Between the Wars [UPDATED]

[Update, 2/6/09: Janet quite rightly points out in the combox that the young Joseph Ratzinger was compelled to fight for the Third Reich, which is certainly not the case for today's "soldiers" for abortion rights. The young Joseph Ratzinger's desertion makes clear his opposition to the evil cause for which he was made to fight. No one, of course, compels Americans to fight against our weakest citizens. In my last paragraph below, I was merely wondering at the way that God sometimes nurtures great good and holiness from evil soil, and hoping that this might be the case with the most committed pro-choicers. But of course, we have to choose it.]

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I went to Mass today in a little chapel near my new home. At the Prayer of the Faithful, the priest invited the congregation to voice their petitions. I was about to ask my fellow communicants to pray for my brothers to find work, but an elderly man offered the intention "For an end to the war . . . of abortion." I was struck by his analogy and forgot my prayer request, and indeed no one else mentioned their petitions after this one.

If abortion is a war, that means there are victims of two kinds, at least as we've come to define them: casualties and collateral damage. Collateral damage is damage that is incidental to the intended outcome of the war. If unwanted babies are the intended casualties of this war, then their mothers (and fathers, and grandparents, and on and on in ever-widening concentric circles) are the collateral damage. If we can't bring back the dead, at least, as in a war, we must bind up the wounds of those calamitously injured in it and work to reintroduce them into society.

And if this is a war, then there are generals, officers, infantry and foot-soldiers on both sides. There are, of course, the vocal and dedicated spokesmen (usually, on the pro-choice side, spokeswomen) who rally the rank and file and lead the troops in battle. But the commitment of the soldiers themselves to the cause for which they are fighting varies widely. Many people on the pro-choice side simply accept that abortion is legal and assume it's an uncontestable right; after all, when something is legal, one can usually safely assume that, if not in the interest of the common welfare, it's at least not something that will harm one's fellow citizens. These people might be induced to march in a rally, or might simply do nothing, as so many good Germans did.

It seems to me that, if lovingly presented with the truth, some of these soldiers might lay down their arms and work instead toward the creation of a more just society, in which all lives are valued equally. Many of them care deeply about justice in the abstract, and abortion rights have become firmly entrenched in the public mind as one of the freedoms that should be guaranteed by our hyper-individualistic society; like the good Germans, these soldiers are unquestioning.

But soldiers can have changes of heart; and soldiers, after the war, must be rehabilitated. One German conscript, for instance, who deserted from the Wehrmacht is now Pope Benedict XVI.

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love that Little Black Dress

My life in the frozen north was briefly interrupted today when I received the J. Peterman catalogue (or Owner's Manual, as it's called on the cover) in the mail. I didn't even know this catalogue was still being published. It's a hoot to read, and I'm sure the copywriters have fun writing it: the clothes, pictured in line drawings and watercolors, are advertised not as clothes, but as cultural tokens meant to evoke nostalgic associatons in the minds of upscale, literate consumers.

There is, for instance, the "Swan Pond" blouse, whose fictional narrative concerns Truman Capote musing upon a coterie of heiresses and Hemingway ex-wives at the now-defunct high-society New York restaurant La Côte Basque in 1960. There is the ensemble in which "you" (most of these descriptions are written in the second-person singular) manage to attract the groom, Lord Randolph, at an English aristocratic country wedding, and there is the "Russian Navy" shirt ("Watch the news on TV tonight. If they're wearing striped shirts like this, it's the Russian Navy. Unless you see a dark-eyed girl paddling a green boat and her boyfriend laughs and smokes and laughs and his cigarette is slightly less than one inch long . . . then it's France"). I was just about to throw it into the recycling bin when I saw a story, about a black dress, entitled "The New Music." Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be about the premiere of John Adams's Doctor Atomic.

"The San Francisco Opera House is exactly the same," the ad copy goes. "Same coffered ceiling, same sweeping balconies, but the music isn't."

"J. Peterman" then goes on to describe the opera:

Long recitations from declassified government files and the Bhagavad Gita set to trilling, clattering, pulsing sounds, atonal explosions and lyrical flights.

You made it through Parsifal, Peterman, I keeep reminding myself.

