Monday 19 December 2016

All that is Light, all that is Music, and 'All the Angels'.......

C. S. Lewis once described Heaven as 'that place where there is only light, and all that is not music is silence'.....

I think it's in 'The Pilgrim's Regress', but I could be wrong........

He is much out of fashion these days. Beyond the 'Narnia' books, his writing is largely ignored.

I think this is a shame.

Though I am far ( very, very very far indeed) from being an Evangelical....... (there, the very word made my skin creep.....) like Lewis, I am even further from Hugh Trevor-Roper:

www.spectator.co.uk/2006/07/the-voltaire-of-st-aldates/

(For the record, H T-R was a daft old ponce who allowed his ego to intervene with his critical faculties to such an extent that when he was presented with the laughable 'Hitler Diaries', a work of obvious fiction so transparent they make Monty Python's 'The Life of Brian' look like a long lost Book of  The New Testament, he cost The Sunday Times the thick end of a quarter of a million quid......In 1985. When that was a sum of money, not the price of a studio flat in in one of London's less salubrious postcodes......)

https://www.theguardian.com › World › Germany

So, as the inimitable Molesworth would have it, "Yah boo sucks to Lord Dacre......."

'So, er, what was all that about?' you may well be asking.....

I suppose that it's about this: I may not agree with Lewis on everything, but we are still on the same side.

And I won't have him traduced.

Or ignored.

Whatever.

Let us consider once more 'that place where there is only light, and all that is not music is silence'.....

It can be tricky, this one.......:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38340648

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Where was the light?

Where was the silence?

Subsumed by Hell itself, I think......

And yet Zuzana Ruzickova endures.

And so does the harpsichord.

And so does the music of Bach.

Perhaps "The light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not"..

And perhaps in that light we find Heaven itself......?

Perhaps......

Anyway, last night at the theatre.......

I went to see 'All the Angels" at The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in London.

www.whatsonstage.com/.../reviews/all-the-angels-handel-sam-wanamaker_42452.htm...

Light.

Music.

Silence.

Applause........

It is an utterly wonderful , life-affirming piece of theatre.

Please go, if you can.

At least twice.

And take heart!!






2 comments:

  1. Apparently my server does not have permission to view the above review!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Try copying the link and pasting it into Google. That may work. If not, Google 'All the Angels Sam Wanamaker Playhouse' and a raft of reviews should come up. but never mind that, just go and see it! :-)

      Delete