This morning at God’o'clock I walked downtown to do an interview on Radio Solent, about the Peru trek and APEC. I had to be there at 6.45, so set off around 10 past 6, iPod at the ready to get me in the mood for some swift walking. As usual, I needed something loud and funky to wake me up, so after considering the Foos (not funky enough) and Missy Elliot (not loud enough), on went the RHCP. Thanks, guys, for another job well done – I got to the studio in record time, nearly two miles in twenty minutes.
I will not be taking my iPod to the Andes as there is no point – nowhere to charge it, and I can’t be fussed with one of those little battery chargers. But not having music electrically supplied hasn’t been a problem during our weekend training hikes, simply because it’s going on in my head all the time. The only difference is that it tends to be one bit of music on a continuous loop (nearly wrote “continuous loup” just then – wonder what that would be like? Owwoooo…). A few weekends ago it was the Boswell Sisters’ “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” (someone else likes this one, too – click on http://katry.blogspot.com/2005/07/between-devil-and-deep-blue-sea.html). Last week it was the chant Regnum mundi et omnem ornatum saeculi contempsi from the profession rite for a Clarissan nun – one of the chants featured in Fallen.
Now, as I’ve said before I’ve never really been into chant: not my kind of thing, no no, just the boring bits you have to sit through before you get to the swingin’ polyphony. However, I have to say, since starting to research Fallen I’ve fallen in love with it, especially with singing it. I find myself humming little snatches of chant tunes as I’m filing in my office, or tidying the bathroom. It was great to sing it in ensemble when we had our first chorus rehearsal last week; incredibly calming, and grounding, and quietly energizing. Being a Quaker sympathiser, I guess strictly I’m not supposed to be into hymns and the like, but I’ve retained an affection for the good old tunes since my church-job days (excellent for giving it some welly when digging the garden – “HE who would valiant be, ‘GAINST all disaster”), and now I’m just going to have to admit chant into my pantheon of weaknesses. If nothing else, it helps make low-level housework more bearable.