Hi there. Been busy. Saw my daughter for all of about an hour in the last two days. Ergo, no blogging. Better now.
Every now and again I see a movie or hear a piece of music that makes me, well, get a little weepy behind the eyes. Sometimes it's my life circumstances, and sometimes it's just something weepy.
August Rush is definitely the latter.
It's a great movie. Lots of heart, lots of great music, and lots of great actors (Terence Howard is AWESOME, and he's only in a few scenes). Freddy Highmore delivers another solid performance as "the child who mourns and the world mourns with him." It was a curious sensation: the cynic in me knew I was being, well, manipulated, but the maudlin in me just didn't care. Yes, I cried just a little bit at the end, especially when I realized how it would end. Because that's what sappy guys like me do.
"What a [fireplace]ing nancy-boy," says my inner nose tackle, and I'm not so sure he's wrong, either. But they're both me - and I won't apologize for either.
My former colleague Erik and I both loved the musical aspect of Tolkien's creation myth from the Silmarilion (no, it's not in the movies - it's a separate book that mythopoeics like me & Erik love and most folks throw aside in disgust.). For me, there is something of God in all good music, and I think that was lurking under the surface in August Rush: there's a lot of talk about faith, hope and love, all of which I seem to remember someone mentioning in the Bible once or twice. A pox on the producers of the dvd we got from Netflix - it didn't have any "making of" special features, so the faith aspect never got addressed. But I'm sure it was there on purpose.
Anyway, good music = presence of God for me sometimes, and the video below is no exception. I'm not in the choir singing, but I wish I had been. All the same, Durufle's Ubi Caritas is one of those pieces of music that touches my soul, and if you've not heard it before, here are the 'main' lyrics:
Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor.
Exultemus, et in ipso iucundemur.
Timeamus, et amemus Deum vivum.
Et ex corde diligamus nos sincero.
Where love and charity abide, God is there.
Christ's love has gathered us into one.
Let us rejoice and be pleased in Him.
Let us fear, and let us love the living God.
And may we love each other with a sincere heart.
Amen, and amen. Peace, friends.
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