It is a surreal thing to hear or read, in real time, how community leaders in two different spheres of life are speaking or writing the eventual demise of what they are doing. When you know, because you have made it your business to know deep matters in history, finance, and Christian spirituality, that there ain't no way ... and folks go right on because they don't get it and you can't even get it across to them...
But, having been given that open, advance knowledge, I had occasion to feel all my feelings, separate them from confusing them with attachment to the outcomes, and say aloud: "This makes me extraordinarily sad ... it is a tragedy in the making and I know it ... but it is not going to be my tragedy." That reminded me of this utterly lovely lamentation by Sergei Bortkiewicz ... in a major key, full of love and brilliance ... all the joy there is and was, while recognizing that even good things must come to an end.
So, I acted ... sometimes, you just gotta get moving ... like this also from Bortkiewicz...
... and then, certain of my students are going through life changes and grief ... so I have to be encouraging for them, and make sure they are not burdened with my concerns ... Schumann's "Silent Tears" comes to mind ... in it, the character describes how the beloved goes out into the meadow under a wondrous blue sky, never knowing of the storm that passed the night before, or of the tears the one who loves her weeps in silence, so that she can imagine that he is happy so she need not be burdened.
Because it is Martti Talvela singing here, I imagine it was his daughter he was thinking of ... the daughter for whom he would literally get out of his deathbed from heart failure to walk down the isle and dance the last dance... he meant what he sings here, and it moves me deeply right now because I understand this as a teacher, going hard for my students even into their young adulthood, and not burdening them with more than they already need to carry...
... while going to the only One Who could help me ... I turned back to Bruckner's F minor mass this week and its Kyrie, for "Lord, have mercy!" is the only thing one can say when twice over one sees destruction just planted before one's eyes ... and when getting distance is all one can do, and one knows it is beyond one's power to do anything for anyone committed to the foolishness... and one still cares deeply about those involved...
In my personal case, the late winter weather obliged me with an overnight rain to work with Schumann's first idea ... but the clouds did not clear that next morning, and I still had to go out into it ... making it more of a Bruckner F minor type of deal ... shot through with light, for the rain had bejeweled my entire neighborhood!
An extraordinary walk had thus found me just around my walking radius ... like stepping out into that portion of the Kyrie in which Kurt Möll and Karina Mattilla are about to sing up to the top of their voices in that passage from F to G flat to C flat that Bruckner wrote which still, although I know how it works from a theory standpoint now, lets one know that fervent, earnest prayer is where this world and that above it meet -- so one can be firmly in F minor one half-minute and be taken up to C flat and another musical world in the next half-minute ... and in a sense, I could see the world I was in had been transformed around me as I continued forth in service ... teardrops not held in silence, but confessed to the only One Who could help me, somehow transmuted into gems along with everything they touched ...
Of course, the way Bruckner wrote that passage, the soprano is soaring upward into that world, but the bass stands firmly for those of us who weep and pray in this world ... and I discovered this piece and Bruckner in general because my favorite musician was the bass solo in it! Kurt Möll has but a few lines, but does he ever come through in the clutch with them! Just in case you were not sure where you are with all those changes, he keeps the note for C flat major just booming over that whole choir and the orchestra, and holds it down from the middle -- a basso profondo, mind you, holding it down from the middle -- while Ms. Karina Mattilla goes on up there and gloriously does her thing!
I'm an alto, and I really am in my thinking ... I hold things down from the middle ... content not in the spotlight most of the time, just making sure things are as they need to be for everyone involved, day after day, year after year ... 36 years of multiple community service ... to be faced with this kind of eventual loss again ... and yet ... from elsewhere, all kinds of blessing have been coming. The contrast ... I walked on through a gray but utterly glittering morning...
... and pondered it with a certain sense of disorientation, but kept going, not yet realizing that the portal of imagination had already opened behind me, and the Ghost of Musical Greatness Past was taking full advantage of his much longer legs to overtake me ... not that he could not actually flash to my position, but it was a busy enough day with enough people around for him to not wish to do that. So, he caught up with me just as I was getting ready to enter a building -- I saw his huge hand and arm reach over me to get that door and I thanked him, as my pattern is with gentlemen, but I did not turn just yet because I was getting myself and a big bag of packages through the door. Therefore he announced himself unmistakably with his voice.
