Book
Excerpts:
“The phone rings. My agent is on the line
with word of a new job opportunity. Could I send
a tape with samples of my work for the producers
and director to listen to? The cues should be
somehow related to their picture. It’s a
comedy about a bunch of misfit kids who find self-esteem;
or a drama about a woman in jeopardy; or a gritty
parable of street life; or a story about someone
with a devastating disease. Whatever the subject
is, it sounds awfully familiar – but it’s
just different enough that none of the music I’ve
already written for another picture quite seems
to fit. “When do they need it?” I ask.
“Yesterday!” my agent laughs, a tad
too heartily.
“I’ll get on it right away.” .
. .
I make . . . the tape and rush to the post office
to mail it just before closing time. . . .
After a few more days my agent calls once more.
I didn’t get the job. Joe Blow of Some Obscure
Rock ‘n’ Roll Band got it. He will improvise
the score on his guitar. Oops. Rewind. That was
the last time – or the last five times. Start
again. This time I get the job. Cheers and huzzahs!
Jigs on the kitchen floor. The next day I clear
the decks of any extraneous activity or unfinished
business – like sleeping – and say goodbye
to my family. I’ll be quarantined downstairs
now for the next few weeks, more or less, depending
on the size of the project. There will be little
time for anything other than offerings to the
film god. Except, of course, for the work that
remains from the last job that went over schedule.”
“while music is a wonderful gift, it makes
a very poor god. It can sing of redemption, but
it can’t provide it.”
“Suddenly we heard the sound of singing,
coming from behind us. We looked up and saw a
group of perhaps 120 young men, marching, six
abreast arm in arm, down the steps from the Jewish
Quarter. They were singing with a fierce joy and
as they drew nearer, their march seemed more like
a dance. They danced and sang their way through
the square and down a ramp leading to a large
space before the Wall where they began to pray.
The sound washed over us like waves. The voices
of several cantors rose above the sea of prayers,
soaring and intertwining with cacophonous abandon.
There were swallows overhead, wheeling in ovals
and diving headlong into niches between the stones
of the temple wall where their nests were crammed.
The swallows were singing too, their voices like
flutes above the cantors, whose voices were trumpets
above the violas and ‘celli of the prayers.
It was a symphony, brave and clean and strong.
The stones themselves may well have been crying
out. And I knew myself to be in the presence of
a God who is so much greater and older and stronger
than my categories, whose love runs deeper and
longer than my imagination can ever embrace.”
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Cloth
(6 x 9), 320 pages
Autographed by J.A.C. Redford
$17.00 
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