Then I notice her next to me . . . . The sight of her in this dress [the black dress pictured in the catalogue] is almost enough to persuade me to give Schönberg a second chance.

He then describes the 1940s-style organza dress, finishing with a flourish: "Kitty Oppenheimer stuck out there on that plateau in New Mexico would have killed for a chance to wear it."

I'm not quite sure how to unpack the fact that John Adams's masterful opera is being used as a foil in a catalogue to sell high-end clothing, and a negative foil at that. I suppose it's a sign of hipness to evoke the work, and another such sign not to like it. The musicologist Richard Taruskin, in this long but excellent article in The New Republic, notes the phenomenon, current since the 1960s, of the intellegentsia (though well-versed in and appreciative of the serious and avant-garde in literature, painting, and philosophy) taking a perverse pride in knowing little-to-nothing about classical music (including twentieth- and twenty-first-century art music). Art music, as J. Peterman reminds us in his catalogue, is not hip; cultural elites today vaunt their knowledge not of new art music, but of popular music from various eras, some of which they profess to like for "ironic," rather than sincere reasons; i.e., not for its merits, but for its lack of them.

The irony here is that Doctor Atomic is not an atonal work at all, and certainly nothing like Schönberg. That, and the fact that I would love to have that dress myself.

There and Back, Part 2: Culture Wars

When Barack Obama made his infamous gaffe on the campaign trail about people in depressed small towns clinging to religion out of "bitterness," I'm sure many in my old circle nodded their heads emphatically. I have neither the means nor the desire to judge Obama's own religious commitment, but his clear subtext was that these bitter folk cling not to religion generically, but to Christianity specifically (we may as well admit that the notion of the small-town Buddhist or Jew clinging to his faith out of bitterness just doesn't make sense to us culturally). In his comment, Obama further conflated this clinging to religion with an apparently similar clinging to guns, as well as to "antipathy to people who aren’t like [the ones who cling] or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

I was raised in an ultra-progressive Catholic home, if that's not an oxymoron, and in my life I have known many who grew up in similar circumstances. In our minds, there were species and degrees of religious belief, and our Christianity and that of the bitter, clinging small-towners couldn't have been more un-alike.

In another statement that caused a great deal of consternation on the right, Barack Obama declared that, if one of his daughters became pregnant outside of marriage, he wouldn't want to see her "punished with a baby." That sentiment was nothing new to me, having grown up hearing that the ultimate goal of the Christian right was to punish women for their sexuality by forcing them to face up to its consequences by bearing unwanted children, clearly an outrageous injustice. When I was married the first time, my father disapproved. As he told me, he was afraid I was going to have children and ruin my life. Little did he know that my first husband and I had aborted our only child a year earlier, an event upon which our entire relationship was essentially predicated.

This really is how liberal intellectuals tend to construe it: the right to free sexuality should be an unbridled one. As for the consequences, they can be taken care of, and any threat to the taking care of them is something to be fought against. For all the lip service paid to the interest of the community, liberal ideology, on this point at least, is anticommunitarianism in its essence. It is individualism taken to its most extreme expression, to the point that it makes enemies of a mother and her child.

And yes, liberal believers do look down on conservative believers as anti-intellectuals who parse everything in black and white for fear of the wonderful shades of gray that they, the liberal believers, are brave enough to discern and embrace.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the reason I agreed to that abortion is that I wanted him to love me. Where, I wonder, is the freedom in that?

Astonished!

I've been tagged again - this time, I sheepishly admit, with a blog award. Toby at Astonished, Yet at Home! has very kindly given me the Premio Dardo (which, if you've sung any eigthteenth-century Italian opera, you'll know means "arrow prize") Award, which "acknowledges the effort of a particular blogger to transmit cultural, ethical, literary and personal values in his or her writing." Toby explains his choice of me among fourteen other bloggers thus:

"Pentimento is a doctor of music whose posts are deeply spiritual and intellectually informed. The grace with which she writes about abortion is unparallelled in the Catholic blogosphere."

I'm humbled by this. Thank you, Toby.

