Laurel and Hardy Get the Mind of Christ
My daughter Kirstie and I spent a lot of last winter learning, practicing and playing songs from the Thirties and Forties for the folks at two adult day care centers around here. It was a lot of fun and I developed a real appreciation for the music too. I started listening to swing singers like Billie Holiday and all her lesser known contemps, first to learn the songs but then for my own joy. There's something about that music that I haven't been able to put into words yet... how I feel about God and worshipping him and all that.
Kirstie just gave me a CD called Sentimental Journey: Capitol's Great Ladies of Song and I've been listening to it. There's a track there by a nearly forgotten group, the King Sisters, singing "Take the A Train". Listening to it just now, I noticed that I had levitated into the sunlit sky 100 feet above my little pigsty and I didn't want to come back.
Their harmonies are like sunlight glistening in waterfall sparkles, with great swoops and swirls like delighted springtime cliff swallows and crazy key changes - they are having so much fun and have such command of their art and every cadenza is a ringing delight -- for them, for the band that is backing them up, and for me listening to them over sixty years later.
Behind their mastery I hear and see in my mind's eye a lifetime of sisters singing in their little beatup 1920s bedroom for their own delight until each of them knows without any thought at all just where their sister's voices are going to be.
That's how God is. That's how we can be with Him. Our relationship doesn't have to be all serious and ernest and frowning and passionate, and "Take my life, Lord it's all I have but it's yours" or some other proper sentiment.
I don't know why I titled this "Laurel and Hardy Get The Mind of Christ". But, since I did, if they did get the mind of Christ, wouldn't they still make a big hash of getting the grand piano down the stairway and wouldn't Ollie still make big steamy looks at Stan and wouldn't we still laugh our head off at them? And love them because they stay friends forever no matter what happens?
It's the same thing with God - but I don't think I can explain it. I've felt for a long time like God is saying to me - "Yeah! Go man go! We need some life in this party! Bring on the King Sisters!" And they come out, nice little Mormon girls of all things and the whole party flips and everybody in heaven levitates one foot higher towards the great King's throne.
Labels: Art Matters, God, Music
posted by Christopher Newton at 8:48 AM
6 Comments:
The King Sisters doing "A-Train"? That is a hoot; I guess because I could never imagine the King Sisters singing with Ellington. Sorta like Janis on Lawrence Welk maybe?
The King Sisters and their family hold a place in the recesses of my cluttered mind. Back in '65 or '66 they had a television show on, I think, ABC. It was a variety thing and may have only lasted a season or two. I remember lotsa singing and an old guy, one of the uncles, played the pedal steel, made it talk. That stuff is etched forever in this fog bin of mine.
But the matter at hand is the mind of Christ. I think I see a glimmer of what you're talking about. It's like the gospel account of Jesus going to visit Mary and Martha. Martha busied herself about making everything just right and cooking and cleaning... all the distractions of life. All the while, Mary is out hangin' with Jesus and his boys.
Martha gets peeved and Jesus reminds her gently that it's cool and she should chill.
A farmer was driving past a neighboring farm one day when he saw his neighbor holding a pig up under an oak tree. Curiosity got the best of him and so he parked his car and walked across the field to where the second farmer and the pig were. He asked his neighbor what he was doing and the second farmer replied, "Feeding my pig acorns."
The first farmer thought about it and said, "Wouldn't it save you time if you just shook the tree to make the acorns fall to the ground?"
The second farmer looked at him and said, "What's time to a pig?"
I was never much of a TV watcher and don't remember the King Sisters in that era. So I'm not quite sure of the comparison. But the 1940s era King Sisters on the Capitol CD are fabulous! Maybe they got old.
Foghorn - that is the best zen answer to my query I've had all day. I will ponder it for some time.
Zen answers are hard to come by. It takes a lot of effort to attain nothing and then what have you got?
Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might;
for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. (Ecclesiastes 9:10)
This is the intense and perfect harmony with which the King Sisters sang their hearts out.
Genevieve! I am so glad you finally got here! We have been waiting so long for you! That is exactly it.
Post a Comment
<< Home