December 30, 2008

On a nasty night, Christmas Eve 1965, members of my family walked into my father’s hospital room. We had just returned from my grandparents’ home, where we had celebrated a Swedish smorgasbord, caroled and opened presents. The sideboard boasted turkey, meatballs, limpa bread, inlagd sill, lutfisk, spritz cookies and svensk plum pudding. But this year it all looked a little gray and lackluster. Usually the children went to bed after dinner and were awakened at midnight to open gifts until 2 a.m. But this year we opened presents right after dinner so we could go to see Dad.

God is “eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, holy, just, faithful, benevolent, merciful and gracious.” I can still rattle off those divine attributes learned in catechism class. Well-tutored Christians will remember learning that some of these attributes of God are “incommunicable attributes,” which means that they have no analogies among humans, who are not able to share the various “omnis.”

“My faith is the grand drama of my life. I’m a believer, so I sing words of God to those who have no faith.”
—Olivier Messiaen

Vast as the heavens are that surround us, we seldom lift our gaze beyond the narrow boundaries of daily tasks. We know we were made only a little lower than the angels, yet we stumble along from hour to hour as if life’s highest purpose were punching a time clock and watching a favorite show. Like Prufrock, we measure out our lives in coffee spoons.

Where might a new listener begin? On several recordings still in the catalog the composer himself performs or supervises a performance, including a remarkable DVD combining his own organ improvisations with a performance of the Quartet for the End of Time (Image Entertainment 6305394776). A documentary titled The Crystal Liturgy (Juxtaposition B000WPJ6O4) gathers archival material and musical excerpts into a wide-ranging musical biography.

It is commonly assumed, and regularly taught, that the key difference between playwriting and screenwriting is that the former tells the bulk of its story with words (it is dialogue-driven), while the latter relies more heavily on images (it is camera-driven). This may be true, but a less obvious difference is that onstage one needs words and performance to draw the audience’s attention to a certain spot or action (“Hey, look here!”), while onscreen all you need is a close-up or a camera move—the viewer can’t look anywhere else, no matter how much they might wish they could.