Apparition hat trick

Anyone who spends as much time looking at Facebook status updates as I do may already know that I concluded my recent trip to New York by partying just a wee bit too hard Monday night, missing my flight Tuesday morning, leaving my cell phone behind in the East Village, spending the next eight hours paying fines, sleeping, eating and crying a little in JFK Terminal 4 (I really know how to party).

Today, a trio of consolation prizes. The first I found randomly on YouTube - a slickly produced two and a half minute documentary about the Apparition of the Eternal Church screening that took place in Trondheim, Norway (at the notorious Church of Our Lady) in September of last year:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe2rYg2blQo

Thanks to the collective brain otherwise known as Facebook, particularly the node of it belonging to Diana Anders, I have this translation of filmgoer commentary (tentative where followed by the question mark):

"It was not provocative, no, but it was fascinating - there were some odd people in that!"
"Surely each of us here had a different experience of the piece - there are so many ways to interpret this."
"Some people might find it blasphemous (?), but I liked it."
"It was very high quality."

- that last comment certainly a reference to Squeaky Blonde's famous bong hit.

Then, today, this showed up in Unquiet Thoughts, Alex Ross's new New Yorker blog:

Two other Messiaen films worth seeing: the DVD of Pierre Audi’s Netherlands Opera production of “St. Francis of Assisi,” with a magnificent lead performance by Rod Gilfry; and Paul Festa’s mind-bending documentary “Apparition of the Eternal Church.”

If my Juilliard education taught me nothing else, it taught me that a mind is a terrible thing not to bend (thank you Albert Fuller).

I started this blog entry as "Apparition double whammy," but then, searching on YouTube for the Trondheim link, I found two videos of three young people videotaping themselves listening to Apparition of the Eternal Church (the organ piece) through headphones. Say what you will about the results (I rated them "awesome"), but as far as I'm concerned this was one of the most gratifying manifestations of the whole Messiaen project to date.