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Brendan Wolfe

  • News
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'Lifted right through the sky'

July 22, 2016

The Trappist monk Thomas Merton on Bix Beiderbecke:

Today, watching the morning of light through the leaves on the brick walls of the house across the garden, light in the little fish pond, same time record of Beiderbecke's "In a Mist" ending, very complicated perfect ending, intricate, suspense, perfectly satisfying; last bar of that, movement of light, it flashes into my head what kind of light and grace is in people like Celeste de Bellis, and for a tenth of a second it was like being lifted right through the sky: and things almost all stopped and lost their diversity and knit themselves together as they ought to be, and then I caught my breath and fell out of it laughing and crying; boy it was fine what I just missed; it was a thing to be happy and thankful for and laugh and be glad about.

— The Journal of Thomas Merton, Vol. 1: 1939–1941

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