Convivium Salon: James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry

James Baldwin's friend, playwright Lorraine Hansberry, died on this day in 1965 in New York City at the age of 34.

"Sweet Lorraine. That's the way I always felt about her, and so I won't apologize for calling her that now. She understood it: in that far too brief a time when we walked and talked and laughed and drank together, sometimes in the streets and bars and restaurants of the Village, sometimes at her house, gracelessly fleeing the houses of others; and sometimes seeming, for anyone who didn't know us, to be having a knock-down-drag-out battle. We spent a lot of time arguing about history and tremendously related subjects in her Bleecker Street and, later, Waverly Place flats. And often, just when I was certain that she was about to throw me out as being altogether too rowdy a type, she would stand up, her hands on her hips (for these down-home sessions she always wore slacks), and pick up my empty glass as though she intended to throw it at me. Then she would walk into the kitchen, saying, with a haughty toss of her head, "Really, Jimmy. You ain't right, child!" With which stern put-down she would hand me another drink and launch into a brilliant analysis of just why I wasn't "right." I would often stagger down her stairs as the sun came up, usually in the middle of a paragraph and always in the middle of a laugh. That marvelous laugh. That marvelous face. I loved her, she was my sister and my comrade.Her going did not so much make me lonely as make me realize how lonely we were. We had that respect for each other which perhaps is only felt by people on the same side of the barricades, listening to the accumulating thunder of the hooves of horses and the heads of tanks."
                   - from “Sweet Lorraine" included in The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction (1948-1985) by James Baldwin

Do you have any literary friendships? How and where did you forge them? What nourishes them? How can we support each other in making art or in living our daily moments more creatively, with intensity, so that our lives can become works of art? Have you read any James Baldwin or Lorraine Hansberry? Oftentimes, art that we make within the crucible of oppression seems to acquire an extra luminosity, seems often more compelling. Why do you think that is? 

Convivium Salon: Flannery O'Connor vs Ayn Rand

The above quote appears in Ayn Rand's The Romantic Manifesto and demonstrates that her taste in literature was as abominable as her "sense-of-life" and her "philosophy." Rather than grapple with her sense-of-life, though, here we'd like to take on her idea that two-bit revenge fiction (Spillane's detective novels) could be somehow ranked above Tolstoy's works. 

What counts as great literature, and why? How can we educate others to appreciate both literary quality and the extraordinary sense-of-life we discover in Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and even Victor Hugo (but not Rand!)? How would you compare your beloved authors to particular spaces or rooms or musical genres? Or would you use some other kind of metaphor to express their different qualities? 

While the above quote reveals much more about its author than about the various authors she names, what might we say to illuminate the value and gift that our beloved authors have been to us?

Let's not distract ourselves with discussing Rand's "philosophy" - Flannery O'Connor, in a letter to her friend, playwright Maryat Lee, already said all there is to say about Rand's fiction:

                                                  Flannery O'Connor

Bam.

A Free Abundance of Great Things at the Rimini Meeting

First published on ilsussidiario.net on Sept 3, 2010:  Entry into the enormous conference center, where the Meeting for the Friendship Among Peoples is held, is free.  Indeed, for each of the past 31 years that this extraordinary cultural festival has been held at the Italian seaside resort town of Rimini, entrance to the exhibits and talks has been free.  

We often think of “free entry” in negative terms: there is no charge, one does not pay; however, the gratuitousness of the Meeting in Rimini does not represent a lack, but rather a fullness.  

Immediately upon arriving at the Fiera of Rimini, one can see that the turnstiles, with their rotating metal arms, have been disabled; the metal spokes all hang down to allow free passage into the gigantic space that is completely filled:  with fascinating exhibits and lectures given in halls filled to capacity, with concerts and dramatic readings and theater performances and film presentations, with sporting events, with shops, with signs, with restaurants, and with thousands of people (800,000 visitors and 40,000 volunteers during the week-long annual event).  

