miserere mei deus

The highly-recommended Asian restaurant Ilha Formosa is in a cozy Pelgrom-like barrel-vaulted basement. As usual, I started scouring the menu for the small section of food I could eat when I remembered that the establishment was vegetarian! The dishes were an explosion of flavor and each employed as many different vegetables and meat substitutes as possible. They even gave us the standard cheap Chinese candy with the bill.

At my wit's end under pressure, I'd nearly forgotten how much Compline used to clear my mind, and unwittingly, I came to a concert by the Canterbury Cathedral Choir and found the catharsis I'd forgotten would help me. I had never seen the interior of St.-Pauluskerk in Antwerpen and was stunned by the perfection of its composition and color and by its priceless collection of artwork. Every object was a treasure in its own right, and the famed 17th-century organ was gloriously restored. Sadly, it was also too far from the choir to play continuo, and the range of its keyboard was limited. They had to skip a piece with continuo, and the organist substituted Mendelssohn for Duruflé in one of his solos.

The Master of Music was gratified to be able to speak in English and to even find himself in "English weather". But the white light filtering in through the windows until nearly 10 pm only added to the church's beauty. I had never heard a boy's choir live, and it was everything people said it would be. Such little children; one in the front was perpetually fidgeting. But those small boys' clear, piercing voices filled the entire church. Their rendition of Allegri's "Miserere mei" (made famous when Mozart bootlegged it from the Vatican at the age of 14) was breathtaking. The unseen descant in the back sung even the highest notes well, and in one verse even sang them flawlessly, an achievement I had not even heard in my various recordings of the piece.

To my delight, the audience was filled with kindred souls... the woman in front of me was clearly enthused, and during the intermission everyone wandered around the church and gazed upwards in wonder. They even beat me to the postcard stand. Needless to say, the choir earned our standing ovation.

As I was stepping off the L train at Mechelen station, the Brussels-bound American in the booth across from mine suddenly hurried up to me and said, "I just wanted to tell you that you're gorgeous. Absolutely beautiful." He smiled at me with red eyes and then went back into the cabin. I'm sure he was simply struck in his drugged state by my funky outfit, but in any case I didn't burst his bubble by revealing that he was complimenting a fellow American instead of some cute foreign Belgian. Sorry dude, it's the California Girls who have the style...