13 August 2005

Paging carpal tunnel OR a strange diasporal church program

I barely manage to catch the last train to get home, after what seemed like a gazillion billion hours of overtime (thanks to my eye allergies combined with a variety of equally useless eyedrops and lack of breaks, nourishment, and sleep), but instead of dropping on the bed half-dead (and crushing my poor dachshund in the process), I sign online! And type some more! And email jokes to people! And read news sites! And drink tea! And worst of all - check the church schedule, to see whether I can make it tomorrow!

Last time I went to church was two weeks ago and two thousand miles away. My tiny Winnipeg church is really an entire post in itself. I just wanted to mention that at that particular time, we had a personal service for an anniversary of the passing away of my grandfather, and as usual, I spent the entire time analyzing the limited resources of the (artistic) program, which made the effort and imagery collected itself all the more...charming. I realized that there was an icon out of sync with the rest of the program in one of the top rows of the iconostatis: the Old Testament Trinity somehow got placed within an entirely christological set of imagery.

Every program is planned, but the image did not fit chronologically or feast-wise (although I am no expert on the latter), so I mentioned this inconsistency to the priest. He seemed puzzled too, because apparently those icons were placed there by a Serbian (?) monk, who had to have known what he was doing.

This short conversation yet again made me realize that I really have no one to discuss these issues with. Art history students? Old ladies in church? As if there are any Byzantinists out there who are additionally interested in program development in contemporary Russian Orthodox Church (and Russian Church Outside of Russia)............

Funny how this remains at the forefront of my thoughts, yet I had resolved to study modernism........................I'm too in love with Rodchenko to just give him up!

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