 by Dr. Jeffrey Lant Author's program note. Leave it to Mozart, thrilling Mozart, sublime Mozart to produce the most evocative music for the multi-aspect event we call Halloween. It is, of course, from "Don Giovanni" (premiered in Prague, 29 October 1787). I am talking of Il Commendatore's adamant call to Don Giovanni, his summons to Hades and his eternal roasting in the exquisite fires of the damned where a man finally learns, and learns at once and forever, that each of us prepares his own place of perdition and torment... which is why we know and understand its every nuance so well... for it is a place only to be found in the unhallowed depths of our imagination, a place where fear lives, seizes and torments us... Go now to any search engine where you'll find the dawning awareness of one doomed soul, the once dashing and heedless Don, who only at the last and far too late understands the consequences of the evil he has wrought. When you select the version you like best, turn up its volume until the very foundation of your abode shakes. Then I shall be glad to receive you, honored guest, at this my little soiree with only the creme de la creme of this baleful season. I've been waiting for you... and now at last you are here... en route to eternity... and the fate you have selected for yourself and honed to unbearable perfection... The unseen barrier between the sweetness of life and the thrall of death lifts... and All Hallow's Eve ushers in what we fear most... the return of our once loved and honored dead... now amongst us again... reeking figures of disgust and horror... withered arms outreaching to drag you into fearsome oblivion with them. Well might good people cross themselves with fervor and implore, "Jesu', now and in the hour of my death", seeking thereby to make too late amends for all that has gone before. Such mad hope is the greatest self deception of all and so great grinning fate grins greater still, at you, your hopeful antics and gyrations, arduous, strenuous, belated, pitiful. The veil lifts... Our pagan ancestors knew this: the line between the life we embrace and the death that steals everything we value is an unbridgeable chasm, shut tight 364 days but on October 31, at the feast of Samhain (pronounced sow-in) it lifts to reveal every horrid thing we ever suspected, heralded by noxious brimstone which once smelled we can never efface, no matter how many sweet posies we try. Death once smelled is always with us... the dead who venture forth All Hallow's Eve ensure that... and so we loathe their approach and presence, huddling close to other chary travelers who this night above all nights crave the touch and warmth of the flesh that will, and far too soon, be putrid, noisome and foul. Oh, yes, we need others of our kind this grim night most of all... and the balm of forgetfulness, if only for the stages of this night of horror and dread apprehension now fully upon us. "Well-known New York socialite found dead in the street, HEADLESS." Let me introduce you to author Washington Irving's friend Ichabod Crane. You'll recall his celebrated 1820 report on the matter, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". Please don't comment on his headless state; he's sensitive about it. After all, he was, in life, vain about his comely face and even features, and it distresses him that he has them no longer; the pumpkin you see in its place, while bravura of its kind and exquisitely carved, is not, after all, the beautiful visage God gave him, as poor Mr. Crane will surely tell you, for in truth he has nowadays no other subject of conversation. "Ah, Ichabod, would you favor us..." And Ichabod does, with every lurid detail at his finger tips. How he was the most fervent of party animals, gracing every social event for miles around. How he used his silver tongue and insinuating manners to fashion the very best of lives (including free room and board from those beguiled by such a paragon and man of bon ton). How he came to know and love (as much as such an acolyte of Narcissus can ever love another) Miss Katrina Van Tassel, something of an heiress with fertile acres and the promise of tasty hot meals for life her appealing dowry... getting her to love him and promise him those acres and those tasty meals was child's play for such a man... and, besides, he may even have loved her, at least as he understood love. Thus promises, pledges, and florid declarations were made, made again, and savored, along, you may suppose, with the trinkets and keep-sakes so much treasured in the giving and the getting. "Pray continue, dear Ichabod, for my guests must leave before..." And so Ichabod continues his painful narration. Of how he believed one and every myth, legend, tall tale and prophesy. And of how one dark October night, yes, this very time of the year, Ichabod Crane, so near his goal, encountered on his road home a traveler who reveals that he is the ghost of a Hessian soldier who was decapitated by a cannon ball in the American Revolution. He, too, has a goal: would Ichabod provide his head, for his own was much worn, its features degraded, gruesome, and oozing? And so commenced the epic chase of Sleepy Hollow... the chase Ichabod Crane thought he'd won, when he crossed the bridge which meant safety. But the horseman threw his own severed head at Crane with diabolical skill. Next day Ichabod was gone, only his hat and a pumpkin remained. Abraham "Brom Bones" van Brunt was questioned, but said nothing, then or ever. "He married Katrina, didn't he?" And so Ichabod Crane finished, as all sinners finish; blaming others, claiming a state of grace, pleading for understanding, empathy, and above all for absolution, adamant that they were innocent, always innocent, wrongly caught in the cycles of eternal damnation. Resolute, committed, determined, pathetic. Linus van Pelt. "Ah Linus, I didn't expect you this year what with your great matter, the Great Pumpkin." "I came to see if Mr. Schulz allows me to see the Great Pumpkin at last, after waiting so long, since October 27, 1966." But he knew better. Charles Schulz in life (1922-2000) insisted that the Great Pumpkin would never come, would remain invisible, allowed no sight, sound, apparition or clue; that poor Linus, alone in the night air, armed with only thumb, blanket and a child's unshakable faith, would so confront the ages. So decreed his creator, who is now (if there is any justice) a pre-school teacher in Hell in a school for toddlers with excessive lobar capacity and preternatural skills for bugging adults. He would have come to my little event, but Linus tells me he's been super-glued to a particularly uncomfortable chair whilst screaming tots record every colorful expletive and imprecation he ever knew and continuously uses; texting each and every profanity to every school board in the land along with the pieces of his latest cartoon strip, pieces so ill assorted they can never be put properly together. Delicious. Poor Mr. Schulz! Despite the fact that he made up to $40 million a year, everything, every single thing made him nervous... and so he is probably fretting right this minute about what those kids are doing to him. And if the kids were this instant taken off Pester Patrol, he'd worry about that too, wondering what it meant. You can surely see the hand of Old Scratch in all this. "You can't create humor out of happiness," Schulz once said. Now he's got enough unhappiness for "Peanuts" strips forever. The last guest to arrive. All those participating in the All Hallow's festivities can leave Hades any time October 31 to commence their grisly rounds. However each must return by the final stroke, the 12th stroke, of the clock at midnight. Otherwise, they are assigned some degrading, demeaning or derisory task, to perform until Hades opens again to call them "home". "Ah, it's Mr. Ron Wallace, isn't it, whose pumpkin at the Topsfield Fair has just become the biggest in history, about 2000 pounds, isn't it?" "Yes, sir, Ron Wallace is back! Ron Wallace is back! It took me six years to get back on top and now I have!" "Many felicitations, Mr. Wallace. By the way, have you read your task?" Wallace, the champ, looked irked. Task indeed! He ripped open the envelope, and his face fell. "It says I'm to spent this year producing my next pumpkin. But that I will only be able to grow one of just 2 pounds... and that each person at the fair will be asked to get up and ridicule my 'achievement'. I'll be pilloried, especially after all the great things I said about myself when the results were released September 28." "No doubt, Mr. Wallace, too sad..." By the way, dear guest, I have a letter for you, too. It contains your little task. Open it now. I can't wait to see what you'll be doing. Happy All Hallow's. So awfully good to see you. |
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