Niko's First Early Music Concert

 

This morning when Travalon drove me to work, a bunch of the incoming freshmen going to their orientation program walked in front of us. The last guy kind of shuffled along, so I mocked him, but the window was open so maybe he heard me. I said, "What was his problem?" and Travalon said, "Maybe he doesn't want to be there."

During my morning break I went for a walk, and I saw a young tree dying from the drought. That hurt my heart so much. And why didn't the landscapers water it? It's on campus, not out in the wild. I prayed very hard for rain, and then I heard thunder, so I hurried back inside.

Then I went down the rabbit hole of trying to find out more about the image of Niko's ancestor that a faculty member has on her office door.

I googled "Illuminor VI" and found out it was a woodcutting done by Daniel Cramer in the early 17th Century, and there was a whole series of forty images of a heart in different situations, with a word that could be good (health) or bad (vanity), and this one was "Clarity." There was a deck of Tarot cards that you could get of all forty images, but Tarot kind of freaks me out. I did some more digging, and Daniel Cramer was a Lutheran minister who had something against the Jesuits, and supposedly he was a Rosicrucian, which is something I know very little about. I finally found a scan of the original book, and each heart had a poem about the quality it was associated with in Latin, German, French, and Italian. I found "Clarity," which was the only heart with an eye, and from the French I could see it was begging God to give him clarity to understand things. This seems good, not like Tarot, which is divination. Asking God for clarity is not like trying to see the future.  

It finally began to rain, so at lunch I walked under the overhang on the third floor of our building. As I walked, I thought about the kid we saw this morning, and I wondered if his sluggish walk was actually because he was sad. Maybe he felt rejected by the other kids because he is brown, not white. And what if he was so down and then he heard me mocking him? Oh, I felt so bad! I prayed very hard for him to know he was loved, and I prayed for all unloved people to feel love. Then God said to me, "The person you find hardest to love is the one who needs it most." I knew He was right, and I said, "Not now, I'm not ready, but I'm not saying never." 

I was shocked to get an email about a concert tonight - talk about little notice! I was planning to pray the Rosary with the Ladies, but they said we could do it tomorrow, so I hurried to the concert. It was an early music one featuring some of my favorites, like Buxtehude, Frescobaldi, and both father and son Scarlatti, and bigger names (Handel and Telemann), and even the composers I hadn't heard of were fabulous. I only wish Tiffy could have been there too - she would have loved it so much. Listening to that music from around the time Daniel Cramer was creating his heart images made me so introspective. Modern music is not just in equal temperament, but nowadays it's all autotuned, but this music has such purity of sound. I had brought Niko with me, and I thought about his ancestor, and love, and I realized that's what the heart in Daniel Cramer's drawings is really all about. Imagine a plush little toy teaching me a lesson! 

I sat next to a woman who looked familiar, but lots of people do. In this case she said, "You look familiar!" so we talked and realized we had seen each other at other early music concerts. One of my bandmates was there too, the one who always used to go to the Early Music Festival, and both she and the woman next to me recommended the workshops, so next year I'll have to try them. I used to take the ones at the Early Music Festival and really enjoyed them. 

As I had rushed into the concert, I met a woman at the door who is a Grammy winner. She was one of the teachers, and one of the performers tonight. Then as I was leaving, she was too. How amazing that in this town you can run into a Grammy winner! The concert was at a church people jokingly call "Christless Presbyterian" because the name is Christ Presbyterian, and they used to have a big statue of Christ on the front, but then they took it down some years ago. It overlooks the lake, so as I was leaving, I stood looking out over the lake that was deep blue as twilight was falling. I thanked God for the rain and for the lesson on love, and for opening the eye of my own heart. He granted me the clarity I hadn't even thought to ask for.

Famous Hat