Now . . . the rules of the award require that I accept the award and post about it, along with the name and blog link of the colleague who's granted it. But then there is another rule which I am going to violate, requiring that I pass the award along to fifteen other bloggers "worthy of this acknowledgment." I don't think I actually know fifteen other bloggers who are treading these waters, and, though there are some widely-read blogs that no doubt deserve the acknowledgment, I'd rather pass it on to some of my favorite "smaller" blogs, so my list is going to be short and simple.

1. Retired Waif, who writes with sensitivity, grace, and wit about the ethics of illness, disability, and motherhood, as well as the spiritual quest and other not-so-everyday matters.

2. Brenda at The Crazy Stable, a Catholic Brooklynite feminist for life. I love her politics, her aesthetics, and her literary sensibility, which calls to mind that of a Catholic Laurie Colwin. What the heck, I love huh.

3. Fallen Sparrow, who I think of as a brother blogger. Fallen writes about the dark road he's traveled (and still is traveling) to satisfy his deep thirst for God with a beauty that's disarming and an honesty that can be excruciating.

4. Pat McNamara at McNamara's Blog, a historian whose blog is a reverent treasure trove of lore about Catholic life in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America.

5. Mrs. T at Fine Old Famly, a poet, essayist, and homeschooling mother. There are so many reasons I would like to give the award to her blog, and I feel inadequate to the task of describing them all; you'll have to read her yourself to understand. Not only does she write superlatively, but the ethos of her blog combines a deeply compassionate humanity, a love for and ease within the intellectual life, and a devotion to God, her vocation, and her family that I greatly admire.

I also want to acknowledge all my blogging colleagues, both known and unknown to me, who are working to create a culture of love and beauty on the web.

Pray for the Dead as if They Were Still Alive

I just read this in Heather King's Redeemed:

"I read a reflection by Dorothy Day . . . that because God transcends time, we can pray for the dead as if they were still alive; we can pray for God to be close to them with respect to problems or illnesses or crises they had when they were still alive, and the prayer somehow helps them with those problems they had when they were still alive."

Has anyone ever heard of this before? I hadn't, and I liked it.

There and Back, Part 1

While my journey back into the Catholic Church was a relatively swift one, spurred by a tangible experience of Christ's mercy and forgiveness back in 2002, my journey out of it had been long, slow, and meandering. I was never quite severed from my belief (someone once said that being a Catholic is like being from the South, something that marks you for life and that you can never really shake, no matter how you try); rather, I tried to pile a lot of other, strange beliefs on top of it, mostly in order to make the way I was living seem rational and justify it in my own mind. My trip away started in adolescence, when my parents, who were struggling in their marriage, stopped taking the family to Mass. From that point, I started down a path of a kind of casual, flaky neo-paganism to which I later on made more formal commitments, and which I now see allowed a great deal of evil into my life -- not that the doors to evil had not already been wide open, unfortunately, since my childhood.

There's a certain type of intellectual/artistic woman in New York City (and no doubt elsewhere) who rejects traditional religion and social morality in the quest for freedom and self-realization, but at the same time craves the connection and sense of rightness that those more traditional practices convey. She tends to take up non-western spiritual beliefs, or to accrue an amalgam of eastern and occult practices which she undertakes mostly on her own and sometimes with others. These patchwork belief systems are attractive because they seem non-judgmental; most of the time, this woman is getting her heart broken over and over in her search for love, because that's how it is, and, having abandoned traditional mores, she can avoid being indicted for her sexual behavior; the synthetic and syncretic belief systems instead provide means of explaining the heartbreak and jettisoning the notion of sin. While this woman is almost bound not to admit it, she's really searching and hoping for a real love, one that will last, i.e. a traditional husband, but she's not allowed, by the standards of the company she keeps, to come out and say so. The morality of this company accepts that people will partner up and then drift apart, and that women can't expect commitment from most men, even after they've given all of themselves; though they may try to pretend otherwise, this state of affairs is usually devastating for the women in question.

