Word: psalms
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...these people, the vocalists, I asked them what do they feel like living in the late twentieth-century, media saturation, electronically-accelerated culture, etc etc. And so each person came back at me with all this kind of wild stuff. I mean Mariko came back with a Buddhist mantra psalm of a two thousand-year-old Japanese dialect. Or Julia Scher came back with a spoken word piece about engineering for the environment. So to make a long story short, you can have Julia Scher from MIT sharing a space with someone from Wu-Tang Clan, or Mariko Mori...
This pattern of inconsistency continued. When the choir boys sang Schubert's Psalm No.23, they achieved some exquisite moments of technical flawlessness--and others of bored inertia. The choir boys were not in want of technical skills; only interpretive ones. Psalm No. 23 is a prayer of peace for someone who has realized that his life is in the hands of God. But an audience member might have known nothing about the meaning of the song--and the joy of love or the anticipation of heaven--if the lyrics had not been printed in the program...
...that fateful night of Aug. 16, Clinton reportedly recited the 51st Psalm, which King David recited after the prophet Nathan reprimands him for his misdeeds in connection with that other woman, Bathsheba. David lusts after another man's wife, sleeps with her, and then has the man killed. Not exactly the King's high point...
...says a great deal that this psalm resonated with Clinton. The man has identified himself with a king of Ancient Israel, and he does not seem to be referring to David's political and sexual impotence. It is worth exploring the implications of such a lofty comparison. For example, can you picture Clinton's reciting the psalm in your mind's eye? Is the image one of a powerful leader, or a lame duck...
...because the morning and evening stars are out of his reach. People sense the sincerity of his love, but also its promiscuity and selfishness. He just about loves everybody, and that leads from temptation to redemption and back again, forever. Sunday night he prayed with Jesse Jackson, from Psalm 51: "Have mercy on me, O God...and cleanse me from my sins." At the end of the novel, Gantry takes note of a new choir girl with pretty ankles, just before he tells the congregation, "We shall yet make these United States a moral nation...