Every Single Verse

Dearest Rachel –

One of the things that we kept of yours throughout the purge of the house during that first year after your passing was your collection of church hymnals and songbooks.

Many of them have hymns organized by subject: the story of salvation, praise to God, appeals for help, and so forth. And of course, there are sections in each of them that are specific to certain times and seasons: harvest and Thanksgiving, Good Friday and Easter…and of course, dozens of Christmas hymns and carols. So throughout this library of music that you kept, I would imagine that there are a few hundred different such songs in your collection.

And when we would sing them, you always wanted to sing every single verse.

Now, in fairness, this makes sense with Christmas carols, in particular; they go by that name (as opposed to ‘songs’ or ‘hymns’) not just because the alliteration sounds cool, but because carols, by their specific nature, tell a story – which, by the way, is why Dickens’ novella was titled as it was, despite actually referencing only one (“God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”) throughout the course of his recounting of Ebeneezer Scrooge and his repentance. To skip a verse would be like removing a chapter from a book; the reader might grasp what was going on, but some important details would be lost by the omission.

You took issue with that practice; to you, every verse was written for a reason, and to ignore some of the later – and more obscure – verses for the sake of time, well… you wouldn’t go so far as to call it sacrilege or blasphemy, but you expressed concern and dismay about it. There could be important truths in those verses that we were missing, if nothing else.

Then again, to refer back to Dickens’ Christmas carol, while you actually had a copy of the novella, and read it for yourself during your childhood (which is more than I can say, personally – after studying Bleak House in high school English class, I’d had quite enough of the fellow who was clearly being paid by the word. And yes, you can point at my letters to you and laugh at that statement, if you like), you were quite content to watch one or another filmic adaptation of it, rather than regularly reading the original work every year. This, despite the fact that no adaptation included everything from the original source, while others added extraneous material the author never intended. Without intending to, this sort of undermines your argument that condensation is a bad thing.

Granted, it’s not a perfect comparison; the novella takes more time to read – let alone enact – than dozens of Christmas carols, even if all their verses are sung. Which may have been part of your point; a plaintive cry against our ever-shortening attention span, when it came to this aspect of seasonal worship and celebration. This was the one part of any service in which we participated, and you didn’t want it cut short.

At the same time, as previously observed, there are so many songs and carols out there; to dwell on one for four or five verses reduces any likelihood of other, more esoteric songs being sung. There are gospel truths in the obscure ones, too, after all. No matter which path is taken, something gets short shrift. At least when singing the one or two main verse(s) of multiple carols, you get a little variety in terms of music.

And the concept of variation was drilled into me when taking instrument lessons; an instrument can’t distinguish between verses by means of lyrics; it has to change keys, or volume, or add grace notes here and there to break up the overall monotony. But if you went through various different songs, well… monotony wasn’t an issue. There are, after all, scores of reasonably familiar pieces that could be performed during this season, and while you wanted to hear – and sing – them in their entirety, you also wanted to hear and sing them all, if at all possible.

Which may be more of the issue, when you come down to it; “if at all possible.” We only get so much time, both for the season as a whole, and to spend it taking in the music (and even you would agree that whatever’s being piped in through the ceiling of the mall doesn’t count; there’s nothing particularly edifying about the secular stuff, and it’s even more egregious with the repetition than churches are with the sacred – although listening to a J-pop singer rendering certain Christmas standards in her interestingly-accented Engrish in a sushi restaurant is its own form of entertainment). Not everything is possible; some things need to be cut from the roster, with the vague promise of “we’ll get to it next year,” which is eerily reminiscent of a sport team’s fan talking about a future championship, or even the playoffs.

The world just doesn’t seem to have time for a full recitation of every stanza of every song any more, honey – assuming it ever did. I’m not sure what’s to be done about that, but I found myself having to let you know that this is every bit as true now as it was when you first took issue with it, and I doubt things are going to change any time soon. It’s just the way things are; although it did remind me of your little quirk regarding the subject, so there’s that.

In any event, if you’d be so kind as to keep an eye on me today, I’d appreciate it, and wish me luck, as I’m going to need it.