Being sandwiched between Crazy Elbows At Eye-Jabbing Level Girl and Very Sweaty Shirtless I’m Sooo Cool Because You Can See My Calvins Over The Top Of My Well Filled Trousers Guy, as was my unfortunate situation at one point, can also lead you to contemplate giving up the unequal fight for dance floor space and just rocking to and fro in a fetal position. But it was, all in all, a good night. :)

After spending my Friday night in a mother-worrying activity, I decided to spend my Saturday night doing stuff that would make her happy. There was a youth celebration mass at Westminster Cathedral, which most of the people in Newman House, as well as the Singaporean Catholics, were going to, so when I woke up (at 4 pm!) I decided to make the effort, despite the worrying possibilities that the words “youth celebration” suggest. Thankfully, it wasn’t that bad – they did, for the most part, manage to strike a balance between making the mass a little more upbeat than usual and making the stupid assumption that all youth like electric guitars, full drum sets and feelgood but ultimately meaningless outbursts of praise when they go to mass. The marked lack of enthusiasm displayed by the congregation whenever the songs did involve clapping was truly heartening. So there, Charismatics…

So now I’m sitting here with some honeyed water and some, er, ham (don’t ask), with a big bands compilation on, and I’m happy with two well-spent nights. Give me a club or a cathedral, Heineken or honey water, Timo Maas or Tommy Dorsey – it’s all good. :)