Notre Dame de la Nostalgie

There was a group of elderly pilgrims in the cathedral. After they had wandered around a bit and admired the stained glass windows and the statues and all the other things one admires when visiting a new cathedral, they sat down and started to sing hymns. For the most part they had quivering old-people voices, in desperate need of some breath support and a pitchfork. But when their echo returned from the nave, it sounded like a perfect children’s choir in four-part harmony. Underneath all the wrinkles and smoke-damaged vocal cords and the abstracted weights of life they were still children, I think, but they could only remember it for two moments at a time at the end of each phrase.
—–