The South Wind

In spite of the fact that the cold of this winter seems to have etched itself into my bones, now that I can drive, I go all around in my own solipsistic, climate-controlled little realm, creating my own atmosphere with recorded music. Nonetheless, I have to be careful what I play, because there's a lot of music across genres that can make me cry, even bawl, which makes for unsafe driving. I had to pull over last week while listening to Sam Cooke singing "A Change is Gonna Come." 
But these past few days, I've been playing the same song over and over again as I drive: the eighteenth-century Irish song "The South Wind," sung by Jean Redpath, for which, sadly, there is no Youtube video, though this is a very nice instrumental rendition. 
The Jean Redpath version is on her album A Fine Song for Singing, and is accompanied by guitar, cello, and violin in a chamber-music-like setting. And it is transcendentally beautiful. The four parts evoke a conversation by turns charming, witty, and haunting, trading off the melody between them, with the violin in particular articulating a wide and subtle range of emotions. In the heart of a hard winter, hearing this song reconciles me to the possibility of a coming lightness, a kind of hope.
 
But I also hear the song, in these last few days, as a kind of accidental-but-apt encomium for the husband of a friend of mine who died suddenly last week. He was a beloved public school teacher, many of whose former students have said that he changed -- even saved -- their lives. His funeral was at an orthodox Jewish synagogue, and during it I found myself longing for the kind of warmth and community I've often noted among observant Jews, which seems so absent from Catholic life as I've known it (they have joy, mysticism, fellow-feeing, and an ethos of life in its fullness; and we have, it often seems, sourness, primness, division, and an ethos of life in its meanness. Why should this be? I've heard that it's the result of the Jansenism imported by the Irish clergy, and also that it's a Northern thing. But it's enough to make me sometimes feel like the Inuit seal-hunter who supposedly asked the missionary priest if he would go to hell if he didn't know about the truth of Christ. No, said the priest; the risk of hell was only for those who knew the truth, but chose to reject it. To which the hunter replied, Then why did you tell me?) 

Tonight I'm going to sit shiva with his family, including the adolescent daughter who has been an occasional voice student of mine. I've never been to a shiva before, but my understanding is that one goes to keep the mourners company, to be with them in their grief, to let them know that they are not alone (I wish we had a tradition like this!). I will bring them a platter of cookies, and also a copy of the Jean Redpath CD. The words of the song go, in part:

South wind of the gentle rain,
You banish winter weather,
Bring salmon to the pool again,
The bees among the heather.
If northward now you mean to blow
As you rustle soft above me,
Godspeed be with you as you go,
And a kiss for those that love me.

From south I come with velvet breeze;
My word all nature blesses;
I melt the snow and strew the leaves
With flowers and warm caresses.
I'll help you to dispel your woes,
With joy I'll take your greeting
And bear it to your loved Mayo
Upon my wings so fleeting.

I will pray that God will send solace to this family, and that, like the south wind, He will, some day in the future, coax the grief of this long winter slowly from their hearts.

The Simon Sisters Sing

Here's something that I bet wasn't on your Christmas playlist: Carly and Lucy Simon, as the Simon Sisters, singing Lucy's setting of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Christmas Bells."

It's from a very unusual children's album first released in 1973. This is one that I did not have growing up, but when I was a child I once heard one of the songs on it, Lucy Simon's setting of William Blake's poem "The Lamb," at a neighbor's house, and never forgot its haunting, chant-like melody (unfortunately, there's no Youtube of it, but you can listen to an excerpt on Amazon), in spite of the fact that I never heard it again and didn't know whose song it was. Then one day last year the Daedalus Books catalogue came in the mail -- I'm a hopeless addict -- and I saw the Simon Sisters' re-released CD advertised in it, with a little blurb describing some of the songs, one of which was a setting of Blake's poem. Could this be the song? I took a chance and ordered the CD, and yes, it was.

The album is outstanding. Lucy, who wrote all the music, was long overshadowed by her younger sister, but would later gain recognition as the composer of the Broadway musical The Secret Garden. Although the songs on the album are arranged for the full gamut of instruments used in 1960s pop to suggest whimsy and the fantastical -- flute, organ, glockenspiel -- the squareness of the sisters' singing has a kind of rectitude to it -- indeed, almost an austere quality, echoed in this undated performance from the "Hootenanny" television show:

Aren't they beautiful, too? Their older sister, Joanna, was also a singer, a mezzo-soprano who had a moderately big career in opera (yes, that's what most big careers in opera look like -- I had never heard of her, either).

Everything about the Simon Sisters, from their singing to their dresses to the songs themselves, evokes a more innocent time, a kind of lost paradise that cannot ever have really existed.

Quick Takes: Disaster Edition

1.  Posting has been light here due to various catastrophes, of both the major kind that affect large swathes of the population, and the minor kind that are more like earthquakes or hurricanes in the soul.  My area has been badly hurt by flooding, and I've been spending time with my very ill mother.  It's strange how sometimes the outer landscape reflects the inner, and then there's no relief for the sufferer; he can neither go within for comfort, nor hope that the beauty of his surroundings will cheer him.

2.  We don't have television, so I will not see the Towers falling over and over again on this anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.  And I didn't have television then, so I didn't have to watch it back then, either, for which I was grateful.  The first time I went downtown afterwards, near the end of September, 2001 -- I tried to avoid it, but I had an appointment to keep -- the ruins were still smoldering, and seeing them almost literally brought me to my knees.  Back then, all at once, the rest of America loved New York, but a few months later was back to hating us again for the usual reasons, mostly having to do, I think, with elitism and liberal values.  And yet New Yorkers took their lives into their hands, and continue to do so, every day in the pursuit of things that are objectively good, like going to work or school, performing acts of family and community service, attending religious services, etc.  The fear of my fellow Americans in the days and years following 9/11 seemed a little out of proportion to the threats they actually faced, while the ordinary courage and good-naturedness of New Yorkers seems to be the only way to live, no matter what we're facing.

3.  All tragedy is local, however, and my attention is focused on some very difficult things going on in my own community.  Posting will probably be light here for a little while.  May God bless everyone who reads here.

4. A song that has repeatedly played in my mind during the flood.  We need beauty even more than usual during a disaster.