"Gern geschehen, Frau Mathews. Gib mir diese Pakete."
Costuming had put him in San Francisco business casual of slightly yesteryear, but he still fit the scene. To him, my heavy bag of packages was like carrying a pillow ... he dazzled me with his smile as I handed them over, too.
"Holding me down from the middle of the day, I see," I said.
"Well, altos need love, too," he purred, "as they will lie in bed and cry all night while listening to Bruckner and then get up to get things done for those they are committed to. I'm just the echo, Frau Mathews, of the Love Above who heard your prayers for mercy."
"You're just about to rescue me to break time and a treat, aren't you?" I said.
"Natürlich, Frau Mathews!"
That was still a little ways off, but packing in and packing out was a lot easier and faster with him -- and of course all I did was walk through open doors because he kept getting them for me or triggering the ADA-compliant switches with a gentle infrasonic purr so that they opened on approach.
"Showoff," I said, and he laughed heartily. "It's not like I don't know I dare not even think of reaching for a door in your presence. You don't have to turn every door into an automatic!"
"Doch," he purred, and thus gently countered my last statement in German ... as if I had said, "No opening every door!" and he answered, "But yes [I must open every door]!"
I was not surprised.
"Danke schön," I said, with a sigh.
"Gern geschehen!"
He was grinning so much that time that the glass of the door sparkled in reflection of his smile before it, too, impelled by an infrasonic signal to its switch, opened as if by magic.
And, speaking of sparkling things...
... literally the greenery of the whole city was bejeweled. I kept seeing this and it kept wonderfully disorienting me like F minor -- gray sky and pavement, drippy, damp thought mild winter weather -- getting hit with the C flat major half a minute later. But then, like that clear E flat in the middle just sweetly thundering out over the press, my companion was just there, his smile and his facilitating just bringing me back to steadiness by virtue of his presence, and working his plan to get me some coffee with a glittering view...
... and then added, "Have you heard my living Austrian colleague Robert Holzer singing Bruckner in the small scale of the lied?" I know that for you, there is only one bass voice that sings directly to your inmost heart, but you know, your heart is big ... you might make a bit more room to be blessed!"
I obliged him ... the elder ethereal bass never missed an opportunity to introduce me to his younger German and Austrian colleagues, and to make way for, someday, perhaps, maybe, a living bass to be the voice that most speaks to my heart. It's not happening, but if it were, Austrian Robert Holzer would be a strong contender.
"I know you are not going to change your mind any time soon, Frau Mathews. Consider the song, sung by Herr Holzer, as just another glittering gem of the day."
"It is indeed a lovely song by a lovely bass -- thank you," I said. "I see he has some other songs by Bruckner, and those are rare recordings -- I will return to Herr Holzer in due time!"
"You can always make a little more room," he said gently. "That is the corollary to today's lesson, presented first."
"It is a cool, drippy workaday moment in the city," he said as I sipped my coffee. "How many eyes are opened to its adornment, do you think?"
"Very few, relative to its population," I said.
"But to you it has been given to see and appreciate," he said. "You know that -- well, I shall say it this way -- the first heaven has come down and adorned the earth with beauty even the grandest royals of history could never so much as touch with their jewels drawn from the earth itself. So, you perceive both the grayness of this damp day in the workaday world, but also the gift of its extreme beauty. You are living in this world in mind of the glories of another, come down within touchable distance, to which most around you are completely blind, and so they never touch or are touched, and thus cling to their rounds as if that were all that is."
I considered that for a long moment.
"Oh," I said. "That's what's going on."
"In increasing aspects of your life," he said. "For a full decade, over and over again, you have been given sight of what is possible beyond repeating patterns that are going to end in ruin -- it has taken you all this time to learn that you have been given sight, and received the gift, but those who have not bothered to receive are going to continue to work with all that they see ... and go to ruin. It has nothing to do with you ... you do all you can to show and teach and warn, but, Frau Mathews, it has nothing to do with you beyond the responsibility you must discharge in the situation.
"Beyond that, you need have, and now in 2026 I dare to say you must have nothing to do with such things. In the meeting of earth and heaven, you live as welcome in both. You therefore cannot and must not even attempt to interpose when clearly, earth is starting another conflict that it must lose, against all obvious signs that anyone with an honest eye and understanding can take in to perceive that the loss is inevitable.
