I recently attended a performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons  in the Madeleine Church in Paris. It was a cool Saturday night, the vast church, a neoclassical building decorated in a hodgepodge of styles, hosted a small but attentive audience.

I was in good and incredibly well dressed company, and her presence, the vaulting space of the church and the music combined to trigger a moment of lucidity. While staring at the altar, I suddenly felt the calm of summer evenings of one’s youth, and of another less cumbersome age when we could receive more easily the silent gift of awe. An act now rendered more difficult by the electronic miasma from which we almost never part.

The opening of this intuitive space - subtle yet undeniably there - was filled by Vivaldi’s vibrant music, the symbols of centuries of Christianity, and to my left, someone of similar sensibilities. A stark, almost harsh realization came to me of how far we have drifted in our digital age from being in any way ‘whole’.

The surround provided even more signals. The painting on the half dome above the altar had in the foreground an image of Napoleon in an imperial ermine cloak seated with his back to the viewer surrounded by supplicant bishops and cardinals. In the distance was a faded Christ, a weak image in comparison to the powerful, scarlet clothed emperor with the golden wreath on his head.

The fresco, known as ’A History of Christianity’, is supposed to show the great figures that shaped the faith; however, it is unusual for a church to highlight a worldly figure above Christ. Some would say this is very secular-French, yet it can also serve as an analogy of today: a worldly tyranny far more prominent than the spiritual – even in a house of God.

The church itself is not beautiful so much as imposing in its space and reach, its columns gilded a dark bronze rather than a rich gold reflecting a faded glory, a temple to Jupiter hijacked by Christian craftsmen and transformed into a semi-gaudy tribute to their god.

Only about two centuries old, the Madeleine still speaks of another age when we suffered more, but when there was more ‘space’ to connect with something deeper and higher. Today, the digital cacophony clouds such attempts, breaking up our attention into bits and filling our minds with the next minor thrill, often on our phones.  

Fortunately, the church had more to say. At the altar was a large marble sculpture of Mary Magdalene (or Madeleine in French), the church’s namesake, kneeling in prayer and held up by three angels as she ascends to heaven. A small golden crucifix  stands unobtrusively in front of it easily overlooked in favour of the monolith.

However, in contrast with the aberrant fresco, the altar speaks of a better road. It represents our human faith and frailties, Mary Magdalene, held up by the better angels of our nature, our higher qualities, something most of us forget to cultivate today in favour of the cornucopia of distractions.

Vivaldi’s music flowed on. From pleasant spring to vibrant summer and fresh fall (as it was outside).  The piece closed with its most powerful section, the lament and sharp dread of winter, the last two minutes of which herald a moving, storm-like menace: the inevitability of a frenetic death. Many of us feel this winter of discontent in our world today. We are going completely the wrong way; there is too much noise to sense truths, without which we wither.

Despite our comforts and endless entertainments, are we marching into a kind of soul death? If not a grand apocalyptic finale – although that may still be in the cards with AI military targeting systems, including ones innocently called ‘Lavender’ – then it will be oblivion, an endless sleep where we may be biologically alive, fed the next thrill, but spiritually dead. We have traded the disease, trauma and shorter lives of former ages - when the symbol of the crucifix was painfully alive at every turn - for endless distraction and comfort.

The concert ended, we left looking up at the magnificence of the church and its Corinthian columns. It fulfilled its purpose of drawing us upwards, creating awe, in contrast with people staring down into their phones everywhere, mesmerized by a small screen rather than the infinite reach of all that is around us.

The evening went on to a spiralling (possibly endless) conversation about politics, gender, the nature of the imagination as well as humorously mundane matters, all fuelled by cocktails, such as Weekend Sauvage, at Harry’s Bar. Life goes on.

But all was underlined by deep impressions forged by music, the images (and the reality) that there is something greater driving us forward than the chronic cackle and crackle of the machine, no matter how rapt we are by its mechanical feats. Despite the impending winter, hidden to many by digital distractions, if we do make an effort to experience the real, we will once again be in glorious summer - and the cycle of the seasons start once again.

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John Bell is the Director of The Conciliators Guild, an organisation dedicated to reframing politics through a deeper understanding of psychology and human needs.

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