Each year the Meeting has a theme around which the exhibits and talks are built.  This year’s theme was, “That nature which pushes us to desire great things is the heart,” and at the Meeting, there were eight large exhibits: 1) “A Use for Everyone. Each to His Work. Within the Crisis, Beyond the Crisis,” concerning the recent ongoing economic crisis; 2) “From One to Infinity. At the Heart of Mathematics,” created by the Euresis Association, an international group of scientists that has created many stunning exhibits for the Meeting in past years; 3) “Flannery O’Connor. A Limit with Infinite Measure,” concerning the life and work of the great 20th Century American author; 4) “At the End of the Road Someone Is Waiting For You. The Splendor of Hope in the Portico of Glory,” an art historical meditation on the beautiful arch at the pilgrimage destination of Compostela, in Spain; 5) “Stephen of Hungary. Founder of the State and Apostle to the Nations;” 6) “‘But I Put Forth on the High Seas’.  Ulysses: When Dante Sang of the Stature of Man,” concerning a passage from Dante’s “Inferno”; 7) “A Heaven on Earth. The Samba of the Hill,” about the birth of the Brazilian dance in the favolas; and 8) “Gdansk 1980. Solidarity,” tracing the events that led to Polish independence from the Soviet Union.

If the Meeting in Rimini were only to include these eight exhibits, it would be a great cultural event; but in addition to these larger exhibits, there were many smaller exhibits, presenting various diverse subjects including: the frescoes within the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, Italy; education as something belonging to the human heart; the life of St. Gianna Beretta Molla; the relationship between love and literature; the work of particular missionaries in Africa; the Russian pianist Marija Judina and her relationship to Stalin; and more.

Each of these exhibits, large and small, was created by groups of individuals with an intense passion for their subject matter and a desire to communicate their fascination to others.  Many of the curators provide guided tours within the exhibits.  They also train additional volunteers to give guided tours that are then offered in many different languages.  It is incredible that passion is the only reason for the huge expenditure of time and work that each exhibit requires; no one receives a financial gain from mounting these exhibits and there is no governing body that awards prizes to the best exhibit; thus neither money, nor glory, nor professional advancement, nor even a spirit of competition is involved in the decision to begin work on an exhibit or in seeing the project through to completion.  In fact, there is no evaluation process (questionnaires, exit interviews, etc.) in order to provide market analysis or to assure attendance at future Meetings.    

And the curators and guides are not the only people with a passionate interest in the subject explored in any given exhibit.  Close observation of the thousands of visitors who file through the exhibits reveals faces in deep concentration, hungry to soak in every detail, whether communicated by the guides or present on the many panels covered in texts and images.  All this effort and work is, moreover, for something that most people consider ephemeral and unnecessary for daily survival: cultural study.  

This passion alone holds the key to the meaning of the Meeting.  It generates the exhibits and also finds expression in the many talks and panel discussions offered in several large lecture halls simultaneously throughout each day of the Meeting.  Often there is not enough room in auditoriums that hold thousands of people and the crowds spill outside the doors, onto the floor in order to watch the proceedings on large video screens.  Imagine a talk about mathematics by a professor from Princeton University (and no one’s grade depends on it), where hundreds of people cannot fit into the lecture hall and must sit on the floor, watching on a screen!  These discussions and talks are given by exhibit curators and experts in many fields.  Among the many speakers at the Meeting in Rimini this year were Rose Busingye, a nurse and the Coordinator of Meeting Point of Kampala, a center for Ugandans with AIDS; Mary McAleese, the President of Ireland; Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Bishop of Ratisbona; Miguel Diaz, the US Ambassador to the Vatican; Joshua Dubois, Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnership; Diarmuid Martin, Archbiship of Dublin and Primate of Ireland; John Milbank, Lecturer in Religion, Politics and Ethics at Nottingham University; Edward Nelson, Lecturer in Mathematics at Princeton University; Mario Livio, Senior Astrophysicist at the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute; William McGurn, Journalist with the Wall Street Journal; Chen-Hsin Wang, Lecturer in German Language in the Departments of Music and Psychology at Fu Jen Catholic University in Taipei, Taiwan; Angelo Scola, Patriarch of Venice; Angelino Alfano, Italian Minister of Justice; David Maurice Frank, Native American from the Ahousat Reserve, Vancouver Island, Canada; Aliyu Idi Hong, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; Shah Mehmood Quereshi, Minister of Foreigners for the Islamic Republic of Pakistan; Shōdō Habukawa, Buddhist Monk and Lecturer at Koyasan University; Tareq Oubrou, Rector of the Mosque of Bordeaux; Joseph H. H. Weiler, Director of the Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice and Co-Director of the Tikvah Centre for Law & Jewish Civilization at the New York University; and many leaders in Italian government and business -- to name only a few!

