o my goodness, this is bizarre . killing time in a sleepdeprived mode of click and read (go to sleep! you say. well yes, that would be an option) i was glancing back at some early archives, as in two years ago. suddenly it strikes me that something i quoted off a radio program not knowing what i was hearing seemed really familar. the phrase/question 'and am i born to die' is the beginning of the song hillary and i are singing in our fringe piece. it's a shapenote/sacred harp song from the early 1800s called 'idumea.' it almost didn't register that the fragments of the rest of the quote are other pieces of the lyrics, some misquoted ('a land of deepest shame' is really 'a land of deepest shade'). realizing that, i felt a creep of eeriness inside. quite arbitrarily, i had recorded those words from some random program i was hearing on the radio, then independently of that, with no real memory of what i heard, decide this song that i thought i had never heard before this summer (and i think, most people don't know) should be a focal point of our piece. the sleep has hit and i must give in.
'the cloud of unknowing...imagining an afterlife...and am i born to die...a land of deepest shame unpierced by human thought...what will begin(become) to(of) me...and see the flaming skies"
posted by Liza 14.8.03