This article was printed last week in the Webster Journal, our student paper. It talks about the concert the Chorale and the St. Louis Chamber Chorus performed at the beginning of November. The concert was a lot of fun, and I was pleasantly surprised when I was asked to answer a few questions about Dr. Bowers and the concert for the Journal. I'm in the picture too; it was bigger in the printed version, but I think I'm pretty visible there on the left end of the picture -- the girl in the gold scarf and plaid skirt.

http://media.www.webujournal.com/media/storage/paper245/news/2009/11/18/Lifestyle/Wu.Music.Professor.GuestConducts.Concert-3836228.shtml

I was looking through some stuff and I found something of interest, it was an earlier piece I wrote; it was my fist stab at symbolism, tell me what you think. and plus now that the weather is cooling off I thought it appropriate. you'll have to forgive me it was I think the 4th poem I ever wrote; so its not very good, but its wintery......

The Viking, as those who have been following the comments on the Judging post may (or may not) have seen, has stepped down with this gracious (or impatient! ;) little comment:

Just give the win to stick-figure-girl...I voted for her....

Keep on keepin' on. Don't do in milk, stay drugs, and drink your school.

Here I double a post from the Steel Lily, to see what the trad-cat readers think.

Last week, in the usual Thursday-noon recital, a fellow-piano-major and I played Debussy's beautiful Petite Suite for piano, four hands. For the first two movements I played the upper part and he the lower, and for the other two, we switched places. We received a good deal of very flattering praise; it was, by all accounts, a pronounced success.

The suite, and some of the things Mr. Schene has said about it, were still turning over in my head after the recital; and when I got home I wrote down this little "suite" of verses. The music can be found on youtube (I'll put links in the titles). My readers may listen to them, and tell me how accurate my little images are.

I. En Bateau

The paddles slice the waters silently,
And in the peaceful golden light of noon
We glide along the river easily,
Far from the faintest thought of dark or ruin;
No ripples on the glassy water lie
To mar its softly pointillistic gleam,
And even the breeze sings, as it whispers by,
A tune I half-remember from a dream...

II. Cortége

The fairy-flutes are piping, far and high,
Sweet as the laughter of the elfin crowd,
And as their small procession marches by,
We cannot help but smile at them - so proud,
Tossing their braids, or curly-tops held tall,
Waving the spoil of a successful raid,
Flowers and nuts from some King Squirrel's hall,
Borne in a gay victorious child-parade.

III. Menuet

Cast off that melancholy from your face!
Upheld by an enchanting violin,
The pairs advance with charming ancient grace;
The minuet is going to begin.
The pipe and viol their harmonies unfurl;
Across the sward they sweep unerringly -
Balance together, step and step and twirl,
And we dream on, lulled by the melody.

IV. Ballet

One rich-voiced cello guides the airy tune,
And trippingly the children whirl away,
Carefree small fairy folk, beneath the moon,
Light-footed, lighter-hearted, bright and gay -
Until the waltz, with passionate romance
(That music is inebriety divine!)
Lifts us, who love, aloft into the dance,
Soaring on wings of song, of love and wine.

Since we are having a series of posts about Halloween, I thought it would be appropriate to quote something about the liturgical spirit of the church around this time (emphasis added):

Let us prepare our souls for the graces heaven is about to shower upon the earth in return for its homage. Tomorrow the Church will be so overflowing with joy, that she will seem to be already in possession of eternal happiness; but today she appears in the garb of penance, confessing that she is still an exile. Let us fast and pray with her; for are not we too pilgrims and strangers in this world, where all things are fleeting and hurry on to death? Year by year, as the great solemnity comes round, it has gathered from among our former companions now saints, who bless our tears and smile upon our songs of hope. Year by year the appointed time draws nearer, when we ourselves, seated at the heavenly banquet, shall receive the homage of those who succeed us, and hold out a helping hand to draw them after us to the home of everlasting happiness. Let us learn, from this very hour, to emancipate our souls; let us keep our hearts free, in the midst of the vain solicitudes and false pleasures of a strange land: the exile has no care but his banishment, no joy but that which gives him a foretaste of his fatherland.

The Liturgical Year by Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.

Now that Halloween has passed and we've been greeted by the usual onslaught of blood and gore, it leads one to think about why our society is so enamoured of all this ugliness. Every October we are bombarded by blood, death and violence: the stores sell everything from dismembered limbs to rotting gravestones, Hollywood releases its most violent movies and occultism temporarily becomes mainstream. Why this fascination? One significant reason has to do with Satan. Where he goes, ugliness follows, and a society as steeped in sin as ours can't help but be inclined to wallow in it. Just as beauty uplifts the soul, ugliness pulls it down, and this is why Satan tries to destroy anything beautiful and replace it with filth. He uses ugliness as a tool to distract those he wishes to lure away from God.

But the fascination with ugliness isn't just a sign of being associated with Satan-it can also be a sign of the despair one feels at not finding beauty (or truth, for that matter). The more one desires the good life, the more poignantly one feels the lack of it. Then in anger and despair the soul says, "Well, if this is all there is, I might as well revel in it." And so the degree of reveling is in direct proportion to the intensity of the frustrated desire. It's partly what they mean when they say "The propensity for evil is equal to the propensity for good." So we can never judge someone who seems given over to ugliness, whether visual or otherwise-we don't know what's in their heart and whether they are merely frustrated in their longing for the good, the beautiful and the true. As Catholics, we have the duty to bring them to the fulfillment of that desire, and away from the ugliness.

Finally, there is also one major reason why ugliness (merely in itself) can never be totally despised: Our Lord Himself embraced ugliness at the most crucial point in His life: Death by crucifixion was the most violent, disturbing and well..just plain UGLY death in existence at that time in the ancient world. But Our Lord didn't just die on a cross, which would have been bad enough. No-first He was scourged to a bloody pulp and THEN crucified. This is what the Psalmist is referring to when he says "But I am a worm and no man..." (Psalm 22:6) So the "good" ugliness can't be totally despised because if Our Lord embraced it, and we are to imitate Him, then we must embrace the "ugliness" in our lives also. Sorrows, loneliness, disappointments, and even failures are all to be accepted (and even LOVED, if you can manage it ;) ). Then we can truly imitate Our Lord and really be worthy of Him.

"There is no beauty in him, nor comeliness...there was no sightliness, that we should be desirous of him." Isaiah 53:2