Carmina Burana

I first fell in love with Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana in the spring of 2001. I was taking a seminar on medieval German literature, and our professor brought in a CD player one day. Without saying a word, he pressed play, and out blasted “O, Fortuna!” It was thrilling, and at the end he beamed around the room and said, “Aren’t you ready to go fight something now?” We all yelled “Yeah!” (or perhaps, “ja!”)

Most of you would probably recognize “O Fortuna” when you heard it, whether you knew that’s what it is or not; it is often used in commercials and movie soundtracks and is one of the most dramatic choral passages I know of. Unlike most choral works I am familiar with, though, Carmina Burana was not written as a mass or other form of sacred music. No, this is one of the bawdiest pieces of classical music out there, but since no one can understand the words it usually passes muster without anyone batting an eyelash.

Cell Phone Dependency

An interesting and frightening thing happened this weekend. My brother lost his cell phone. Or rather, my brother lost his cell phone, failed to show up at two or three places he said he was going to be, and no one heard from him for nearly three days.

As it turns out, it had fallen out of his pocket in someone else’s car and then had the battery die, so the other person was driving it around for a couple of days all unsuspecting. And he didn’t show up at his previously scheduled events because the Clinton campaign* called the restaurant where he works at the last minute to schedule a huge dinner, which he then got roped into working even though he was supposed to be off that day, and he couldn’t tell anyone because he didn’t have his phone.

But the whole thing was kind of scary, because it made me realize I have no other way to reach him. I sort of kind of have an email address for him, but I’m never sure if it’s the address he’s still using any more, because he’s not much of an emailer. (At least, not to his geeky sister.) Since he works at a restaurant, he doesn’t really have a “work phone,” (though my parents did go to the restaurant and leave him a physical note-style message when they got a call from the person who did have the phone.) I don’t know the phone numbers of any of his friends. Conversely, I suspect he doesn’t know my phone number without looking it up in his own phone. Hence, the loss of his cell phone pretty much meant that my brother fell off the face of the earth.