Oh, Sisters, Let's Go Down...

Yes, we're meeting again tomorrow, and once again my true reportage will be minimal, thanks to a few conflicts. But after the tight focus on a detail of my last post, I did want to go to the other extreme and get in a larger view of the group, even though this won't be exactly a strict recording of our session either.

Last time we met, the new longer hours of daylight worked to the disadvantage of some of us. The sun was coming in brightly through the window, making it difficult to do anything but squint, and the music over the loud speakers was particularly loud, making it difficult to hear as well. We were discussing this scene of Glugg and Chuff and the girls, who are all the colors of the rainbow, among other things, and the game is for Glugg to guess the colors of the girls' underpants. It's a child's game, a bit salacious, but still within the realm of innocence.

We were discussing this when the music came over the loudspeaker. As we discussed the 'rainbow girls' what should come over the loudspeaker but this hymn, "Oh, Sisters, let's go down, down to the river to pray." To the background of this music, Tom and Ann spurred each other on to new metaphoric meanings. Tom's understanding of language as the refraction of the whole met with Ann's understanding of the Kabbalah and the way the branches of the tree of life are also refractions. It was a moment of insight prompting insight, but I was kind of lost to it, because the music was speaking to me so much.

Because the river of the song is also Anna Livia Pluribelle, of course. And it was such a strange moment, when, blinded by the light, and deafened by the music, as we always are with Joyce to some degree, I did understand that this child's game about what we sometimes think of as the lower human instincts was exactly the revelation that appeared after blindness and deafness, and that the 'rainbow girls' playing their teasing child's game, were in fact speaking about the divine all along...