The Hero Construction Company

Those of you who have read my two posts about the Bosnian cellist, Vedran Smailovic,  will enjoy a blog site I stumbled  upon--or was led to--today. Featured in a March 3, 2009, post at Matt Langdon's "The Hero Construction Company" site is the children's book, Echoes From the Square, by Elizabeth Wellburn. In an accompanying video, Ms. Wellburn reads the full text of the book, which Deryk Houston beautifully illustrated. There's a blurb by the great Yo-Yo Ma, and the musical accompaniment is quite lovely, too.

(c) 2010 by Alfred J. Garrotto
All rights reserved

The Saint With the Dragon Tattoo

I've always marveled that some children reared in wretchedly dysfunctional families grow up to be marvelous, well-adjusted human beings. Others born into loving homes and Western-style comfort and privilege choose an opposite path, living their lives in seemingly self-inflicted misery. Those who have scratched their way to maturity--even happiness--against the odds now have a new model and patron saint in Lisbeth Salander, the female protagonist of the late Stieg Larsson's internationally best-selling Swedish trilogy: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

Purists will argue that a literary (and now film) character cannot  qualify as a saint. There was a time when I, too, delimited my understanding of the spiritual world along the boundary lines of fact and fiction. A crack appeared in my dualistic (either/or) thought processes in 1969, when the Catholic Church admitted that only shaky evidence existed to support the historicity of some saints who had long enjoyed their special annual feast days. Among those demoted was everybody's favorite co-pilot, St. Christopher.

Archbishop Jacopo de Voragine, author of The Golden Legend, a thirteenth century compilation of saints' lives, set off a seven-hundred-year run of popular devotion to the muscular Christ-bearer. Over the past three decades, the saint's medals and dashboard bobble heads have virtually disappeared. What became of those billions of prayers sent heavenward by travelers who relied on him for protection? Jesus assures us, as he did the people of his own day, that our God wastes nothing: "Your faith has saved you" (Luke 7:50).

Humans, whether religious or not, have always drawn inspiration from legends, as well as from certifiably historical people and events. So, why not adopt Larsson's protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, as a saint for our time, especially as a model for young adults? 

I won't give away the details of her life story here. There just might still be a few people on the planet who have not read the books (or not yet completed the trilogy). Personal discovery of her inner life, values, and unique, but finely tuned, morality is one of the trilogy's great rewards. But I give nothing away by saying that the Universe dealt Salander one of the worst hands of any child, fictional or real.

Canonizing Salander does challenge us to shift our understanding about what is moral and what is not. By rigid Judeo-Christian standards, the behaviors that enable her to survive as a functioning human being are immoral. But behavior alone is not the ultimate determiner of morality. For me, the most sensible and hallowed definition of morality is enshrined at the core of my own tradition. For Catholics, individual conscience is the final arbiter of morality, superseding everything else. The essence of morality is being human in the best sense, according to each person's unique capability at any given moment in life. Since we are made in God's image, whatever attitudes and behaviors help us to grow emotionally and spiritually--and thus become more like God--are moral. An intentional decision or action is immoral to the extent that it causes us to be less than the person God created us to be.

In The Girl Who Played With Fire, co-protagonist Mikael Blomkvist says of his friend Lisbeth, now a murder suspect, that she possesses a highly developed sense of morality. By this he means that her moral compass is a trustworthy guide and that she consistently operates from that core principle. In view of that, by what right does anyone judge her or condemn her choices? This is especially so, in light of the abuse she has suffered as a child and teen from the very adults responsible for guiding and protecting her (mother, father, legal and social welfare systems, and government at the highest levels). That she survives and arrives at womanhood as a still-moral human being is miracle enough to merit this fictional character the titles of role model and patron saint for the twenty-first-century. 

(c) 2010 by Alfred J. Garrotto
All rights reserved

Author's Website

______________________

Alfred J. Garrotto is the author of the suspense novel,

The Saint of Florenville: A Love Story.

My Cello Year

What's not to love about the cello? Sexy design. Polished finish that brings every wooden fiber to brilliant life. A to-die-for "voice." 

Twice in recent months, this instrument has caught me by surprise and thrust itself upon my consciousness. First, in the PBS documentary, "Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound," that chronicles Baez's life, including her 1993 visit to the destroyed and terrorized city of Sarajevo, Bosnia. In a December 26, 2009 blog entry, I described her moving encounter with Sarajevo Opera cellist Vedran Smajlovic. 

"Unable to stop the madness that had ripped apart the former Yugoslavia, Smajlovic honored the memory of his friends and defied their killers by doing the only thing he was good at. Placing his chair in the middle of the street, he took out cello and bow—musician and instrument melding into a single defiant force. Eyes closed to the surrounding destruction, he rendered the mournful Adagio in G minor by Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni."

That experience sent me to Google and beyond to learn more about Smajlovic, the man. I found and read Steven Galloway's best-selling novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo. According to an article in Wikipedia, "Although he only appears as a peripheral character in the novel, Smajlović has publicly expressed his outrage over the publication of the book, demanding financial compensation from the author. " Copyright attorneys I looked up have been quoted as saying that he has little chance of winning that legal battle.

More recently, my wife and I squeezed into our busy spring lives a 29th wedding anniversary date that started with Sunday Mass at our local parish, Christ the King, in Pleasant Hill (CA). Then we enjoyed a terrific seafood brunch at Scott's Restaurant in Walnut Creek, followed by a rare matinee visit to the Diablo Symphony at the Lesher Center for the Performing Arts (thank you, Goldstar).

The first half of the program was pleasant but uninspiring. The post-intermission program promised a guest appearance by a cellist, whose name meant nothing to me, but I do love the instrument. David Requiro, a tall, slender twenty-something, came on stage wearing dark slacks and a loose-fitting white shirt. He carried his instrument and bow. From the first note, I knew I was in the presence of a unique artist. What captivated me, beyond his exquisite rendition of Antonin Dvorak's Cello Concerto in B minor, was the mirage he created, making himself and his cello disappear as separate entities and reappear as a single, inseparable unit. 

This is an artist's supreme achievement, be it a musician, actor, painter, or writer: to become one with the work. I think of Michelangelo on the scaffolds of the Sistine Chapel, Antoni Gaudi living the last years of his life in the construction site of Barcelona's (still-unfinished) Sagrada Familia. I think of Victor Hugo becoming one with his idealized man, Jean Valjean, and Stieg Larsson losing himself in the personae of Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander in the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy.

The great gift of artists is that they do not hoard their transcendent experience, but allow us less-skilled humans an opportunity to be transported in spirit to a higher realm of contemplative unity, be it ever so brief. That's a lofty and sacred calling.

(c) 2010 by Alfred J. Garrotto
All rights reserved

Author's Website

______________________

Alfred J. Garrotto is the author of the suspense novel,

The Saint of Florenville: A Love Story.