I think that in many ways the accretion of beliefs that these women profess is meant to soothe their troubled souls from so much heartache, and to give them a sense of power in the face of such powerlessness. I've known many of these women; they've been friends, colleagues, family members, and respected teachers. I can see now what I couldn't see then: that moral relativism is a subtle ploy of the enemy, one that has a particular appeal to intellectuals, and that it leads to sin, excuses sin, and then perpetuates the cycle. The first stirrings I had that it might be a load of crap were when I would hear women of this type say about abortion: "Well, I would never have an abortion myself, but I am committed to other women's right to have them." Being post-abortive, hearing this was always like a kick in the stomach to me. You mean you DIDN'T think abortion was okay? At least not for you? And if it's not okay for you, why would it be okay for me, or for anyone else? I assumed that something that people were organizing about, marching for, professing, and demanding must be something, well, in the interest of the common good, but my pro-choice friends clearly thought abortion was a bad thing that other women (subtext: other, less-fortunate, women) should be able to have without questions or restrictions. Believe it or not, I found this shocking.

The disconnect in logic, morality, and compassion in this paradox began to awaken my sense of horror at my own abortion, as well as my acceptance of the need for real forgiveness, not the kind of self-made forgiveness cobbled together from the ideas encountered in books on meditation or the tarot. The shifting definition of the good -- that what would be repellent to me might be swell for you -- was understood by the women in my circle to be the price we paid for liberation, and heartbreak the price for freedom and the journey to self-realization. This was the real world, was the message: no longer the safe, constricted world of our mothers. The real world, real relationships, real love, were categorically NOT safe, and we were brave women, we told ourselves, for venturing out onto those choppy waters. Because there were so few tangible rewards in any of it, the journey itself, or so all the books claimed, was supposed to be its own reward.

I am one of the lucky ones who got out. This has meant a certain distancing, if not a complete break, from many of my old friends. It's also meant that I am forever, in a certain sense, marked by heartbreak. This is not to say that I don't have joy in my life; I do. Joy, however, does not cancel out heartbreak; in fact, real joy can never really be that distant from heartbreak, as we know from the Gospels. Joy and pleasure are not the same thing. Conversion has made me a different person, and yet I'm also the same foolish, misguided, deluded, and desperate woman I always was. Heartbreak has left a permanent mark on me, and I pray that it may be a sign to others not to go the way I went.

Mercy Mercy Mercy

When I came to New York to deposit my dissertation last week, my first stop upon setting foot in the city was the Church of the Holy Innocents. My arrival coincided with the Hour of Divine Mercy, and I wanted to ask God for His particular guidance and mercy in the beautiful church that has been so important in my life. Holy Innocents has exposition all day long on weekdays, and so I was dismayed when I got there to find something that never happens: the church was closed. I was afraid that the parish had fallen victim to the Archdiocese's plans for realignment. I went to the rectory and leaned on the bell. No one came. Before walking away, I rang once more, and this time s young man answered, a parish volunteer who was there to work on a special project. I explained that I was visiting New York (how strange to say that!), and had wanted to pray in the church and say the Divine Mercy Chaplet. He told me that the church had closed early for Martin Luther King Day, but he let me in to say my devotions. It was a rare and mysterious privilege to be allowed to pray alone in silence in that holy spot, illuminated only by the candles lit by the faithful.

More Redeemed

From Heather King's memoir Redeemed:

“As for abortion, I’d had three by the time I was confirmed [a recovering alcoholic, King had a conversion and was received into the Catholic Church in her forties], and knew instinctively when I had them, and believe even more strongly now, that abortion is wrong. . . . I’m not saying I don’t understand any number of reasons why I had, and other women have, abortions, or feel driven to abortion, or feel there’s no other option but abortion, but an act of violence can never also be an act leading toward true freedom . . . We have to act as if the universe we long for is already in place, as if the kingdom of God is already here. And by believing it, and acting in accord with our belief, we bring it into being . . . a universe where we admit that actions have consequences and take responsibility for them . . . a universe where every child is welcomed . . . . In a way, [abortion is] a murder of ourselves: a murder of hope, of love, of the only reason we were put here, which is surely to care for and be kind to each other.”

Happy Birthday

To Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born on this day (in the old calendar, the feast of Saint John Chrysostom) in 1756.

Matchmaking 101

I'm still on my university music department's mailing list, and I forward the notices I receive of interesting concerts and lectures around New York to the students I've taught in the university's senior colleges over the past couple of years. One of my Music 101 students from the Spring 2008 semester wrote me back to tell me that she had been dating another student she'd met in the class, and that they'd gone together to some of the events I'd recommended.

