Requiem
I love music. For me, one of the highest and most moving forms of music is the Requiem Mass. Bach's Mass in B Minor or Verdi's Manzoni Requiem or Mozart's or Faure's or Beethoven's Missa Solemnis are just a few of the sublime works that take me to another place outside of time and space. Other shorter sacred choral pieces, particularly Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium will stop me dead in my tracks and put me into an instant trance.

The thing I've been wrestling with for many years now is that, on the one hand, these are deeply religious works and, on the other hand, I'm an agnostic and, well, that shouldn't compute, right(?). But, still, their impact on me is very real and profound.

The other night, as I was listening to all of the above pieces, a thought occurred to me that, besides the inspired music, the thing that was really moving me was the same set of emotions that one experiences at the funeral of a relative or of a dear friend. Death is a very powerful (probably a gross understatement - make that "the most powerful") and Real Thing in Life. When someone close to me dies, a Tsunami of various conflicting emotions sweeps over, around and through me. There's the deep sadness. There's the uncomputable, sudden and for ever absence of a person that, just that morning, you took for granted would still be here. There's the feeling of you having, once again, dodged the bullet (well, this time, at least). There's the communal grief and leaning on shoulders shared between friends and relatives that are left behind (the "Survivors" (well, for the time being, at least)). There's the release and rejuvenation at the wake when I "wake up" (for a couple of days, at least) to the finiteness and preciousness of our own Life which, most of the time, I so take for granted. There's the cultivation the memory of the departed, now that memories are all that are left. Swirling among all these are many other emotions and thoughts that muddle the mind.

Well, somehow, for me, listening to a Requiem Mass smooths and clears these troubled waters. Listening to a Requiem Mass puts Death into perspective by giving some kind of non-verbal meaning to our own Life in the face of Irrefutable Death.

For me, it's all in the music. I don't speak Latin and I don't even think of what the words are trying to impart (on the other hand, I probably WOULD have a difficult time singing the words in a mass chorus, which is, indeed, sad for me). The transcending music, itself, is what lifts me up from the minutia of everyday busy-ness. I would guess that for most, if not all, of these composers, it was the impact of the death of a dear friend (and/or of their own impending demise) that served as the inspirational font for their compositions. The Latin text of the Mass might have been just a secondary format compared to the world-stopping grief that Death hands us all.

So, don't worry (he tells himself), I'm not becoming religious yet. For me, the Requiem Mass is all about Life, not Death or the hereafter.

So, would you please fill up my margarita glass again and here's to all of you, my good friends!