"In the two specific cases that are troubling your dear heart, Frau Mathews, the younger of the two has only required a decade to develop. Just a decade. The elder? Five decades, meaning the people involved have had chance after chance after chance after chance, and missed the first before you were even born. You now see all those consequences that have been delayed, and delayed, and delayed -- you see that in both cases, they will not be denied forever and that the reaping is getting near.
"But you did not contribute to either -- you have done your best to hold things and people down from the middle of it all, where you came in. You have ministered and blessed and worked and have a depth of legacy that already, at age 45, makes you a force everywhere you choose to be. Contralto profondo is your dramatis personae, actually ... but to you, life is not a performance. You see heaven and earth meeting in blessing. You do your best to spread that blessing out around you. You are being told no to your face in two cases. It is not for you to 'doch' that, Frau Mathews."
I had to laugh.
"Bravo," I said. "Did you ever set this part of the lesson up, the way you have been "doching" my fussing at will this year!"
"Because I know you are still learning how to be loved deeply, and so occasionally you think being so treated is too much -- you are reflexively uncomfortable sometimes, but not actually refusing. You may need more time to get comfortable or to understand, and your expressions of discomfort give you a few moments and give me an alert that I may need to make an explanation or adjustment, but your fussing about being fussed over has never yet contained a hard no to a clear expression of love. So, a gentle 'doch,' in Germanic terms, is the appropriate response.
"However, Frau Mathews, the main reason you cannot 'doch' these two situations is simply because the hard no in them is not even addressed to you. You are witness to it, and the consequences could reach as far as you if you did not move, but again: the heart of these matters has nothing to do with you. There is a decade or more of momentum behind these developments."
He paused, and then waved toward the street.
"Suppose we were crossing the street, and you were about to enter the crosswalk. Suppose there is a driver who has been drinking all night into the morning and made the right turn that will take them to hell, wrapped around that pole right there. Do you suppose you are going to stop that car and save that driver from the outcome he has chosen by being between that car and the pole?"
"You know, when you put it that way," I said. "Yikes."
"Allow me to disturb you a little more," he said. "I said, suppose we are walking. You think you are going to be standing there, with me with these hands and strength?"
"Oh no -- I am about to get pushed, snatched up, thrown clear -- might hurt quite a lot, but not as much as being in that collision!"
"Remember, Frau Mathews," he said, "I'm just the echo."
"Oh," I said. "OK ... that really does put a different view on this."
"You do well to clear the street on your own, Frau Mathews -- you did well to get into action immediately when you witnessed what you witnessed. You did well to shield your students with their own grief from knowledge they are not prepared for, so you can prepare them in an appropriate manner in due time. You do well, also, to grieve, and seek comfort on high for decades of disappointment that few other people would understand. You do well to do as you have done, and separate the reality of your feelings from the reality of your outcomes when you have the choice not to choose to participate in tragedies you have not created. There is One Who does not will that you perish ... you do well to move to His calling you out, as opposed to Him needing to pull you out."
I thought of just the size differential between him and me, and how even in his mortal strength he might have shoved me or pulled me with terrible force in an emergency ... in his immortal strength, this became unthinkable ... but he was still just a human being ... so ... given that there is still angel strength to consider above that ... and even then, one is not even close to comprehending the hand of the Creator, reaching down to get someone out of the way ...
"You do very, very well, Frau Mathews, to clear the path of disasters that are not yours to be in when called out. Your reflex for this has gotten quicker and stronger, and this is a blessing for you ... a painful one, but the pain is limited to the absolute minimum, in which ... ."
I had finished my coffee and the clock had struck noon ... I listened to the bell on Lone Mountain for a moment, and then looked back to see that immense hand extended to me.
"In which there is strength available to help you along the way that you are called to go," he said, and helped me up after I took his hand.
"OK, you are getting to the point of doing a bit too much," I said, and then laughed at myself because I knew what was coming.
"Doch," he said with a gentle laugh.
"Here you go 'doching' me again!" I said.
"Ja."
"It's about time for you to get told off in two languages again, you know!"
"Ja."