How is it that so many professionals from diverse fields find the passion to offer their work as a free gift to anyone who approaches?  And what is it that draws these crowds, year after year, to a fascinated engagement with the cultural exhibits and lectures at the Meeting?  Where does this passion come from?  The theme of the 2010 Meeting offers a clue: the human heart.  The heart, unimpeded by calculation and not distracted by the dream of personal gain, can and does open out toward whatever is true, and beautiful, and just.  The Meeting is the fruit of this discovery and its consequence: an embrace for every aspect of reality, because all is a gift, all has been given by Another.   - Suzanne Lewis

Why We Sing

by Luigi Giussani

Reprinted from the introduction to the Communion and Liberation Songbook for Great Britain

“There is no greater expression of human feeling than music.  Who is not moved by a string concert, or who can be insensitive to the variations of a piano sonata?  Can you imagine anything greater?  And yet when I hear the human voice … I don’t know if this happens to you, but I feel the human voice is even greater.  Truly there is no service to the community comparable to singing.”  With these words Fr. Giussani welcomes a large group of people for whom music is  a major part of life.  Some are music professors, others are amateur singers, but all lend their breath, their voices and passion to the choirs of Communion and Liberation.

In this occasion there were nearly 30 people gathered around the dinner table.  Piecing together various sets of notes, we have assembled the questions posed from one end of the giant table to the other and the answers or counter-questions raised by Fr. Giussani.  The theme of the discussion?  Music, of course, or more precisely, song.

Fr. Giussani repeats himself, “Yes, singing is the highest expression of the human heart.  I’m not saying this just because you are all singers.  I am saying what I have always said.”

An observation: few people sing nowadays, yet tunes are always escaping from headphones or blasting out of speakers.  A soundtrack, that we haven’t chosen, follows us wherever we go.  The latest fashion calls for mobs of people at karaoke shows or gathered around some singer-songwriter.

“And yet,” Fr. Giussani interrupts, “These types of exhibitions and songs might very well be the signs of the unspeakable corruption of an era.  Instead of being the expression of a people, song becomes an obsessive, sentimentalized repetition of the fears and whims of the individual.  Perhaps many listen to and recognize themselves in the melody and the lyrics, but they remain fragmented, collectively alone.”

A little unease is felt around the table.  Is popular (i.e. of the people) song really impossible today?  One of the music professions poses the question in this way: how can we grow and be missionaries in music?

“The biggest aid from the point of view of expressivity comes from singing for the community.  And I underline the word for.  You don’t sing a solo at the Fraternity retreat in front of sixteen thousand people, you sing it for them!  This is the difference between Vasco Rossi [a rock singer], talented though he may be, and you who sing in the choir for sixteen thousand people.  You express these sixteen thousand, you express their awareness, you are the voice of a body, of a people, of a destiny.  In front of sixteen thousand people, Vasco Rossi expresses himself; he confirms those who adore him in their solitude and emptiness.  When you sing at the retreat, you express us, you are us and your voice rises and touches us like a gift.  For this reason song is freely given, singing is charity.  Song is pure charity.  If I can make a suggestion: don’t be overly worried about yourselves and your ability to express yourselves.  The reason for your worries cannot be the expression of self, but rather the expression of the consciousness of this people.  This is why the choir, why singing, is the most useful and charitable service given to the community.  A community without a choir is a community without passion, something is already beginning to come undone.”

Question:  How can we be sure that we aren’t following our own expressive whims?  Answer: “Certainty comes from belonging.  And this is something very natural.  A child who hasn’t experienced belonging to his mother and father grows up psychopathic.  You sing, and this song, which is emitted from the chest and the throat, expresses a consciousness if you belong.  Have you ever gone into the house of a young affectionate mother?  It is almost impossible not to find her child singing.  At four years old he is singing or humming melodies – and who knows where they came from.  This is the expression of gladness and peace that comes from being loved, that comes from belonging.”

