Peter T.,

Appreciate the reminder of the music. Disturbing, that lowering ancient, subterranean chant. Couldn't recall why I hadn't been put off by Taverner's rather awkward use of Shakespeare. Have it now. The disjointed literary and liturgical echoes are intentionally un-beautiful, jarring, -- forced, with their attendant images, into the subconscious, on the wave of the dark, ironically orderly bass.

Are we, (the insatiably voyeuristic public, that is), then supposed to come to terms with our collective guilt through awareness that, in demanding Diana's authentic human presence in her public life, we have overtaken, overwhelmed, and ultimately consumed her, much as the musical crescendo swallows the words and their ambiguous potential meanings? A doer summation, indeed.

(The royals have learned, one must suppose, to arm themselves with the very masks for which the press and citizenry excoriate them.) And just as you say, it is all, from this perspective, viciously, deliciously, chaotically funny. Freud, et al, would feast on this like medieval "sin-eaters"! (Have I got it?)

Doesn't change my preference for the more uplifting view. Comprehension and acknowledgment of ineradicable darkness and inexplicable evil only makes the reassertion of faith and hope the more urgently incumbent upon us, say I.

Enough pontification. Can't abide myself in this mood. Easier to break the glass under the chuppah, than to bring comfort into the house of mourning.

L'Chaim

Shula