By this time this individual had wrapped an arm around me because of a sudden late-winter gust of wind, and had augmented my moving out of it into pretty much carrying me out... he had added his strength to me going in the right direction, and by the time we were out of the wind he had swung me entirely off my feet while I was still fussing ... and not saying no.
"I get your points," I said, and he put me down with a smile.
"I knew you would," he said. "You know, you are getting enough practice in so that you could pass for a fussy German woman by the time you reach old age, by the way!"
Oh, he had to use those long legs, getting out of the way of getting swatted by my hiking poles, and laughing his head off! And, with that impeccable stage timing of his, the sun peeked out just then to see what was going on, and the beauty of the adornment of the day increased!
This was a good thing, for he had glowed up, and his eyes were glittering with his intense joy as he turned around to my playful pursuit, snatched me up, and danced me clear down the block.
"Do you not see, meine Liebe, what you have been moved out of the way of tragedies for? Look around you -- all around -- and see! There is no need for you to be disoriented -- this is for you! It always was! Others may come too if they will -- but no matter their decision, this is for you!"
In his passion, he lifted me up above his head, so I got to look at the world from a basketball player's perspective for a minute ... seven feet and more ... and indeed, though most had overlooked it, there is nothing like how the city is shined up after a rain ... a single block contains sights that vaults of jewels could not match for beauty. Yet most walk through and never see it ... they could if they would realize the necessary change in perspective and look ... but most are on their hustle and bustle for the baubles of the world system, and never see much else.
But for those who see ...
He brought me down and then stopped, his arms wrapped around me, his eyes and voice filled with that same intense golden fire ...
"There is a time to act, to move, to weep ... your heart is still tender so all that must be ... but there must also be a return to rejoicing in the blessing that is yours, in due time. While others continue their Winterreise, your destination is still a new spring, in all its fresh beauties. Keep in mind what you are called to ... there is so much blessing budding, blooming around you and for those you are called to pour into ... there may even be a blessing coming out of what looks like tragedy on its way ... remember how you are called, mein geliebtes, goldenes Blumenkind, and to what world you belong!"
He was so moved that he could not keep from singing the song of one in a cold, dark winter, but seeking light and encouraged by a heliotrope to go to the city of the sun ... toward the light ... and this man clearly loved singing the role of the heliotrope, the one who encouraged ... for so he had been to me through his music, and to at this point potentially millions more... he had reveled in it all through his music and his mortal life, and so the joy continued with Schubert's "Aus Heliopolis 1."
Now, this happening in the middle of the city caused a few things to happen -- word went out to the fanbase of KM Altesrouge: "Yes, there is a Frau Altesrouge or at least one soon to be -- but I couldn't see anything but that she has dark hair and was wearing burgundy, because he had her all wrapped up in every way!" -- but also, San Francisco, so adorned already by the rain, and always so beautiful with its hills, watersides, and park situations, exceeded its beauty limits, so we had to be taken up to the Knockout Zone ... or something like that.
I'm not sure because when he hit that high E flat twice in that song -- that note and that key had a love affair with him that shows up in a lot of pieces -- the next thing I knew, the stars of the Milky Way were behind him, spangled on the blackest midnight like gems on velvet, as he finished that song. What pain? What tragedies? What even were those concepts? I could not remember ... the beauty was too much.
"Oops," he said after a while of holding me as we just floated along in the Knockout Zone. "Detour ... but it is still only just past noon in San Francisco ... I'll get you back on time, mein Blumenkind."
I burst into tears.
"When have you failed me, my dear sweet-voiced encourager? You have so often helped me on my way ... thank you ... thank you ... danke schön!"
Now I forgot that he was already not calmed down -- singing only lifted him higher -- and he was glowing up even before that -- so now behind him began a shower of fire -- a golden meteor shower of an intensity the world has rarely seen as he cried out: "I have not yet even begun -- I am the echo to you of a love that has no bound of height or depth -- I have not yet even begun, Frau Mathews -- thank you, thank you for giving me room!"
Whole bunch of baritones and tenors would have retired about there, just throwing in the towel because what was even the point ... his head voice in mortality was known to go to at least a G4, and his falsetto put him decently up into countertenor range ... he once sang the whole range of his voice live with an orchestra and just cracked an audience entirely up, living his best basso profondo buffo life -- point was, he had all those notes and could access them at will. Now, overjoyed, he was running the entire range -- no perceivable bound of height or depth. He was being a faithful echo indeed, although I do not think that he was consciously aware of it at the moment.
