So, inter-alienists, our trip has begun with a whirlwind of trash bags, bathroom cleaning and forgetting to reprogram the TiVo. Pretty much like most trips, except we’re not coming back from this one for the next six months or so. We tried to listen to the French channel on the XM satellite radio in the rental car on the way up, but they had compressed the hell out of the transmission, so it sounded more like two computers talking to each in Franctron, the all-machine French of the 29th century when the world is ruled by despotic but strangely enlightened Francbots that rarely bathe, but have a mania for elegance and order. Worse still, I believe that the pre-digital-compression human beings were speaking Canadian French. “Sapeine Noel!,” they intoned with all the excitement that a Francbot can muster. I distinctly learned the word “sapin” for Christmas tree. Pardon me if this seems disjointed. There is a large jet engine directly to either side of my head as I write this.

So, the French lesson was abandoned, and instead we listened to alternative rock that was constantly misidentified by the Sirius XM radio as “Latin/World.” We heard some cool tunes, actually, but none of them were identified by the radio. This whole satellite radio doesn’t seem to really deliver on its promises, but it was ice to listen to the same station for the whole drive up.

The most noteworthy aspect of the drive from Champaign to O’Hare is normally that it is incredibly dull, with completely flat cornfields extending in all directions for two hours, relieved only by the occasional farmhouse or bridge with a state trooper lurking in its shadow. It becomes marginally more ugly in winter, with either equally flat plains of blinding white snow as far as the eye can see (if it’s snowed) or blighted, ugly and equally vast expanses of corn stalk stubs after the harvest (if it hasn’t).

This time, however, we were treated to nothing short of aesthetic wonder. An ice storm has swept through the whole area from just north of Champaign to just south of Chicago. It was a cloudless day, so every stalk of grass, every tree, every fence—the whole winter world, in short—was coated in a centimeter of ice. Some trick of the light, however, made it appear silver rather than clear. Everything appeared to be glittering like tinsel, and for the first time ever, I realized what tinsel on the tree was supposed to resemble. The storm had clearly blasted in from the East, since the East side of every tree appeared to have sprayed with mirrors, or quicksilver. The remaining prairie grass no looked like grass at all, but like a rayed burst of crystals.

And speaking of aesthetic wonders, I’ve been listening over and over to Arvo Pärt’s Passio (or more completely Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Secundum Joannem), which may very well be the most beautiful piece of music of the twentieth century. It is better listened to in a dark room with no distractions than on a loud airplane at 30,000 feet, but even here its intensity, simplicity, and logic come through. It’s an intensely literary piece of music—you can literally hear the punctuation (certain musical phrases pulse out the ends of sentences, commas, and the like). Each character sings any line of text that is attributed to them (Christ is the bass, which is the only thing that seems strange to me—I’d kind of figure him as a tenor, but this is all about gravitas, I guess), either solo or, as the piece develops, one or two instruments. Organ for Christ, clarinet and cello for Peter, and so on. Mostly Pärt chose the actual dialogue portions of the passion, but there is narrative as well. The passion according to John is sung out this way, for 72 minutes—quiet (except when Simon Peter denies he is one of the disciples, when the chorus explodes in an almost catastrophic “non sum!”, or “I am not!”), slow, haunting, insistent, and mournful, all constructed out of a minimum number of repeated, simple musical phrases. Which makes the ending, narrating Christ’s death, unimaginably powerful. The chorus goes pianissimo, and monotone, as slowly as possible—every syllable is the same note: et inclinato capite, tradidit spiritum (“he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost,” or literally “And having bowed his head, he gave the spirit across”

Then there is an incredibly long pause, long even by the standards of Passio. In minute 70 of this mournful, grave and ultimately tragic piece, the organ kicks in with a new note, and the chorus joins in forming a major third. Qui passus es pro nobis— (“You who have suffered for us…”)—and at this point, the chorus has swelled to mezzo forte, and we’re cadencing toward a full resolution—the organ holds and then swells. Miserere nobis (…have mercy on us.”), but not quite a full resolution and stop—the echoes from the organ fade away into silence. And then, completely ecstatic, perhaps even orgasmic, fortissimo: Amen.

Finally, a point of dirty amusement in Passio, however, to bring us down from the sublime to our more appropriate level of the ridiculous (really, it’s for Jim). When Christ tells Simon Peter to put away his sword (“Put up thy sword into the sheath”) (John 18:11), he sings: mitte gladium tuum in vaginam. I know that vagina in Latin just meant sheath, but it still seems funny every time.