the most beautiful song?

I have been loving this song and feel I must share it with you - if this doesn't convince you that we can create beauty, I don't know what will. For me, it is possibly the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. When that woman's voice rises above the rest and spirals around, it is pure and intoxicating.

It was written by an italian composer, Gregorio Allegri. At some point this piece of music was protected from being transcribed or played outside of the Cistine Chapel for the Tenebrae service - doing so was punishable by excommunication. The story goes that in 1770 young Mozart heard the work and wrote it out from memory when he returned home. His transcription ended up in the hands of an englishman who published it in 1771. Rather than being excommunicated, Mozart was called to Rome and praised by the pope for his musical genius*. The ban was lifted and now it is the most commonly performed work for a cappella choirs.

Why would this song ever have been banned in the first place? Because it was so very beautiful. Perhaps people would hear this music and have a spiritual experience. That experience, of course could then be had anywhere they heard that music and open a personal pathway to a relationship with God. The church wanted to be sure that that type of communication could only occur with its guidance/control. There are other examples of music being avoided because of the belief that it insinuated evil, like the tritone.

Anyway, as interesting as all of that is, I'm not trying to make any big statement. I just want to share this amazing music that deeply touches my soul, no matter what sort of mood I am in.

*Other composers also transcribed it, and I believe there is quite the dispute about who got it right and whose version is the best. I first heard a recording by the Dale Warland Singers, so I think I'm stuck with my first love, but there are many recordings, both with adult and children's choirs.

my nightstand

We all go through periods of time where something seems to consume our entire life - a heavy semester, a project at work, a difficult family situation. Some of us have just resigned ourselves to lives that will always be busy and filled with working and caring for others in some shape or form. I challenge you to think of one thing that brings you peace or joy or fulfillment and make that a priority, and then set aside ten minutes for it every day. It will be a daily gift to yourself. I bet you will be able to find the time, at least on most days, and that it will help you to remember there is a whole world outside of whatever it is you are usually caught up in.

For the past 3 weeks I have been caught up in anatomy. I have learned so much in that short amount of time that it feels as though I had been studying this for much longer. The price (aside from medical school tuition) is a world consumed by anatomy. My brain wakes me up in the middle of the night because it can't quite trace the path of the vagus nerve in my dream and needs some consciousness to figure it out. This blog is one attempt at remaining connected to the world outside the anatomy lab. Another one is keeping a book on my nightstand and reading something other than a textbook just before I fall asleep each night. I don't usually manage more than 2 paragraphs at a time, but it allows me to hold onto something that I have loved since I was a child.

What do you do to stay balanced? What's on your nightstand?

hands

I have decided that the hands are the most intimate part of the body. I am getting to know an old man's hands very well. He is (or, was) eighty-three years old and his hands are large, the hands of a man who has used them for many years. I am getting to know these hands so very well, beneath the skin, discovering what makes them tremble or sends blood through the arteries or causes the hairs of the dorsum to stand on end. But that is all I will learn about these hands. They are the hands of my cadaver, so I can only wonder about the rest. I find myself occasionally holding his hand to reposition his arm, as if it were that of a living person, and I wonder who the last person was to hold it before me.

As I migrate through the lab, studying the bodies my classmates have been assigned to, I am not impressed by the faces nor the genitals of the cadavers. The hands carry more meaning to me. One woman has fake nails, painted barbie-doll-pink.

I picture the hands of people who have been important in my life - 

my mother's precise hands that bring instant comfort with their touch;

my father's wide knuckles, that I inherited, and that can tickle so well;

my husband's careful hands with long nails for strumming nylon strings;

his grandmother's hands that were crippled from arthritis but perfect for stroking a cat's head;

my friend's talking hands that are excited about life and spread their wanderlust.

I also remember the hand of a man in the ER that had gotten caught in a corn mill. As he revealed it to the doctor, holding it with his opposite hand, lest the finger completely fall away without the supporting bandage, the man stared at it in awe, wondering if this destroyed appendage was really his own.

I remember the hand of a woman who came to the ER that, despite the IV in the same arm pumping in man's greatest attempt at a miracle, despite the hands of a nurse crushing her sternum, forcing the blood to circulate through her body, fell limp. Even when we all admitted she was dead, I was oddly captivated by her slender, beautiful hand. I wanted to hold it, but did not.

I can understand why people believe their fortune can be seen in their palms. Those dermatoglyphs are indeed unique, formed in the womb, a product of epigenetics.

I look at my own hands and I see an old scar from playing hide-and-seek, another that will soon fade because it's young, because I'm always running into things, nails that are smooth but will never hold nail polish for more than an hour without chipping. A new freckle. A broken pinky, recalcified. These hands take a scalpel and peel back the skin of another's, with the hope that one day soon these hands will heal.