funny meeting you here

So it seems that the latest Detective Conan full-length feature is inspired by the Singapore Flyer. I was watching it on the plane (gah, what is it, 36 more hours until I get home?) and couldn’t quite believe my eyes when the credits featured footage of the Marina Bay skyline, and Gardens by the Bay. It’s funny how the things that seem dinkiest and least impressive to someone who lives there—and especially things that are so novel and phantasmic as the features of Singaporean contemporary urban planning are—can be the most inspiring to others. It’s a strange taste I’m not sure I want to understand, but y’know, there is still something to call home.

The film, by the way, is excellent. From the opening fight sequence you can tell it’s a well-animated. No Dragonball-style fight scenes here, although the degree to which angles and shots try to do something novel drops off significantly after the first act. I have no qualms with that, and anyway, there’s something very comforting about Conan’s world, where a kid who looks 10 basically can run around with FBI agents and save the world.

stanford: justorum animae

I sang this as part of the motet choir at the Colloquium this year, and I remember how, from the very first chord, there was a blooming warmth behind my eyes, and it just got better and better. Since Colloquium folks are all such accomplished sight-readers (or enough of us are that the rest can hitch a ride) the first chord quickly yielded to the first bar which yielded to the first cadence and then the rest of the piece. (The first cadence really is something special, though.)

The text is Justorum animae, which is the offertory for All Saints’ as well as several other martyrs. I believe that in this case it was the feast day of St Thomas More and St John Fisher, who were both martyrs, so this would’ve been fitting.

It’s actually a very simple text: justorum animae in manu Dei sunt, et non tanget illos tormentum malitiae; visi sunt populi insipientium mori, illi autem sunt in pace. The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and the torment of evil will not touch them; in the sight of the unwise they are seen to die, but they are in peace.

Sung one way (i.e. with lots of bombast or drama) it could turn out a very grossly overblown piece–after all, already in its construction it is very Romantic. And I think that’s how we sang it, although that was somewhat out of desperation, when you hang on to and amplify every small direction because that’s all you can do, nothing’s holding together… Anyway. The forward momentum that is established from the first phrase is really wonderful and important to establishing the paradoxical relationship between sorrow for the death of saints (as they are most certainly in another world per the text), and a resolute and clearheadedly hopeful and faithful determination that they are at peace.

Music, man.