Week 24: Music from a Catholic School Education

To Kurt Vonnegut, RIP, I will forever eat crumbs from your blue beard.

Part 1 – Semana Santa Music for Dirty Teenagers

Holy week in Puerto Rico – Semana Santa. Teenagers in Catholic school, and we get the whole week off. Spring Break for the guilt-ridden set. We didn’t care. We were going for ten days to the little island of Culebra. To live on the beach for ten days. No shoes, no shirts, no showers. Ten days in a bathing suit looking for left over ammunition and playing with abandoned armored vehicles left over from the days when Culebra was a US Navy bombing range before they moved to nearby Vieques. Ten days of listening to one mixed-tape of Ramones, Iggy Pop, Blue Oyster Cult, Black Sabbath and Foreigner selections which we recorded from a friend’s older brother’s record collection. Ten days of eating cold soup, Vienna sausages and tuna fish cause we didn’t care enough to start a fire (though we did walk the mile or so that separated the beach from the town carrying a cooler full of beer on several occasions). So, ten days of shitting in the woods and wiping with leaves or can wrappers. Ten days of what we thought of as roughing it.

Padre Tomás was the school counselor priest for our high school. He was a cool priest by our standards. Our experience of priests up to this point had been that they were either extremely old, or extremely perverted. But Padre Tomás was neither. He loved to drink San Miguel beer and watch futbol at the local Spanish bakery. He was youthful and not that interested in us teenagers except as much as it was his job to give us some advice once in a while. But when he did he talked to us like we knew what we were doing, even if he knew we didn’t, and he would make suggestions that sometimes were for our benefit, sometimes just because they were interesting. He would suggest things like, try this beer, or try walking away when your father is drunk and picks up the speargun. So when, the day before leaving for Culebra, he told us that we should check out mass while we were there, we listened even if we knew we wouldn’t be going there for church.

But now it’s Thursday and we’ve been in Culebra for almost a week, and the days go by slowly when one is doing nothing under a blazing sun on an empty beach with a few other knuckleheads you saw every day anyways and who were starting to really smell like something rancid. And now we were out of batteries for our crappy handheld tape player, had no more money for more batteries or for beer, so we were drinking some old vinegary wine we had, and the mosquitoes were starting to smell our defeat. Needless to say we were a little more than bored. So we remembered what Padre Tomás said and decided, what the hell, let’s check out the Holy Thursday mass that night. So we go to church and as we are waiting for the service to start the priest comes to us and asks us if we would please volunteer for a special part of the services. It would require no work on our part, we just have to come up when he calls us. Ok, sounds easy enough. Mass moves along as usual, until somewhere towards the end when the priest calls up the volunteers. I think only three from our group were there, plus nine other volunteers from among the locals to add up to twelve. We of course looked like we had been dragged out from the sewer while everyone else was dressed for church. So they sit us all in a line facing the congregation and as we are preparing for a game of which-one-of-these-are-not-like-the-others, the priest explains that at the last supper Jesus washed the apostles’ feet, and so he gets on his knees and with a pail of water and a washcloth proceeds, one by one, to scrub, wash and rinse all 24 feet in front of him, including the six nasty crusty feet of the three of us. That was one Holy Thursday.

Nothing boosts one’s energy level quite like having your filthy feet washed by a priest in front of a whole congregation. It was so much fun, we couldn’t’ wait for Friday night service. Jesus was alright with us. But alas we were teenagers so we missed it for some reason or other I don’t remember. I think the dog ate it. So by Saturday we couldn’t wait to go and see what was going to happen in this crazy church.

Let me tell you about the temple a bit. It was a small version of your standard Catholic. There was one entrance at the far end, and a single aisle going down the center between rows of pews that probably sat 100 people, while statues of various saints lined up the side walls below modest stained glass windows. However on that Holy Saturday, everything was covered with purple cloths. The windows were covered, the statues were covered, and the whole front end of the church where you would expect to see the altar, the crucifix, the tabernacle, etc. was all covered by a purple curtain that didn’t let you see past the first few feet in front of the first line of pews. A small wooden table was set up in front of the curtain with a purple table cloth over it. This was going to be the altar for the service. The whole atmosphere was pure doom and gloom worthy of the best gothic imagination.

And now it’s 10pm and the service starts. And there is no mass. The priest says a few words and starts a litany in the monotone of one who is resigned to patiently wait while the world finishes destroying itself around him. This is after all the day Jesus died and went down to hell to get Moses, Abraham and the rest of the worthy ones who had been down there for hundreds of years waiting for him to come get them (that must have sucked). And when God is in hell, you can only imagine what it must be like on earth. Teenagers are running wild thru the streets. But the priest is in his own world. And we follow along thinking it has to be almost over. We had never been to a church service that lasted more than 45 minutes. But the priest goes on with the litany. Everyone stand up. Saint Mary have mercy on us. And now everyone kneels and responds, Saint Mary have mercy on us. Now everyone sits down. Now everyone stands up. Saint Joseph have mercy on us. Everyone kneels and responds, Saint Joseph have mercy on us. Everyone sits down. Everyone stands up. Saint Peter have mercy on us. Everyone kneels and responds, Saint Peter have mercy on us. Everyone sits down. Everyone stands up. Saint John have mercy on us. Everyone kneels and responds, Saint John have mercy on us. Everyone sits down. And on it goes. At first it’s an eternity in hell, then everything starts to happen by itself, we stand up, kneel, say the words, sit, stand up, kneel, say the words, sit. We do this over and over without even trying, like machines or zombies. A whole congregation entranced by the monotonous dirge of the priest’s voice as he goes through all the Catholic saints. And suddenly it was midnight, and the priest says something which I don’t remember, and suddenly all the purple cloths are gone, all the statues of the saints are wrapped in wreaths of flowers, the curtain covering the altar end of the church has also disappeared and there is the altar covered in white flowers and there is no crucifix but a statue of the resurrected Jesus all in white and there is a band, a seriously rocking drummer, a bassist and a guitarist who are suddenly laying down sounds with their instruments the likes of which I had never experienced. And its like that trick when someone holds your arms down tight against the sides of your body for a few minutes while you push them out and then they let go and your arms feel like feathers. And suddenly at midnight we not only feel like feathers, but we feel like we are going straight to heaven right then and there with a rocking beat leading us up and up and up, and all our grime and slime is behind us and we are lifted above the buildings of the tiny town and over the island and we don’t come down from that high until the sun came up the next day. And my understanding of contrast has never been the same.