Audience, Garrison Keillor.
Battle Hymn of the Republic ( Garrison Keillor , Audience )
[undocumented]
I wish Grandma could’ve seen the show I did in Nashua, N.H., a week ago. I don’t know what she would’ve thought about the jokes but I talked about her respect for memorization, which she required of her pupils, and I recited Shakespeare and Frost and Housman, poems I’d learned back in my teen years that stick with me, also an erotic sonnet of my own and a string of lowbrow limericks. I stood there reciting for 800 people but really it was for Grandma Dora. I led the audience in singing “My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” which Grandma surely knew by heart and the audience sang it with passion and I saw nobody, absolutely not a soul, google it on their cellphone.
I’m an old man and I’m still trying to impress my grandma though now she’s become a contemporary. She would be saddened by my two divorces and she would love my wife who is independent and practical and loving and forgiving and she’d be stunned by Jenny playing Rossini at the opera and “Giselle” at the ballet, but this crowd happily singing by heart a great national song about freedom and justice would exhilarate Grandma as it does me.
The anthem by Julia Ward Howe, When sung by an audience — wow. The Lord’s judgment seat, The jubilant feet, I wish we could hear it right now.