Chocolate, Dragons and Plainchant

I’m gonna eat chocolate and read all day. Okay, maybe not. Seems like a fine idea though.

It’ll be up in the 50s later. Possibly Ten and I can take a walk over to Off The Hook (formerly Louis’), the neighborhood seafood restaurant, for lunch. That’d be a long hike, for me, especially over the rough roads and broken sidewalks around here. Still, it could be a great way to push myself, expand my abilities and shit. Plus, I’d have a nice, lengthy, restorative break (LUNCH) in the middle of all that exercise.

Problem, the wind’s due to kick up to Red Flag Warning (‘the fuck? Why is this capitalized on weather.com?) conditions at noon. So, NOT safe walking weather for yurs truly.

This, naturally, brings me back to reading in bed whilst snarfing chocolate eggs. A splendid plan.

The book I’m reading now is about a murder in a small, remote, cloistered monastery in northern Québec. The monks are known for their Gregorian chants.

I believe it must have been Daddy who introduced me to plainchant. Despite my bone deep love of bombast, the exquisite, simple purity of Gregorian chants drew me in like Odysseus hearing the Siren’s song for the first time. (little known fact, Odysseus was an easy mark, a total round heels)

Now, 18 years after my hearing took the last train to the coast, I can’t bring so much as a single phrase into my aural memory. This, as I’m sure you understand, blows gangrenous Krayt Dragon chunks.

My father converted to Catholicism but not until after his mother, Grandma, had died. Why convert at all and why wait?

Daddy did it for his wife, my mother—she was quite devout (if you’ll plz recall, I survived an elementary school education at the hands of angry nuns). More than for her, possibly, he became Catholic for the music. Daddy absolutely loved singing in the choir. (gotta say, from what I recall, the Catholic hymns were, in fact, musically superior to the Protestant ones)

Why wait until his own mother was gone before joining? Ruby never lost her fury over what the church had done to Ireland. Her family left Derry, in Northern Ireland, at the end of the 19th century, settling in Canada. Grandpa’s family had left a small village on the Ring of Kerry around the same time, settling in Buffalo, New York.

Daddy was well aware of the church’s sins but wanted to make his wife happy AND he had lost his heart and soul to the music. Here are two quotes from Louise Penny’s The Beautiful Mystery. The first is by a monk who had joined the order specifically because of the Gregorian chants. Like my father, he’d fallen in love.

“What did falling in love do for you? Can you ever really explain it? It filled empty spaces I never knew were empty. It cured a loneliness I never knew I had. It gave me joy. And freedom. I think that was the most amazing part. I suddenly felt both embraced and freed (by the chants) at the same time.”

This second quote is from a detective whose family had left the church.

The Catholic Church wasn't just a part of his parents' live, and his grandparents', it ruled their lives. The priests told them what to eat, what to do, who to vote for, what to think. What to believe.

Told them to have more and more babies. Kept them pregnant and poor and ignorant.

They'd been beaten in school, scolded in church, abused in the back rooms.

And when, after generations of this, they'd finally walked away, the Church had accused them of being unfaithful. And threatened them with eternal damnation.

I wish Daddy was still alive so we could compare religion’s manifest wickedness alongside the brilliant works of art and music created in its name.

That’d be one hell of a satisfying convo.