Someone throws out this question, “Fr. Giussani, is this why in many places around the movement people sing poorly?”

“It is a symptom that the community is falling apart,” says Fr. Giussani calmly.  He then goes on to explain “The more the word companionship rolls off the tongue, the more our communion is dissolved.  Belonging to the companionship, communion, is substituted by the affective bond with someone who may even be a fascinating personality.  In the end, it is merely a psychological bond.  The community, instead, arises from the participation in Being, an ontological bond.  If the companionship doesn’t descend from the Mystery, it isn’t a community.  Furthermore, there must be the awareness of an event that takes place here and now.  And as for singing, singing is generally lacking in the movement, due to the fact that the leaders understand little about what man is, what Christianity is.  This carelessness and lack of love for music and song is a symptom of a grave decline.  Because I know what man is, I demand singing.”

Fr. Giussani’s is an old love.  He tells how in 1932-33, when he was 9 or 10 years old, his father would read the paper to decide to which Sunday Mass he would accompany his son.  He would search the whole region of Lombardy to find a polyphonic Mass.  They were hard times, but music was more important than bread.  There was no money to waste at his house in Desio, and yet on Sunday evenings they would have a trio or quartet come to play Schubert.  Someone remarks, “You either have music in your blood or you don’t.  So what do we do?  Send out the order to form choirs and sing, is that it?”

Fr. Giussani replies, “Nobody responds to mere words.  Those who belong want to learn.”

At this point, the discussion turns to the history of song in the movement.  The birth of singing in the movement was contemporaneous to the birth of the movement itself, it didn’t evolve at some later date with Adriana Mascagni and the others.  Can we say, then, that the movement and song are one and the same, that song is the charism of the movement?

Giussani recalls the beginning:  “Singing in the movement was born at the very first Mass we celebrated together in the church of San Gottardo al Palazzo in Milan.  Ten minutes before the Mass, I started to teach Vero Amore e Gesu and O Cor Soave.  I started waving my hands as I had seen my music teacher do in the seminary [and he repeats the motion].  I sang and they followed.  Singing in the movement started five minutes before the first Mass; it began when the movement began.  There was no difference.  As the movement comes to life, so does singing.  Just like the child and his mother.  You belong and a song arises.  There can be no choir without belonging.  Choirs are not imposed by decree, they arise as the movement arises – even today.”

And the songs that came out of GS?  “They were beautiful even from the very beginning and everyone sang them.  Then years and years went by and no one sang them anymore.  The beautiful songs of Adriana Mascagni fell by the wayside.  Even the most beautiful Chieffo songs fell into disuse (The War, The Ballad of the Old Man…).  When something is authentic, it must be passed on.  Now those songs have returned.”

Someone reopens the wound:  “And yet, it is almost as if these things fall on deaf ears in the movement.”

Fr. Giussani responds: “Laziness, inertia, and above all, aridity have spread.  Aridity dominates the society today.  But it is precisely with song that we can break this dry ground.  We lament and beat our breast whenever we realize that aridity has found space in us, and rightly so.  But just think that nine out of ten people who come to our meetings for the first time go away saying: ‘What beautiful songs you sing.’  We learn all the strongest human feelings – the meaning of sin, fear, mercy – much more through song than through reading.  I myself learned them when I was small not through sermons but through song.  Even the reform of the Church needed song to express itself – the reform was expressed through the songs of St. Philip Neri.  The most beautiful of these songs are sung by us today.”  Fr. Giussani concludes:  “Singing is the most authentic expression of man if man is man, and he is a man if he belongs.  If his mother is in the vicinity, the child will sing.  And just as soon as a fragment of the movement exists, so does song.

“There is no greater expression of human feeling than music.  Who is not moved by a string concert, or who can be insensitive to the variations of a piano sonata?  Can you imagine anything greater?  And yet when I hear the human voice … I don’t know if this happens to you, but I feel the human voice is even greater.  Truly there is no service to the community comparable to singing.”  With these words Fr. Giussani welcomes a large group of people for whom music is  a major part of life.  Some are music professors, others are amateur singers, but all lend their breath, their voices and passion to the choirs of Communion and Liberation.

