To begin with, you must know two things. One, I do not smell well. Two, I am a choir girl. That is, I have sung in choir since I was five years old and my mom put me in the large-haired Mrs. Davidson's church choir. Knowing these things will help you understand how I met the Patchouli People.
It was Thursday night and the temperature had dropped ten degrees when the wind picked up. After feeding, changing, and cooing at my sweet baby Piper Joy for a little while, I entrusted her to the able arms of Nurse Cori along with my parents, Ann and Carson, who will hereafter be referred to by their grandparent names, Nan and Pop, because those are their favorite names right now. Piper Joy trumps all. Why would I leave Piper Joy on a windy, cold Thursday night in the care of her aunt and grandparents? To go to a choir concert of course.
I have mixed feelings about going to choir concerts. They come from the fact that I would prefer to be singing with the choir rather than listening. I know too well the hours of preparation, the countless silly vocal exercises, the grueling section rehearsals that go into a concert to sit passively and enjoy the music. I watch facial expressions to see if the choir members are enthused or exhausted. I listen to hear if the tenor section has enough umph. I pick out the basses who never think of watching the director. Do the soprano and alto sections have a good balance? And by the time I make it through my list of observations and questions I am so terribly interested in the workings of the choir that I just want to jump up there and join them so that I can really see and hear what's going on. Still, if my choice is to hear a choir concert or stay at home, I will almost always choose the concert.
And that is how my grandmother, Granjoy, and I came to be at St. Mary's Catholic Church to watch the ensemble, Conspirare perform a concert of Russian liturgical music. The concert was entirely in Russian, entirely acappella, and entirely amazing. The arches of the church blended the choral notes and launched them back and forth over our heads for almost two hours of glorious, foreign, orthodox sound. Two pieces in particular wowed me. "Do Not Cast Me Off in My Old Age," by Pavel Chesnokov, had a bass solo that was so low you could hardly believe a human being was creating the sound. It gave the piece a sense of heaviness that coincided with the text, a plea for God to be near. There was a female trio in "The Beatitudes," by Vladimir Martynov, who circled their sounds around each other in a repetitive blend that echoes Christ's words in Matthew five: blessed, blessed, blessed. It was so beautiful I hoped it would never end.
I sat enraptured throughout the entire concert. Almost.
Except for the moments I was distracted by the Patchouli People. The Patchouli People wore loose outfits of beige and mauve, hers with a velveteen drape that kept falling off one shoulder, his with massive embroidered butterflies dancing across the back of his shirt. They had that earthy look that comes from choosing to shower less often. She wore a headpiece of white feathers and flowers in her not so showered hair. He wore glasses. I never saw their faces because they were sitting on the pew in front of me, but I got to know their profiles quite well because they had come to the concert for a different purpose than me: to whisper sweet nothings in each others ears. And to lean towards the other every time something was said. In addition to the movement and the whispered s's, the Patchouli People brought with them an overwhelming scent of the oil that gives them their name. At this time, may I remind you of the first of two points I made at the beginning of this post, I do not smell well. I am always struggling with some sort of allergy or other and can rarely make out much of a smell. But the Patchouli People made it easy for me. Their fragrance wafted around our section of the church just like music.And so I was graced with not one, but two performances that Thursday night. One, The Sacred Spirit of Russia by Conspirare, and the other the overwhelmingly into each other love whispers of the Patchouli People. The best part is, Granjoy and I never mentioned the couple to each other. I wonder if she will now have the same association as I, however unrelated it may seem, of Russia and Patchouli.
It was Thursday night and the temperature had dropped ten degrees when the wind picked up. After feeding, changing, and cooing at my sweet baby Piper Joy for a little while, I entrusted her to the able arms of Nurse Cori along with my parents, Ann and Carson, who will hereafter be referred to by their grandparent names, Nan and Pop, because those are their favorite names right now. Piper Joy trumps all. Why would I leave Piper Joy on a windy, cold Thursday night in the care of her aunt and grandparents? To go to a choir concert of course.
I have mixed feelings about going to choir concerts. They come from the fact that I would prefer to be singing with the choir rather than listening. I know too well the hours of preparation, the countless silly vocal exercises, the grueling section rehearsals that go into a concert to sit passively and enjoy the music. I watch facial expressions to see if the choir members are enthused or exhausted. I listen to hear if the tenor section has enough umph. I pick out the basses who never think of watching the director. Do the soprano and alto sections have a good balance? And by the time I make it through my list of observations and questions I am so terribly interested in the workings of the choir that I just want to jump up there and join them so that I can really see and hear what's going on. Still, if my choice is to hear a choir concert or stay at home, I will almost always choose the concert.
And that is how my grandmother, Granjoy, and I came to be at St. Mary's Catholic Church to watch the ensemble, Conspirare perform a concert of Russian liturgical music. The concert was entirely in Russian, entirely acappella, and entirely amazing. The arches of the church blended the choral notes and launched them back and forth over our heads for almost two hours of glorious, foreign, orthodox sound. Two pieces in particular wowed me. "Do Not Cast Me Off in My Old Age," by Pavel Chesnokov, had a bass solo that was so low you could hardly believe a human being was creating the sound. It gave the piece a sense of heaviness that coincided with the text, a plea for God to be near. There was a female trio in "The Beatitudes," by Vladimir Martynov, who circled their sounds around each other in a repetitive blend that echoes Christ's words in Matthew five: blessed, blessed, blessed. It was so beautiful I hoped it would never end.
I sat enraptured throughout the entire concert. Almost.
Except for the moments I was distracted by the Patchouli People. The Patchouli People wore loose outfits of beige and mauve, hers with a velveteen drape that kept falling off one shoulder, his with massive embroidered butterflies dancing across the back of his shirt. They had that earthy look that comes from choosing to shower less often. She wore a headpiece of white feathers and flowers in her not so showered hair. He wore glasses. I never saw their faces because they were sitting on the pew in front of me, but I got to know their profiles quite well because they had come to the concert for a different purpose than me: to whisper sweet nothings in each others ears. And to lean towards the other every time something was said. In addition to the movement and the whispered s's, the Patchouli People brought with them an overwhelming scent of the oil that gives them their name. At this time, may I remind you of the first of two points I made at the beginning of this post, I do not smell well. I am always struggling with some sort of allergy or other and can rarely make out much of a smell. But the Patchouli People made it easy for me. Their fragrance wafted around our section of the church just like music.And so I was graced with not one, but two performances that Thursday night. One, The Sacred Spirit of Russia by Conspirare, and the other the overwhelmingly into each other love whispers of the Patchouli People. The best part is, Granjoy and I never mentioned the couple to each other. I wonder if she will now have the same association as I, however unrelated it may seem, of Russia and Patchouli.
Too too fun. I will probably grow up into my own Patchouli person, and I will enjoy knowing that you can smell me!
ReplyDeleteAlso, I love how "smell well" very aptly emphasizes the ever constant need to differentiate between "good" and "well" in everyday speech.
oh good, you're reading my blog! if you weren't, i'd be mad. you already are a Patchouli person and i love you anyway. thanks for getting me into this... so far!
DeletePatchouli people don't sound too interesting to me, but I can smell, most of the time. I really don't desire smelling people. I am sorry I was too immersed in my upstairs shower draining into my downstairs bathroom to make the concert.The description of the music, via Grandjoy, sounded wonderful.
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