March 2, 2003

• 7:20 PM CALI Time

  
  

  The Bus and the Bead Game:
   
  The Communion of Saints as
   the Association of Ideas
  

  
  

  On this date in 1955, “Bus Stop,” a play by William Inge, opened at the Music Box Theatre in New York City.

  
  

  “I seemed to be standing in a bus queue by the side of a long, mean street.”

  
  

  — C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, opening sentence

  
  

  Today’s birthdays:

  
  

  Sam Houston
  Dr. Seuss
  Kurt Weill
  Mikhail Gorbachev
  Tom Wolfe
  Desi Arnaz
  Jennifer Jones
  Karen Carpenter

  
  

  and many others.
  
  Today is the feast day of  
  
  St. Randolph Scott, 
  St. Sandy Dennis, 
  St. D. H. Lawrence, and
  St. Charlie Christian.

  
  

  “Your guitar, it sounds so sweet and clear…”

  
  

  — Karen Carpenter singing “Superstar“

  
  

  “And if I find me a good man,
   I won’t be back at all.”

  
  

  — C. C. Rider lyrics

  
  

  See (and hear) also “Seven Come Eleven,” played by St. Charlie Christian.

  
  

  One might (disregarding separation in time and space — never major hindrances to the saints) imagine C. S. Lewis in Heaven listening to a conversation among the four saints listed above.  For more on the communion of saints, see my entry “State of the Communion” of Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2003.  This entry, quoting an old spiritual, concluded with ”Now hear the word of the Lord”  — followed by this notation: 

  
  

   7:11 PM.

  
  

  See also the N.Y. Times obituary of John P. Thompson of Dallas, former 7-Eleven chairman, who died, as it happened, on that very day (Jan. 28).  See also Karen Carpenter’s “first take luck.”

  
  

  The sort of association of ideas described in the “Communion” entry is not unrelated to the Glasperlenspiel, or Glass Bead Game, of Hermann Hesse.  For a somewhat different approach to the Game, see

  
  

  “The Glass Bead Game,”

  
  

  by John S. Wilson, group theorist and head of the Pure Mathematics Group at the University of Birmingham in England. Wilson is “not convinced that Hesse’s… game is only a metaphor.” Neither am I.

  
  

  For the association-of-ideas approach, see the page cited in my “Communion” entry,

  
  

  “A Game Designer’s Holy Grail,”

  
  

  and (if you can find a copy) one of the greatest forgotten books of the twentieth century,

  
  

  The Third Word War,

  
  

  by Ian Lee (A&W Publishers, Inc., New York, 1978).  As Lee remarks concerning the communion of saints and the association of ideas,

  
  

  “The association is the idea.”
   

  • 10:20 pm
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