Then he lost his English, and swiftly reached a speed in German that I could not hope to cope with, given his butter-smooth dialect ... I gathered that at a certain point he was addressing himself on high in gratitude for the assignment to me, and at some point he experienced a flashback of his mortal life, and the assignments he had been graced to complete in that.
Now he would have been lost to the world for nine years this month ... and the Knockout Zone could barely hold him down in the height of his joy and thanksgiving ... at this point, there were auroras across every color of the rainbow to go with the meteor shower ... the silent fireworks went on as his voice rang out peal after peal after multi-octave peal of rejoicing like an entire golden bell set missing only the tippity-top tinkling bells ... and not missing them, because the perfection in the way his voice had been made was just fine ...
But, far off, there was another bell ... somehow, Lone Mountain's bell, tolling the half-hour, was faintly heard between phrases of his praise -- just right there at the end of one, and he heard it and stopped ... and then completed his thought, and then looked down at me, his mind returning to the present ... the auroras calmed down, and the meteor shower slowed to a streak of fire occasionally ... he was still quite in his passion, but he was focusing...
"Above all things, love must keep its promises -- your next appointment is at 1:00, Frau Mathews, and I will get you there on time."
"Ich danke dir ... ich vertraue dir," I said, and leaned my head on his shoulder in complete trust. I did notice that the meteor shower revved right back up, and a golden sheet of an aurora spread from horizon to horizon -- and he rang that whole golden bell set in answer, from bottom to top:
"I intend to justify your trust in full, meine liebe Dame ... thank you ... thank you ... ich danke dir ... ich danke dir ..."
His English escaped him again and the sky was just burning down again ... his eyes were lit up like twin stars in a countenance glowing with joy ... it was a good thing the sun had come all the way out by the time we touched down in San Francisco at 12:35pm. But still, the sounds of the city were not ready for all those extra golden bells ... I saw him laughing at himself as the ground started quivering.
"Get your infrasonic life together, old man," he said aloud. "If I shake the city down, how in the world are any appointments going to be made?"
I had a good laugh about this as I went up and got the documents I needed, and he ordered a car while I was gone, so we made it to my next stop ten minutes early.
"While you are there, I am going to go up home for a little while," he said. "There is a shout in me, Frau Mathews, and although I am subject to no temptation, I do have a human limit, and I have been pressing it."
"Trying to keep that voice in safe bounds for mortality," I said.
"I almost took you on home with me an hour ago," he said. "About three octaves more either way ... but that is not what is ordained for you or your city. I will return to see you through whatever appointments remain, and home!"
"You know, I am actually so ahead of schedule on my non-fixed things that after I run over and make sure my parents are good, I might have time for a proper walk in the afternoon, though a short one."
"What kind of coffee or tea would you like then?"
"I leave it to your kindness to delight me."
I wanted to make sure he got the most of that shout on high. He lit up like a Christmas tree at the thought!
"You give me room -- very well! Auf Wiedersehen!"
I was surprised he wasn't clicking his heels in the air as he was walking down the street to step up around the corner, home!
Meanwhile, I went into the establishment at hand to do my business and that went joyfully and well ... I was feeling loads better and I suppose that radiated ... nothing is more attractive and more relieving of choke points in small business than joy, although this is a little-known secret ... I am grateful to have discovered it!
Things were well with my parents that afternoon ... their relative conditions have stabilized after nine months of intensive work, so I have a bit more time and can get out sometimes for a little while in the afternoon, especially with the time change.
I thought then of what he said, about while others were continuing their Winterreise ... their winter journeys from which, because of the severity of conditions owing from their own decisions, they might not emerge ... while that was indeed going on, I had a new spring to look forward to, in which new opportunities and blessings in bud would be blooming. Even silent tears might be made gems upon those things growing, in that way, and upon looking back, be an adornment to the beauty in the light.
The burden upon me having been lifted, I determined to return to the beauties of the day. The sadness would be there whenever I permitted certain circumstances to have my attention, but, there being nothing I could do to make anything better in either case at the moment, I determined I would not give those things my attention for the afternoon. I had been encouraged to put my energy into what was for me... so I did so.
