Laurel Massé

What are you reading?

And what is on your bookshelf these days? What's on the bedside table? What book did you grumble about having to put down the last time the phone rang?

J.K. Rowling's bookshelf

I wonder what J.K. Rowling has on her bookshelf. I specifically wonder if she has read anything by British theologian James Alison. JATB, any guesses?

In the meantime... I was not going to succumb, I was going to embrace holy patience and wait till one of my friends had finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but my friends were reading s-l-o-w-l-y, and when I did a recording session on Saturday, the wonderful engineer and I started talking about the HP books, and the next thing I knew, we were in a bookstore. Buying. WIthout regrets, I hasten to add. I read and read and read and read and I cried, too, of course, and I know how it ends, and am satisfied. No, I am not going to tell you why. Yes, you will have to read it for yourselves.

Today has been a day of relentless rain, a perfect day to stay in and read (though I went out and rehearsed). It is now tea-time, and your very own literate singer is in her apartment, having a mug of tea, and thinking about and missing the so-very-real characters in the HP series. Do not worry - I did this at the end of the Lord of the Rings saga, too, and that was worse, because I knew that Tolkien was dead, and there would be no more books from that hand, that heart. This little sniffly episode will pass, is passing, has passed, and here is why: I know that the only thing that prevents us from seeing miracles and magic in our midst every moment of every day is that we do not know how to see. I know that the whole bright world is flaming like shook foil, as Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote. That every bush is afire with God. That the kingdom of heaven is among us. And that we need our eyes opened.

I have read that, when Capt. James Cook sailed his tall ships to the Hawaiian Islands, and anchored there offshore, nobody on the beach could see the boats. Sight happens in the brain, really - information of light and shadow has to be interpreted, and then, and only then, do we actually "see", because we know, from referencing previous patterns, what we are seeing. The islanders had no frame of reference for those ships, their brains had no way to interpret and categorize those shapes, and so discarded the information. No one saw the boats.

Even if this is not what actually happened, not factual, I believe it to be true. We all have moments when, for no apparent reason, a curtain in our mind moves aside, and we see a reality far more intense than that which we usually notice. Frighteningly beautiful. Sacred. Magical. Holy. Enlightened. Imbued. Whatever word you choose. Jesus talks about the eye being the lamp of the body, and that if that eye is clear and healthy (which it often is not) we fill with light, because there is nothing, no film, between us and the light. Which is the state mystics seem to live in, and which scares most of us silly, so we reach for our "real life" shades, and call the intensified living unreal and unrealistic when it is actually the Realest Real. I am reminded of the Three Stooges. Curly starts yelling, "I can't see! I can't see!" Larry asks, "Why not?" Curly replies, still panicked, "My eyes are closed!". Yep, that's us.

I think that books like these - Harry Potter,Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Wrinkle in Time - blow that curtain a little, move it away for a moment,. We love them because they help us to see things rain-washed, startling, and fresh.

LIke they were in that garden we used to play in. Remember?

Thank you, J.K.Rowling

Like many folks, I have been spending the last few days re-reading the sixth Harry Potter book, refreshing my memory in preparation for savoring the seventh and final one. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows goes on sale here in NY in about two hours. Even before I read it, though, I am feeling teary. It will be hard to say goodbye to this series. I cried for a week when I read the last paragraph of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, wept for The Wind in the Willows, too.

I will write more about this in the next few days, about books that have shown me a secret door back into the garden, but for now, my profound gratitude to J.K. Rowling, who said "yes" when Harry Potter presented himself to her to be written. Jo, I am so proud of you. Well done! And thank you!

In-dependence Day

This was my day.

A car alarm pulling me up from sleep in the morning, a cat taking advantage of my waking to beg for breakfast. A lovely large cup of Community Coffee New Orleans Blend (thank you, C.J.). A long mosey (slow walk with destination) to the Cathedral, followed by an amble (slow walk, no particular destination) down 110th Street, where I discovered Labyrinth Books, a real bookstore, and bought a used copy of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets. I ran into a singer friend from Ashokan on upper Broadway. She had to call out my name; I didn't see her at first because I was looking at a dog.

Indulged in a latte and a browse through "Burnt Norton" at a sidewalk café where a young woman was studying Russian on one side of me, a gentleman with a British accent was discussing photography at the table behind me, and a man opposite me was reading The Secret rather apologetically, by which I mean that he said, "well, a friend gave it to me, so I have to read it." Two Schipperke dogs trotted by on long leashes.

The sky clouded over and the breeze started to smell wet.

A man standing in front of the Romanian Orthodox Church told me about how much better life had been in Romania when it was Communist - "nobody too little, nobody too much, everybody middle. You understand?"

I walked past my car to find I had been given a parking ticket on a holiday.

Now it is raining. Fireworks will begin soon. My cat will hide under the sofa. I will go to bed with a book.

I declared my independence today by staying off the phone and computer, and my interdependence by talking to strangers in the street. I declared my independence by buying a second-hand book at an independent bookstore, my interdependence by the book being poetry that calls the reader into communion with the writer. I declared my independence by walking everywhere I went, and my complete utter dependence by having as my one destination and as every step I took the kingdom of heaven wherein we live and move and have our being. As St. Catherine of Siena said, "all the way to heaven is heaven." I know this is always true; all the same, it is easier to feel after Ashokan, where all the way to the dance is the dance.

That was my July 4th. How was yours?

 

Back to the city

Fresh from a week at Ashokan that culminated in dancing my fool head off to the Texas Playboys - not a recording! Live! - I sang at the Cathedral yesterday morning one day ahead of a cough and a sore throat. I know what this is. It's the natural result of being overwhelmed by joy. The body says,"Captain, she canna take no more", and the dilithium crystals take a little nap, anad I come down with a little something that is enough to keep me quiet for a day or two.

Ashokan Fiddle and Dance Camp is heaven on earth. I mean something very specific by that, and I have to say it in the language I am comfortable with. It is an experience for me of the kingdom of heaven revealing itself to be right here, right now. Here. Now. Every here. Every now. In every one. That's the real world, and the challenge is to carry it with me, to remember this, and to revel in the accomplishments of my many companions in this life, and to share in their sorrows. And to dance.

I did take a break in my reading; after having devoted two months to the Onegoodbook experiment, I needed to come into something else. So I started Barbara Ehrenreich's Dancing in the Streets, subtitled A History of Collective Joy. But it is really hard to read about dancing when just up the hill you can hear fiddles and a swinging rhythm section calling you to actually dance. So I put it aside till sometime later this summer (after Harry Potter, of course), and am about to re-immerse in scripture. But I am going for the gospels now. The more I read of the Old Testament, the more I long for the good news.

It is going to take me a few days to be posting on a semi-regular schedule. Looking forward...

laurelmasse.com

My newly-redesigned website is up and running - please take a moment to visit, and if you have not already done so, join my mailing list. You can hear many of my recordings in mp3 format, and later this summer music will be available for download. Many thanks to George Hahn of GHX International for his beautiful work.