Kayleen Asbo, Ph.D
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Week Three: Beethoven and Klimt

"So often  if we talk about religion, words get in our way. But if we sit in silence and sing, the doors of our hearts begin to open in trust and hope."
-Brother Roger of Taize



Ode to Joy by Kayleen Asbo
​
Our ancestors from the past knew
that relentless tragedy could also be the beginning of transformation ,
could become paint on the cave wall,
song in a scarred throat
the drumming heartbeat of a dance of lamentation
that would lead us to a deeper truth.

I think of that long scream of terror
that opens the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony,
the cacophonous descent that signals the end of the world
and how the orchestra tries so valiantly to recapture the past
recapitulating one theme after another from the first three movements.

How each time, the Greek Chorus of the orchestra says:

"No.
This will not do.
We cannot go back to where we have already been.
And that moment --when all seems lost in utter chaos and darkness--
how slowly,
tentatively,
ever so gently
emerging from the soft underbelly of the strings
is the simplest of tunes--
Childlike,
almost embarrassing
in its utter transparency and
open-hearted
vulnerability

And how the goosebumps rise upon my neck
as the melody begins its sure ascent
Higher
Higher
Until it blazes with triumph,
blossoming into the Ode to Joy,
Shattering all notions of what a symphony should be
What a symphony could be.

I wonder if Beethoven,
gripped with liver disease and completely deaf
knew as he flailed his swollen hands
that his agony had opened the door to a new vision
for the entire human race.

I imagine how his sad eyes would open wide with wonder
If he could see his simple tune sung at Auschwitz,
as Chinese students faced tanks in Tiananman Square,
if he could hear it sung at the fall of the Berlin Wall,
and see the choirs all across the world after 911
uniting the world into his lifelong dream:
a chorus of common, shared humanity.

​How he would weep to know that in this time of darkness
When touch is forbidden
When we are locked in isolation
It is the notes he could not even hear anymore
That weave us together in loving embrace.

Let us sing with all we have in us
no matter what storms rage all around,
and know this in our bones:
If a deaf and dying man
(who believed his whole life was a failure)
could give birth to such miraculous starshine as this,
surely,
surely,
there is still hope
for us all.

In a Circle Six Feet Apart in Town Park​
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
 
Perhaps we stumbled
on the words, perhaps
we forgot a note,
forgot a bridge,
bumbled our entrances,
fumbled our parts,
but we sang, oh yes,
we sang into the low golden light
of summer, sang
because joy, because
harmony, sang because
lonely, because fear,
sang because, tears
spilling down our cheeks,
we could sing, oh friends,
before we said goodbye,
we could sing.
 
Contact Kayleen Asbo: mythicamuse@gmail.com
  • Home
  • Calendar
  • Magdalene
    • Magdalene Conference
    • Forty Days with Mary Magdalene
    • Rose Sangha
    • Passion of Mary Magdalene
    • Magdalene in Provence
  • Pilgrimages
    • Provence: In the Footsteps of Mary Magdalene
    • Provence: Mary Magdalene and The Black Madonna
    • Scotland
  • Music
    • Van Gogh
  • Poetry
  • About