In this occasion there were nearly 30 people gathered around the dinner table.  Piecing together various sets of notes, we have assembled the questions posed from one end of the giant table to the other and the answers or counter-questions raised by Fr. Giussani.  The theme of the discussion?  Music, of course, or more precisely, song.

Fr. Giussani repeats himself, “Yes, singing is the highest expression of the human heart.  I’m not saying this just because you are all singers.  I am saying what I have always said.”

An observation: few people sing nowadays, yet tunes are always escaping from headphones or blasting out of speakers.  A soundtrack, that we haven’t chosen, follows us wherever we go.  The latest fashion calls for mobs of people at karaoke shows or gathered around some singer-songwriter.

“And yet,” Fr. Giussani interrupts, “These types of exhibitions and songs might very well be the signs of the unspeakable corruption of an era.  Instead of being the expression of a people, song becomes an obsessive, sentimentalized repetition of the fears and whims of the individual.  Perhaps many listen to and recognize themselves in the melody and the lyrics, but they remain fragmented, collectively alone.”

A little unease is felt around the table.  Is popular (i.e. of the people) song really impossible today?  One of the music professions poses the question in this way: how can we grow and be missionaries in music?

“The biggest aid from the point of view of expressivity comes from singing for the community.  And I underline the word for.  You don’t sing a solo at the Fraternity retreat in front of sixteen thousand people, you sing it for them!  This is the difference between Vasco Rossi [a rock singer], talented though he may be, and you who sing in the choir for sixteen thousand people.  You express these sixteen thousand, you express their awareness, you are the voice of a body, of a people, of a destiny.  In front of sixteen thousand people, Vasco Rossi expresses himself; he confirms those who adore him in their solitude and emptiness.  When you sing at the retreat, you express us, you are us and your voice rises and touches us like a gift.  For this reason song is freely given, singing is charity.  Song is pure charity.  If I can make a suggestion: don’t be overly worried about yourselves and your ability to express yourselves.  The reason for your worries cannot be the expression of self, but rather the expression of the consciousness of this people.  This is why the choir, why singing, is the most useful and charitable service given to the community.  A community without a choir is a community without passion, something is already beginning to come undone.”

Question:  How can we be sure that we aren’t following our own expressive whims?  Answer: “Certainty comes from belonging.  And this is something very natural.  A child who hasn’t experienced belonging to his mother and father grows up psychopathic.  You sing, and this song, which is emitted from the chest and the throat, expresses a consciousness if you belong.  Have you ever gone into the house of a young affectionate mother?  It is almost impossible not to find her child singing.  At four years old he is singing or humming melodies – and who knows where they came from.  This is the expression of gladness and peace that comes from being loved, that comes from belonging.”

Someone throws out this question, “Fr. Giussani, is this why in many places around the movement people sing poorly?”

“It is a symptom that the community is falling apart,” says Fr. Giussani calmly.  He then goes on to explain “The more the word companionship rolls off the tongue, the more our communion is dissolved.  Belonging to the companionship, communion, is substituted by the affective bond with someone who may even be a fascinating personality.  In the end, it is merely a psychological bond.  The community, instead, arises from the participation in Being, an ontological bond.  If the companionship doesn’t descend from the Mystery, it isn’t a community.  Furthermore, there must be the awareness of an event that takes place here and now.  And as for singing, singing is generally lacking in the movement, due to the fact that the leaders understand little about what man is, what Christianity is.  This carelessness and lack of love for music and song is a symptom of a grave decline.  Because I know what man is, I demand singing.”

Fr. Giussani’s is an old love.  He tells how in 1932-33, when he was 9 or 10 years old, his father would read the paper to decide to which Sunday Mass he would accompany his son.  He would search the whole region of Lombardy to find a polyphonic Mass.  They were hard times, but music was more important than bread.  There was no money to waste at his house in Desio, and yet on Sunday evenings they would have a trio or quartet come to play Schubert.  Someone remarks, “You either have music in your blood or you don’t.  So what do we do?  Send out the order to form choirs and sing, is that it?”

Fr. Giussani replies, “Nobody responds to mere words.  Those who belong want to learn.”

