requiem

This morning I sang in two services at this church - the music director has written a requiem, and he recruited a bunch of extra people to supplement his regular choir. You never know with things like this, because he's just, like, some church music director. But it turns out this church knew what it was doing when it hired Clif Hardin. The requiem is beautiful. Stunning. Amazing. T. Hand was at the second service, so she can tell you - by the time it ended, much of the congregation (and certainly most of the choir) was in tears.

The last movement used this text by John Buxton:
Wherever you go now, I go with you;
I am the wind, I tousle your hair.
Fling it away from brow and temple,
Back from your cheek and your small ear bare,
Wherever you go now.

And so on.

During the first service, I had to stop singing several times in the last movement because, like, singing and crying? Not compatible. When the second service started, I was still kind of shaky, but I'd come up with a strategy, which I will call "puppies and rainbows": I visualized cute things that made me not think about grieving. In fact, I focused on these baby seals. (Baby seal #1; baby seal #2.) Seriously. And it worked! Um...mostly.