Hello once more, dear ones,

I no longer have easy internet access so I can only send my missives from internet cafes where I can plug in my laptop, so this may be written over a period of several days. I'm writing this first part from Sevilla, in southern Spain. Since last I wrote, Robin and I spent New Years in Paris, where we saw an updated version of Leonard Bernstein's Candide, and I've passed through Barcelona, where I spent a day agog at some of the work of architect Antoni Gaudí (the Sagrada Familia temple, which looks like it inspired the someone-left-the-cake-out-in-the-rain line in "Macarthur Park," and the Casa Milà/Pedrera apartment building with its undulating lines and eccentric chimneys). The reprised Candide is pretty biting and a bit confused (as I'm told the original was), with a brilliant political and ecological updating. The proscenium stage looked like an old TV set, and during the overture, TV-like credits were projected, followed by a montage of ads for kitchen appliances and cars. Candide is an innocent growing up in a white house (capitalized) in "this best of all possible worlds." In the original, his home country is Westphalia. In this one it's West Failure. It goes on from there, following his journey out of innocence. On top of Voltaire's criticism of endless wars and the human costs of colonialism, there's a new scene where Chirac, Bush, Putin, Berlusconi, and Tony Blair all gleefully toast one another in the midst of an oil spill. And the "make our garden grow" ending is a shockingly powerful ecological plea among images of the effects of global warming, like desertification. And then of course there's the music, challenging and sublime as ever.

Lost in Sevilla

January 6--Sevilla is charming, a place for taking in the sun and the open air. And finally, a city with lots of places to sit. Streets lined with trees laden with oranges. Cordial people. The old man who checked me into the hostal had been rather gruff on the phone, but when I arrived and introduced myself, he reached out in a courtly manner and shook my hand. Last night I got hopelessly lost--I can recall asking for directions at least six different times on my hourlong meander back to my bed--but I didn't mind. I wandered through cobblestone streets and an alley crowded with people huddled around charcoal burners. Felt like I was traipsing through somebody's movie. One group of young men who looked like toughs turned out to include a guy warming up for a throaty and passionate flamenco song. I'd forgotten that my guidebooks listed many things starting at midnight. It should have been a clue when I was told (twice) at my hostal that there'd be no one at the desk to let me back in after 3 a.m.

I'll only be here for three nights, and today is a holiday and tomorrow I'll take a day-trip to Córdoba, but it's also a good place for me to relax again. The past few weeks have been rather full with family and Christmas and New Years activities. (By now Robin is visiting with Isabel in London or back in Minneapolis, and Tucker is with his girlfriend in New Jersey, or maybe they've headed to Chicago.) On Monday I'll go to Granada for almost a week to finish my sabbatical time. I had planned to go to Toledo, too--Spain, not Ohio--but decided to pare back a bit. I need to get as rested up again as I can before coming home and going back to work.

This morning--Epiphany--I went to Mass in Sevilla's cathedral. Though remarkably unremarkable on the outside, it's either the 3rd largest church in the world or the largest, depending on how you calculate it. Apparently by sheer volume it surpasses both St. Peter's in the Vatican and St. Paul's in London. As a point of civic pride, that's the preferred calculation here. It's certainly huge. A Gothic church with a redone belltower that was originally a minaret in Moorish days. Baroque elements inside the cathedral that would overwhelm almost anything smaller than the Grand Canyon--the ornately carved wooden altarpiece alone is 65 feet tall--but they seem pretty much to scale in there. Much of the Mass and pre-service music was sung by a choir of older men (some with great voices) accompanied by a huge organ (7000 pipes, my guidebook says; I didn't count) played by a man who used it to the full. Again, in a smaller space the sound would have blown you away like in that old print ad for some deluxe sound system where there's a guy slunk down in a chair in front of the speaker and it looks like he's being blasted by gale-force winds. But in Sevilla's cathedral it was a perfect match, full and inspiring. Soon after the Mass in the main part of the church ended, another started in the apse chapel (as big as most churches) with a mixed choir of at least 60 people. I was about a hundred yards away, toward the back of the nave. The sound was, well, heavenly.

Some of the most memorable moments on this sabbatical have been combinations of sound and space--calls to prayer in the open air in Kas and Istanbul, Qur'anic recitation in the Selimiye mosque in Edirne and Istanbul's Beyazid, Mass echoing through the Basilica di San Marco in Venice, English carols in well-worn Anglican churches in Venice and Florence, a Czech carol that everybody knew in grand theaters and a grander Baroque church in Prague, a soprano/violin/organ Christmas concert in Prague, a cantor's soulful lament in a synagogue-turned-museum in Prague in which the walls are covered with names and dates of Jews who were taken away to the concentration camps, and the organ and choirs at Mass here in Sevilla. I hear that in Granada, where I have yet to go, the calls to prayer from the minarets of the Grand Mosque are unamplified--muezzin unplugged, as it were. I look forward to that, too.