It's good to know that I made, or at least facilitated, an appreciable difference (and I hope it's a good one) in at least two lives!

Redeemed

A few years ago, a good friend gave me a subscription the The Sun magazine. I have clear memories of many occasions of clutching it to myself and weeping as I read it on the subway on my way to work. Although some of the writing was trite and the editorial stance predictable, there was usually something in each month's issue that would just kick me to the ground. Usually it was the "Readers Write" section, to which readers sent in their own meditations on a prescribed topic. The writing ability of that magazine's general readership was of an outstandingly high level, especially with respect to the ability to get right to the point using an economy of language.

I eventually stopped subscribing, mostly because of The Sun's well-worn hostility to traditional (i.e. Western) religions. Christianity was generally treated to reinterpretations from Gnostic gurus, or became the foil for a writer's reminiscence about his grandmother or about growing up in a tough ethnic neighborhood (in which case the Christianity was always of the Catholic variety). But there was one frequent contributor who was a professed Catholic, and whose work I usually found both moving and bitingly funny. Her name is Heather King, and I've just started reading her new book, Redeemed (pictured above).

I think I'm going to like it. She opens with an epigraph by Wittgenstein:

"The Christian religion is only for one who needs infinite help. That is, only for one who feels infinite anguish . . . The Christian faith -- as I see it -- is one's refuge in this ultimate torment. Anyone to whom it is given in this anguish to open his heart, instead of contracting it, accepts the means of salvation in his heart."

King explains:

"I don't know about you, but this is the kind of quote that makes me feel right at home."

I'm down with that.

Goodbye, All of That

I've come back to New York to finish up my business here. Today I am set to turn in my dissertation and sign out of the university, which will sever my official ties to this city in which I spent most of my life.

I lived variously in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan Valley, the East Village, and Washington Heights. I reached adulthood in New York. The city has undergone gradual but ineluctable changes in the past two decades in ways I could never have foreseen in my youth, and whose cumulative effect is startling, especially after coming back to the actual city, not to the city of my memories and my interior life, after time away. I've always believed that I know New York like the proverbial back of my hand, but now, since I was last here a couple of months ago, I already feel like a stranger.

Some things are familiar, but altered somehow. I stayed overnight with one of my brothers, who lives in a Brooklyn neighborhood (its backyards are shown above, in the snow) where I spent a great deal of time over the past twenty-some years. Through a set of fairy-tale-like circumstances, he has come to live in one of the most beautiful apartments that anyone could imagine. One window looks out over a courtyard covered with snow and criss-crossed by paths like a Kertész photograph; from another, one has the hypnotic, strangely beautiful sight of an endless parade of cars and trucks on the arching overpass of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the container cranes at the Port of Elizabeth. From my former knowledge of the neighborhood, I could never have conceived that a home like this could exist there. If I lived there, I would never want to leave the house (though outside it's just as charming), but would stay in looking out the windows all day (his wife works from home; I'm not sure how she can manage with all that distraction from the mesmerizing view).

But I couldn't stay and look out the window. I left my brother's at 7:30 in the morning. My path took me through the Lower East Side, where I saw a group of Chinese immigrants practicing a fan dance in the snow in Sarah Roosevelt Park, and I crossed the street where, a hundred years ago, my great-grandfather had a pushcart. I realized that, once my dissertation was deposited and the flurry of bureaucratic office visits and paperwork that went along with the process was over, I would have no more real business here. It was an astonishing thought.

Going through the administrative process at the university was bittersweet. The six years I spent getting my doctorate were among the happiest and most fulfilling of my life. I felt like I had finally found my place. I would walk from my day job to the university and back several days a week during my coursework and research years, and once I got to school, a sense of rightness would settle upon me, and I wanted never to have to leave. I hadn't felt that way at first, however. I recall that, at the music department's orientation in the fall of 2002, I was gripped with fear, sure I would fail. The next day's general university orientation was much more reassuring, though. One of the things that cheered that day me was a speech given by a woman doctoral candidate, who said, among other things, "You can get married in graduate school. You can have a baby in graduate school." Those possibilities were among my fondest wishes (though, as it turned out, they did not involve the beloved man who was my boyfriend had at the time. He moved away, and I met my beloved husband a few months later. My baby was born in the midway point of my doctoral work).