At this point, the discussion turns to the history of song in the movement.  The birth of singing in the movement was contemporaneous to the birth of the movement itself, it didn’t evolve at some later date with Adriana Mascagni and the others.  Can we say, then, that the movement and song are one and the same, that song is the charism of the movement?

Giussani recalls the beginning:  “Singing in the movement was born at the very first Mass we celebrated together in the church of San Gottardo al Palazzo in Milan.  Ten minutes before the Mass, I started to teach Vero Amore e Gesu and O Cor Soave.  I started waving my hands as I had seen my music teacher do in the seminary [and he repeats the motion].  I sang and they followed.  Singing in the movement started five minutes before the first Mass; it began when the movement began.  There was no difference.  As the movement comes to life, so does singing.  Just like the child and his mother.  You belong and a song arises.  There can be no choir without belonging.  Choirs are not imposed by decree, they arise as the movement arises – even today.”

And the songs that came out of GS?  “They were beautiful even from the very beginning and everyone sang them.  Then years and years went by and no one sang them anymore.  The beautiful songs of Adriana Mascagni fell by the wayside.  Even the most beautiful Chieffo songs fell into disuse (The War, The Ballad of the Old Man…).  When something is authentic, it must be passed on.  Now those songs have returned.”

Someone reopens the wound:  “And yet, it is almost as if these things fall on deaf ears in the movement.”

Fr. Giussani responds: “Laziness, inertia, and above all, aridity have spread.  Aridity dominates the society today.  But it is precisely with song that we can break this dry ground.  We lament and beat our breast whenever we realize that aridity has found space in us, and rightly so.  But just think that nine out of ten people who come to our meetings for the first time go away saying: ‘What beautiful songs you sing.’  We learn all the strongest human feelings – the meaning of sin, fear, mercy – much more through song than through reading.  I myself learned them when I was small not through sermons but through song.  Even the reform of the Church needed song to express itself – the reform was expressed through the songs of St. Philip Neri.  The most beautiful of these songs are sung by us today.”  Fr. Giussani concludes:  “Singing is the most authentic expression of man if man is man, and he is a man if he belongs.  If his mother is in the vicinity, the child will sing.  And just as soon as a fragment of the movement exists, so does song.”

An Encounter Among Friends

Photo by Margherita Daho

Upon arriving at the New York Encounter, a three-day cultural festival held in New York City each January, one is first struck by the conversations taking place; on the sidewalk outside the entrance, in the building’s vestibule, in line to check coats, clustered around the information tables, in aisles and stairways, in groups of two or seven or twenty-three, people pause in order to embrace, to update one another on joys and sorrows, or to work out dining or traveling details. What is clear is that participants know one another; they are friends.

One high school student, who had never before been to an event organized by the lay ecclesial Movement Communion and Liberation (the group to which the organizers of this cultural festival, and many of the guests, belong), exclaimed, “How does everyone know everyone else?!” In fact, some have only been introduced a moment beforehand, while others met as children and grew up together on the other side of the planet. The way that visitors to the New York Encounter know one another is not so much about acquiring superficial personal information. Rather, even before knowing the name of another person, those who are present here know that each of the others is animated by a desire for something extraordinary, something great, something infinite. This awareness is never far from the thoughts of those who gather to talk before or after the scheduled events.

To be friends with someone else means to recognize the other person’s humanity and to see, vibrating within one’s friend, a commonality. Some people build lives in common around particular similarities: the enjoyment of particular leisure activities or hobbies, sharing the same profession, or subscribing to the same political beliefs. No such common thread unites the people gathered in New York City this weekend for the largest Catholic cultural festival in the United States. They are not even all Catholic.

The only thing that these people do have in common, though, is that which they share with each human person on this planet: a heart that impels them to seek beauty, truth, love, or justice. If all people, everywhere, share these same desires, what makes this manifestation of friendship, here at the New York Encounter, seem so unusual?  The difference is this: while each human being discovers, within, a need for truth, or beauty, or satisfaction, for visitors to the New York Encounter, this great desire itself is more valuable than any other possible point of connection. We know one another because we know our own need, and we can love one another because we are not afraid of this need; in fact, we treasure it.   - Suzanne M. Lewis, first published here.