And here I expected much of my inspiration to be visual! Actually, much of it has been. I just didn't expect the aural richness I've also encountered.

Blackface and yellow stars

An unexpected thing of another sort: actors in blackface. For starters, the two Christmas pageants we saw in Prague included a king/wise man/magi (magus?) in blackface. (I'll skip the poster--not for any event described below--showing the Three Kings, one of whom looked like the Tar Baby.) In one--a program that had the feel of being based on medieval plays--the blackface king was a rather comical figure, though not in as patronizing a way as you might think. The other two kings kept trying to push him to the back but he kept popping up, tricking them, insisting on his rightful place among them or even in front. In the other (a children's pageant put on by a boy's choir), the dark king was clearly a Turk, more smudged in complexion than in full blackface, and carrying a standard with a crescent moon atop it. The third of the Three Kings (as always), when he presented his gift to the Christ child, he prostrated himself. (Actually it looked more like a push-up, but the actor was maybe 12 years old.) He was also the only one of the Kings not to kneel after they presented their gifts, simply standing with his head bowed.

Another intriguing thing about that pageant was the angel Gabriel, who also represented the Christmas star, which was a brilliant move. The star he wore on his forehead was a yellow six-pointed Star of David--also brilliant given the horrible history of Prague's Jews under the Nazis.

And then last night, vastly inflating the count of figures in blackface, there were hundreds of Moorish-looking characters in the Epiphany parade here in Sevilla. Crowds, including lots and lots of kids, mobbed the streets as bands and floats flowed by, like Minneapolis' Holidazzle parade but without all the flashing lights, or Mardi Gras without the bawdiness. Children and adults on the floats threw candy to the crowd. All around me kids on their fathers' shoulders held out plastic shopping bags as if they were trying to catch the rain.

Everyone was out to welcome the arrival of Los Tres Reyes Magos as part of the Epiphany celebration, which is huge in Spain. Sevilla is known for its street liturgy--if you've seen photos of spooky-looking KKK-like figures in a Holy Week parade in Spain, it was probably from here. Last night's parade was anything but macabre, though the rivers of blackfaced Moors was odd from an American perspective. They were all dressed alike, in white robes and Bedouin-looking head coverings with simple red bands around their heads. The Three Kings and their floats were interspersed in the long procession, which also included trumpeters on horseback, marching bands, a float at the beginning that might have represented the Christmas star but which also apparently carried the Epiphany beauty queen and her court. Mixed in in the long procession were Willy Wonka (throwing chocolate bars, I assume), Cinderella in her pumpkin carriage, and Don Quixote on a float crowned with a big book.

Judería siglos I-XX

January 8--Yesterday I rode the train to nearby Córdoba to see La Mezquita, the mosque from when Córdoba was the center of Al-Andalus (the Arabic name for Moorish or Islamic Spain; this region is still called Andalucía). As capital of Al-Andalus, roughly from the mid-8th to the 11th centuries, it was a center of culture and tolerance, what the Spaniards call convivencia. As in the Ottoman empire later and at the other end of the Mediterranean, Muslim rulers allowed--even encouraged--Christians and Jews to keep their religion. Yes, they were required to pay higher taxes than Muslims, so there was some economic self-interest for the state in this arrangement, but there was also a remarkable tolerance at the time. Jews in particular fared better under Muslim rulers than they had or would again under Christian monarchs.

I designed much of this trip so I could learn more about Islam and some of the history of Muslim-Christian relations. Serendipitous have been the reminders of Jewish history in the midst of all this. I mentioned how charming the part of Sevilla was that I stayed in. It's the old Jewish Quarter or Judería. Istanbul has one, Venice has one (the Ghetto), Prague has one, Sevilla has one. They're scattered all over Europe. And all over Europe they've been emptied--by the Spanish Inquisition, by pogroms, by the Holocaust. I still think that many of the policies and practices of the present state of Israel are indefensible (as well as tragically self-defeating, almost in a Greek-tragedy sort of way--so much geopolitical violence is; think Iraq), but it's easy for me as an American Gentile to be insensitive to the history of wave after wave of Jewish persecution, from Spain to Russia--usually by people who were Christian, or claimed to be.

As I was entering the old Jewish Quarter in Córdoba yesterday I saw a plaque that said

which basically means that while the mosque (mezquita) and cathedral were built between the 8th and 18th centuries, this has been the Jewish Quarter since Roman times. It was a quiet reminder that through two millennia, from the Roman empire through the rise and fall of Muslim caliphates and Christian monarchs, through dictatorships and fascism and liberal democracy, Judaism has silently persisted. I've read that Spain is trying to recover some of its Jewish heritage, which is quite illustrious, too.

More later, but not a lot more and not a lot later. My sabbatical ends a week from today.

Warm regards, and see you soon,