The 'O' Antiphons: Adonai

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The sumup is here.

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O Adonai and leader of Israel, you appeared to Moses in a burning bush and you gave him the Law on Sinai. O come and save us with your mighty power.

The second antiphon invokes God as the authority on Sinai who set down the Ten Commandments.

I'm listening to musical interpretations from the SNES game Earthbound. In particular, I'm in love with SnowBound, Sky Runner, Flying Man, and especially Sweet Dream Lullaby. These songs, like the sounds from games such as Mega Man II (think MetalMan and Wily 1 & 2) and Ninja Gaiden II always struck me growing up with a sound that I was finally able to describe in 7th grade as a sound of necessity. Castlevania II. Final Fantasy IV. These were just video games. What gave video games such a prerogative on this one kind of music, and why did I want to describe it as "necessary" of all things.

There is no ambiguity in these games. The objective is clearly set; you maneuver a fictitious character through a typically 2-dimensional space and vie against enemies. The music, above its goal of establishing a mood, is meant to stir you, to keep you moving, to keep you playing. This is why the Sky Runner has such a frenetic forward momentum on Earthbound and why the pulse of Wily 1 in MM2 (possibly the greatest video game song ever) for all its intensity and bombast has a plaintive, almost pleading quality. Because the music is able to assert most fully what exactly is a stake: what will happen if Guygas, or Wily, or Ashtar, or Dracula, or Zemus... wins.

I usually have a few minutes each morning when I feel myself filled with this energy. I know what I have to accomplish and I understand fully the consequences of what will happen if I fail. When I feel this way, I feel important, decisive, necessary. I might be writing the Great American Novel or leaving for work a few minutes late. I don't know. It might be the caffeine.

I look at this antiphon as an opportunity to attribute this energy to something more human and fundamental. If wisdom tells us that there is order to the universe, that the more-than-casual interest of Adonai, the Lord of Israel, can invest our actions with a bearing upon that order.

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