Monday, June 11, 2012

Shining Night


Last night I went to a screening of the movie Shining Night:  A Portrait of Composer Morten Lauridsen at the Rafael Theater.  The composer himself was there, as was the director, Michael Stillwater.  The film was lovely and simple, beautifully photographed, and part of a larger body of work called, “In Search of the Great Song.”  According to Stillwater’s website, Song Without Borders, Lauridsen’s gorgeous works are, “. . . the most frequently performed choral music of modern history.” 

Truly a mystic, Lauridsen does a great deal of his writing on Waldron, one of the San Juan Islands in the Pacific Northwest, the place where he says he first felt whole.  Speaking after the film was shown, he described when he purchased, sight unseen, his wonderfully dilapidated house on the island.  Seeing the structure for the first time, the realtor apologized profusely, and the woman Lauridsen was with was looking at him as if he were insane.  But Lauridsen was ecstatic.   "No, " he said.  "Look at what you can see from here.”  He didn’t care what the house looked like; he cared that from this place he could see spectacular beauty. 

This came back to me as I sat this morning.  Feeling, perhaps, a little dilapidated myself, I suddenly stopped looking at myself and began to look through me to what was all around.  Lauridsen’s house might not last many more winters, but the land on which it was built will survive a series of structures that come and go.  My perspective shifted from the view of the self to the view from the self, and for just a moment I became invisible, like a very clean window. 

While it is human to love what death will take, there is a blessed stillness in loving death itself, to stop – for just a moment – the ceaseless renovation and nestle into the arms of that which takes us home.  I felt patient and safe.  Everything I’ve built became irrelevant, and I beamed as though I’d discovered a new color, the color of appreciation.  I never wanted to come back. 




Yet here I am.  As I sat in the center of creation without words or thoughts, I suddenly felt an ache of loneliness, a desire to share this moment with someone else.  It gets me every time.  

5 comments:

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  2. I'll bet it's a nice spot. The San Juans are incredible. the weather can be just AWFUL, but when it's nice there's nothing like it. Thanks, Mia. I must listen again to Lauridsen.

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    1. Neil, I think he only spends his summers there. LA for the winter.

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