Religion – THE QUALITY OF MERCY

2025-09-162025-09-20 by David Hughes

Ways of the Cross

Sometime in the winter of 1995/96 my friend and mentor Milania Austin Henley introduced me to the artwork of Michael Schrauzer who, like Milania, was associated with St. Andrew’s Abbey, a Benedictine Monastery at Valyermo. She did so through the “Journal of the Arts and Religion” called Image. Schrauzer’s work is formal, often housed in rich cabinets, yet inviting, contemplative. The Annunciation consists not of cabinetry but of interlocking frames: a gilt T—the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet—foreshadows the Cross; its setting sun smolders in the base of the letter’s upright, bisecting a white rose. It is almost cruel in its “truth, perfection, completion.”¹ It’s the obverse of Oscar Wilde, who describes his wonder at the, well, banality of this consequential moment.

Ave Maria Gratia Plena

Was this His coming! I had hoped to see
A scene of wondrous glory, as was told
Of some great God who in a rain of gold
Broke open bars and fell on Danae:
Or a dread vision as when Semele
Sickening for love and unappeased desire
Prayed to see God’s clear body, and the fire
Caught her brown limbs and slew her utterly:
With such glad dreams I sought this holy place,
And now with wondering eyes and heart I stand
Before this supreme mystery of Love:
Some kneeling girl with passionless pale face,
An angel with a lily in his hand,
And over both the white wings of a Dove.

— Oscar Wilde, Vatican Gallery, Rome, 1877

2025-04-172025-04-17 by David Hughes

Dread Rhyme: Womb, Tomb

Many years ago my friend and mentor Milania Austin Henley shared with me a poem written by her friend Claudette Drennan Kane upon the death of her son in 1993. Last year, in this season—liturgical, historical—I was drawn to it again. At that time I contacted Claudette’s husband Robert Hilary Kane, without a reply. I recently learned that three weeks later he had died. (My attempt to reach their surviving son has failed. I of course will remove this post upon request.)

Every mother’s faith is pummelled by the death of a child, and this moment in time, like too many others, causes us consciousness. As Claudette writes, we witnesses die too.

2025-01-172025-03-03 by David Hughes

Sor Juana: Inquisitional minds want to know

I have Octavio Paz’s acclaimed biography of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz on my shelves, but I never read it. I saw the 1990 film adaptation—if one can compress a 547-page tome into a 105-minute film.² The IMDB précis is precise:

A 17th-century Mexican nun defies expectations, becoming a renowned intellectual and writer during the Spanish Inquisition. Her progressive ideas attract unwanted attention, forcing her to seek protection from an influential ally.

2024-05-272024-12-28 by David Hughes

Obscure Exposures

Reminiscences regarding reissues by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp.

2023-10-132023-10-13 by David Hughes

Elijah

Elisha Raising the Son of the Shunamite by Frederick Leighton

The prophet Elijah is mentioned in Hebrew, Christian, and Islamic scriptures. In Luke, Jesus famously used the example of Elijah to stress his own rejection.

2023-09-162025-01-17 by David Hughes

Thank God you’ve got a Job

The music label ECM is well known to fans of jazz, but also of avant-garde classical music. Recordings in the latter camp are by familiar composers like Arvo Pärt, John Adams, Steve Reich, John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen—and Meredith Monk, who Rob Berg and I (and friends) caught at the lovely John Anson Ford Theater last month as she celebrated her eightieth birth year in song, movement, and music with the Bang on a Can All-Stars.³

Aside from Monk’s music, which was profound yet playful, I must mention that we arrived early enough to witness a deep-teal-colored cloudless sky framed by the theater’s walls. I had to look away; I didn’t want its perfection to pass. I was reminded of the John McLaughlin title, “What Need Have I for This—What Need Have I for That—I Am Dancing at the Feet of My Lord—All Is Bliss—All Is Bliss.”⁴

Officium

Definitely not dancing, but rather writhing, complaining—confronting—is Job, whose challenge to his Lord is neatly summed in the Christian devotional cycle, Officium Defunctorum (Office of the Dead). Thirty years ago this month, ECM recorded Job’s Parce mihi domine, from the Office, coupled with kindred motets, by Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek and British quartet The Hilliard Ensemble, under the simple title of Officium. This arranged marriage was contrived by ECM founder Manfred Eicher, inspired by composer Cristóbal Morales’s sixteenth-century setting of the Office, which Eicher (re)heard while filming his Holozän, based on Max Frisch’s novel Man in the Holocene. In the booklet that accompanies the ECM release, Frisch mentions “driving through the jagged lava fields of Iceland” during filming, of his protagonist’s “encroaching isolation,” the landscape “a metaphor for the silencing of mankind whose history has come to an end.”

2022-07-302025-09-16 by David Hughes

Jim Morphesis: Conversations in Isolation

The sun will never disappear
But the world may not have many years

— John Lennon, “Isolation”

In the summer of 2020 I contacted visual artist Jim Morphesis to ask his permission to reprint his private reply to Rudy Perez in response to Part 2 of my Portrait of Rudy Perez series. Jim had reminded Rudy of how the two had met on July 24, 1981, when Rudy appeared on Rona Barrett’s television show.

2021-01-252025-09-06 by David Hughes

The Old Normal

I was annoyed Tuesday when the Biden-Harris tribute to the 400,000 fallen included that old, mm…, warhorse “Amazing Grace.” I muttered to my wife Andrea Carney, “Well, as long as they don’t trot out ‘Hallelujah’…,” which of course they did. “Amazing Grace” showed up time and again during the inaugural spectacle.

2020-12-072025-08-02 by David Hughes

Merry Kitschmas

This post looks at speculations about the physical appearance of Jesus.

2020-07-112025-08-03 by David Hughes

Everybody Dance Now 4: Time/Travel

This fourth edition of Everybody Dance Now involves travel in space and time, beginning with a short from Arizona filmmaker and photographer Harrison J. Bahe of Navajo Joe Films. “Xibalba” comes from the soundtrack of The Fountain (2006) composed by Clint Mansell, which also accompanies Bahe’s film. Xibalba is the Mayan underworld, which figures in The Fountain, a once-and-future picture that weaves together Mayan and Hebrew mythology, featuring a Spanish conquistador astoundingly being recognized by a native priest as the First Father, the life source.⁵