One night a crowd gathered in a church made of peaches and cream. Shuffling through the doorway they sat down in silence, absorbing the rainbow of colors reflecting from the usually oh-so-dead-bleak statuettes. Suddenly there were four musicians on stage and lovely Philip Glass for strings, floating off the stage like swirly strips of silk. Then the colors changed to red and there was a beautiful creature in a pink evening gown and huge glittery silver jewelry, telling animated stories of Schönberg’s cabarets, followed up by the songs he wrote. Adults smiled. Children laughed. And we did not understand a word. Lithuanian is related to sanskrit, you see.

In the afterglow even a cup of woody, burnt acorn surrogate coffee tasted marvelous.

(Church of St. Catherine, Vilnius, Lithuania: April 2014)