Some years ago, I produced a recording with the St. Olaf choir, widely recognized as one of world’s premier a cappella choirs. Among the repertoire was a piece entitled “A Boy & A Girl” by composer Eric Whitacre.   I had never heard of Eric, but the piece was stunning.

Shortly after the recording, I contacted Eric directly. He was thrilled to know that we had recorded his piece. To his knowledge it had never been recorded previously. After mastering, I sent him a copy of the recording and we continued to stay in touch. I later helped him with some technical guidance on his opera (which I understand will play Carnegie Hall this year).

So I was thrilled when Kevin Kelly made me aware this week of Eric’s latest project, a “virtual choir” of 185 voices performing his work “Lux Aurumque.” It’s a dream-like composition highlighting Eric’s masterful artistry. Besides being an innovative use of virtuality, I see this work as a breakthrough metaphor of new gathering as global humanity grows in its ability to connect and collaborate directly, at a high level, with decreasing need for locality and mediation.

Coincidentally, I took the family to see Carmina Burana today at the Sacramento Ballet — with large choirs straddling both sides of the stage. Please take 5 minutes and be swept away by Eric’s beautiful excursion into the heavens.

Eric said this, “When I saw the finished video for the first time I actually teared up. The intimacy of all the faces, the sound of the singing, the obvious poetic symbolism about our shared humanity and our need to connect; all of it completely overwhelmed me.”

I want to put on my audio engineer’s hat and point out that I’m hearing a recording quality far higher than what one would expect with a PC-grade microphone plugged into a PC recording system. And I’m not hearing 185 voices. I’m hearing perhaps 50 of the best voices, perhaps doubled, thickened, perhaps pitch-corrected (don’t make choir pitch too perfect or it sounds sterile), widened, EQ’ed, compressed, placed-in-space, single-ended noise-reduced with gobs of electronic ambiance added.

This is as much a study in post-production as it is in production, which (to me) doesn’t lessen the impact of the project at all. I think it’s brilliant. Here’s an example of a single-track

Once in a while, something blind-sides you, lays you out cold on the floor when you’re not expecting it. That happened to me this week after reading the latest Harris Poll.

The Harris poll measured people’s beliefs about Obama. One of the things they found was that 14% of all Americans believe that Obama may be the “Anti-Christ” as described in the New Testament book of Revelation. And nearly 24% of all Republicans thought it was true.

This is deeply disturbing to me. In any sampling, one would expect maybe 0.5% or 1% of people harboring marginal, paranoiac beliefs. But 24% of all republican voters? This isn’t some tiny, reclusive, wild-eyed Jim Jones community. These are people we work with, people who take care of our kids. What I had always assumed to be a religious fringe element turns out to be nearly normative. (?)

How can we have any reasonable social discourse when 32 million of our neighbors have rooted their guiding life principles in religious fantasies? How can anyone claim to be a representative of greater love, compassion, and reconciliation while imagining other people to be incarnations of pure evil?

More than ever, we need to define ourselves, and our “eschatology” (religious futurism), not in terms of fear, death, boogiemen, demonizing, socio-religious in-groups and out-groups, and imagination posing as certainty –  but in a vision of shared hope and mutual care, sustainable grace towards others, and even the practice of love towards one’s perceived enemies.

I wonder, is the Harris poll accurate? Were the questions posed objectively and plainly? Was the sampling population randomized properly? Let’s hope not.

“Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing there is a field. I will meet you there.” – Mowlana (Rumi) Sufi poet, theologian, mystic  c. 1250

found in a book review, which I encourage you to read.

Here’s the best summary I’ve found on the financial melt-down. Interview with author Michael Lewis, who was fantastic in a book I read years ago called Moneyball – which looked at new trends in baseball scouting metrics. This interview is well worth 15 minutes if you’re interested in really understanding how $2 trillion in “wealth” simply evaporated (hint: it was never there). The parallels to religion are clear.

“Wall Street deludes itself because it’s paid to delude itself. People see what they’re incentivized to see. If you pay someone to not see the truth, they will not see the truth. Wall Street organized itself so that people were paid to see something other than the truth. You have to be very careful how you incentivize people, for they will respond to the incentives.” – Michael Lewis

Mentioned in my last post, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman’s 2010 TED Talk was among my favorites. In the context of behavioral economics, Kahneman takes us immediately to the heart of what it means to be human – to question and probe the very nature of self and memory and experience, ultimately revealing ‘economics’ in the larger picture of relationship, value/worth, and our questionable notions of perceived reality.

Is the consumption of memory the consumption of reality? Considering spirituality, do we place more value in experiencing or remembering, and how do we define the differences? Are well-being and happiness synonymous? Are there really two selves at work here? You will find yourself challenged and asking questions you’ve probably never considered after viewing this must-watch TED Talk.

ADDED: After you view the video, don’t miss this surprisingly thoughtful article from Norman Lear in today’s Washington Post religion section:

“the ‘What’s it all about?’ question is the best conversation going. Just plain folks, unfortunately, can’t get into it, because the rabbis, the priests, the ministers, mullahs and the reverends — the professionals — have a corner on the subject… And so, the sectarian rivalry and sanctimonious bickering about moral superiority and spiritual infallibility that occurs among the professionals often assumes a greater importance than the religious experience itself.”