Midnight in the Garden - minor grievances

There are few things more annoying to me than Holy Week.

Background: I'm Orthodox, which means Easter is between mid-April and early May most of the time. (Roughly once every five years, both Eastern and Western Easter dates synchronize.) There are advantages, like deep discounts at the seasonal sections of shops, but on the whole there are problems. Problems like, well, Murphy's Law going into overdrive during Holy Week, which starts sundown on the Saturday before Easter.
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Of particular problem is off-key chanting. I've been reared in music since an obscenely young age, first with the violin, then the xylophone, then the clarinet, then the trombone, all of which I played rather poorly. I felt pain deep down when I botched a note or twenty because I have a deep-seated sense for euphony.

When I hear something off-key or otherwise disphonic, it causes physical discomfort. This isn't restricted to music, either. The term "twenty-oh" rather than "two thousand" has the same effect. When I explain this, people look at me quizzically, as though I just landed on this planet. (Just because I did doesn't mean I'm wrong.)

Think about it, though. In regular speech, oh's and um's and er's and eh's and like's are verbalized brain freezes, the sorts of sounds one makes when the flow of words between the grey matter and larynx is interrupted, terminated, or otherwise obstructed and one does not want to sound as though this were true. In addition, there's a disrhythmic feature of the phrase. Compare (bold is stressed) "twenty oh six" with "two thousand six". One doesn't really flow, the other does.

Most people are sensitive to sound and euphony. That's the main reason slot machines are designed to primarily play C, E, and G on the octave scale; these tones, especially combined, are most pleasant to hear.

What also gets me at church is disphony in chanting. Greek Orthodox churches use Byzantine chant for chanting primarily psalms and biblically-derived verses, with the prophetic books and epistles as main sources. For comparison, Koranic chant is damned close to it, as are certain Buddhist chants.

When the chant goes right, it's beautiful, with a variable rhythm close to a human heartbeat and a powerful sound. When things go wrong, as, say, when someone's consistantly a flattened fourth off key, it can get ugly. The only relief is for those on pitch to compensate with volume, but that's a questionable tactic, since excessive vocal cord strain will cause pain and diminish ability to sing.
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Family, in my humble opinion, is the hardest part of any holiday. I'm put in the center of attention, with constant queries as to my sex life (none to speak of), marriage prospects (see above), employment prospects (see above), and more annoying intimate drek. I'm constantly being set up with a nice Greek girl, who I barely have the time or expense to see, and return with reports of rejection to their aggrieved faces.

I usually just shut up and sit against the wall, frozen in place by relations who are dissecting my spiralling life and by an apathy towards the whole damned ritual.
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Sorry for the gloom this Easter; I'm just letting a little steam off.

cya
drew
d dot valued at gmail dot com