So my path away from the life I'd known for many years coincided with my doctoral studies, which were also a sort of path away from performing and towards teaching and scholarship. My work finished successfully, but so many other things in that old life did not. The psychic landscape of my New York is littered with bitter failures of all kinds. In a way, it is a countryside of utter brokenness, of devastating memories. Because of that, I'm not entirely sorry to leave; sometimes I feel as if our move away from New York is a hejira, a flight from danger (at least according to Joni Mitchell's definition of the word).

Still, I will miss New York terribly in so many ways. Most of all, I think, I'll miss New Yorkers. There is a beautiful kind of unspoken understandng among people of all origins here; people approach one another with a frank openness, mostly lacking in the preemptive suspicion and guarded hostility found elsewhere.

I don't know when I'll be back next, but I do have commencement in May.

(Image: 423smith.com)

More Dreams

Last night I dreamt that Condoleezza Rice and I were picking up patrons' lost and broken gold jewelry from the floor of the Great Hall at the Metropolitan Museum after closing time. Not sure what that one means.

"Die Junge Nonne"

Dame Janet Baker sings one of Schubert's later songs, composed in 1825, in recital at Covent Garden. I'm guessing this performance took place in the late 1970s.

If you don't know the song "Die junge Nonne" (The Young Nun), you're in for an experience. The poem (text below, in German and English) is narrated by a nun who has taken refuge in religious life from the anguish of the world. Notice how the key changes from minor to the relative major in the third stanza as she describes her newfound peace, and the ringing of the bell in the high register of the piano (a bit of word-painting). Don't miss, however, the rumbling chords in the left hand of the piano near the end of the song, as the disordered theme associated with the young nun's past reappears, signalling that more turmoil awaits her.

The first time I performed in England, in 2001, I was asked at a dinner party afterward who my favorite singer was. I thought the other guests were going to make me a Dame of the British Empire myself when I answered that it was Dame Janet Baker, but it was -- and is -- true. Words cannot describe her superlative artistry. Oh, and Murray Perahia plays the hell out of the piano part, too.

Die junge Nonne (Jakob Nikolaus, Reichsfreiherr von Craigher de Jachelutta, 1797-1855)

Wie braust durch die Wipfel der heulende Sturm!
Es klirren die Balken, es zittert das Haus!
Es rollet der Donner, es leuchtet der Blitz,
Und finster die Nacht, wie das Grab!

Immerhin, immerhin,
so tobt' es auch jüngst noch in mir!
Es brauste das Leben, wie jetzo der Sturm,
Es bebten die Glieder, wie jetzo das Haus,
Es flammte die Liebe, wie jetzo der Blitz,
Und finster die Brust, wie das Grab.

Nun tobe, du wilder gewalt'ger Sturm,
Im Herzen ist Friede, im Herzen ist Ruh,
Des Bräutigams harret die liebende Braut,
Gereinigt in prüfender Glut,
Der ewigen Liebe getraut.

Ich harre, mein Heiland! mit sehnendem Blick!
Komm, himmlischer Bräutigam, hole die Braut,
Erlöse die Seele von irdischer Haft.
Horch, friedlich ertönet das Glöcklein vom Turm!
Es lockt mich das süße Getön
Allmächtig zu ewigen Höhn.
Alleluja!

Here is my translation:

How loudly the howling wind roars through the treetops!
The rafters rattle, the house shudders!
The thunder rolls, the lighting flashes,
And the night is as dark as the grave!

Just like this, not long ago,
It raged within me too.
My life roared, just like this storm,
My limbs trembled, just like this house,
Love burst into flame, just like this lightning;
And my heart was as dark as the grave.

So rage then, you wild, turbulent storm;
In my heart there is peace; in my heart there is tranquility!
The loving bride awaits her bridegroom,
All cleansed by the purifying flames,
To eternal Love betrothed.

I await you, my Saviour, with longing gaze!
Come, heavenly Bridegroom, take your bride;
Rescue her soul from earthly bondage.

Listen: the bell rings peacefully from the tower!
That sweet tone invites me overpoweringly to the heights of heaven.

Halleluja!