It is a good thing the Ghost of Musical Greatness Past is a basso profondo, because last week he said something so deep that I had to think about it another week, and January needed a fifth Thursday to handle it!
From here to eternity, gratitude is the echo of love to the giver, so if love is met with gratitude, there is not loss but gain in the energy of the exchange, and there is no actual limit in the gain except that we are finite, and can be overwhelmed.
Now, styles differ. Some of us stop breathing and pass out for a while, and some of us start acting like we are sprouting six wings and about to reveal our true seraphim (burning angel) form ... but that's on the overwhelmed end.
But in all the space there is before all that happens, this just changes the whole idea about how to be among people in the world ... the people who have come back around me from the past basically are conforming to this pattern, as I can see ... and Gentle Giant Nurse just fell into the pattern instantly. My grand old soldier and I walked together in this way for the better part of two decades, and the community we had then did too ... which brought to me the thought: have I ever not lived in this way, as much as I could? Is this how I actually knew to leave certain situations? Has the standard actually been there all the while?
I just kept hearing laughter across three octaves, all week ...
I love it when my students have questions -- when the mind is just going -- my lesson planning is working! Mwahahahahahahahahaha!
But also, I had this year affectionately nicknamed him the Echo Watchman ... he was the faithful echo of wisdom I had learned from Scripture and my own elders and studies of both Negro Spirituals and the (mostly) German classical music of the same age, being familiar with both from early childhood. He said often, "Frau Mathews, I am just the echo" -- so I really had to grapple this week with "How long have I known what I know without knowing, and now that I know what I know, now what?"
If that confused you for a minute, that gives you a glimpse of how I had to move through the week.
With the "now what" piece, I realized it basically boiled down to how to find the people to walk with in this way ... now, they were also finding me, but if I wanted to take it in hand, how would I do it?
I then realized: my darling Echo Watchman had been telling me from the beginning what is written throughout Scripture: "Walk in the light!" Louis Armstrong had also sung that to me as a child, in the only song anybody remembers by Ted Lewis!
Even in common grace, that made sense ... in Alamo Square Park, it is obvious ... tourists who came to see San Francisco's famous painted ladies were on the eastern side, but those who came to the park for the park were always enjoying the sunshine on the western side with their dogs and for their walks.
So then ... "walk, abide, adorn, appear" ... appropriate gratefully all things granted for the purpose?
Appropriation -- taking possession of things -- has been done so badly, culturally, in the United States. 160 years ago, someone could take possession of me and work me to death in every way for their profit. People have tried in this century to do that ... and got left, and watched everything I was holding up collapse! Freedom requires abandoning everything, though, so one learns to travel light.
Corrie ten Boom, sole survivor of her family of Nazi Germany, worldwide missionary later in life, said it this way: "Hold everything loosely, so that when God takes it away from you, it will not hurt so much."
So you can hold things and people ... just not too hard ... as the light moves, so must I?
Then I thought ... light is always moving ... technically, the earth is moving, but walk with me on this a moment ... it is necessary to cross the street to stay on the sunny side over the course of a day ...
... and light walks over the hills ... in the morning on the eastern side, in the early afternoon on both because the sun is overhead, in the late afternoon and evening, on the western side ...
So, to "travel light," one cannot be carrying too much ... to be willing to take up and put down things as the climb requires ... for "travel [in the] light" requires one to be ready to keep moving, to not become so attached to things and people and places that when the shadows overtake, one chooses to stay too long.
Hence, I had put in a decade climbing out ... I knew this at age 34 ... just didn't know I knew it ... but I had read Corrie Ten Boom in my teens ... and then all those things about
Walk in the Light.
Walk in the Spirit.
The wind blows where it wishes, and you can hear the sound, but you cannot see where it comes from, and where it is going. So too is everyone who is born of the Spirit.
Even generalized ... when one says someone else is a "free spirit," one generally ends up with someone who is not too attached to possessions or staying in one place for too long ... which of course brings "Reiterlied" back to mind ... that young man got his first horse and headed out into the forest and never stopped...
But that's an extreme ... as discussed in the summer, the young rider of Loewe may well become the Wanderer of Schubert in later years, because failing to build any kind of community in younger years leads to being alone in later years when one has more needs than material advantages to offer, where that devastating last line of "happiness is found where you are not" becomes reality because that type of man never committed to build love and happiness in the life of anyone but himself, and never planted the roses and built the house he wanted to live in.
After another week of thought I realized: even in dark times and places, one can turn on a light. That is how humans get through the evenings and mornings before and after going to bed. There are also night lights ... the moon and stars have been doing pretty well all this time, and as it has also been pointed out:
The sun, moon, and stars do not compete for mankind's attention -- they do not need to!
One can also carry light on the journey ... now that requires NOT carrying something else in the hand holding the light, but it of course can be done ... "travel [in the] light" comes together here. So, even in dark times ... .
Last year's concept of "Winterreised" comes back here too ... those who have climbed through darkness are best suited to take light back into the darkness to help those also seeking a way out ...
But carrying those with no desire to go is a no go ... in the summer I learned about "Rast," from Schubert, and the fact is that some people can be brought to a place of rest like a frozen viper can be put in a warm pocket only to wake to bite and kill the warm body and itself at the same time ... to bring a man to safety, only to learn that he can and will destroy one's own safe place because there is no rest in him!
This is especially important for me in a nation that is bound to have a lot of people who need relief from decisions made late last year, but intend to take all help given them to use as chattel to keep going as they are going now. Some people will run all the way to "Der Leiermann" ... they will only seek to play their tune and sing their song right until they freeze to death ... and sometimes, because they insist ... because even putting three lights in their sky is not enough ... they must be allowed to thus go on. For a decade, I have seen this. It is going to get worse!
But in the meantime ... it dawned on me after that thought ... we looked at it in terms of echoes last time, but a echo is a kind of reflection ... so too are "Die Nebensonnen," the sun dogs ... a weather phenomenon causes the sun itself to be reflected twice in the sky.
So then, love and gratitude ... light and a reflection ... assuming two people have a light and a reflector, and that reflector is also going to pick up every other light around, too ... that could be plenty bright ... add more people doing the same, and that could be plenty bright ... the requirement, though, would have to be: "If right now, you cannot bring a light, you MUST have a reflector. If you have a love deficit, we can help you, but if you have no gratitude, you must stay behind."
I thought of slavery and colonialism in that light ... the idea that people thought they had the right to exploit a whole world and all its people, with ZERO LOVE, and ZERO GRATITUDE for all they obtained at everyone else's expense. That sense of entitlement, of only love for self, and no gratitude for anyone else -- the surest red flag that someone is not walking in love is also that they have no sense of gratitude. In a world of abundance, they will be unaware of anything to be thankful for.
Past the flash and dash of what anyone brings to a first meeting, it literally takes just a few minutes of conversation to notice this red flag unless one is in the same state of mind.
This brought on some grief, for YouTube has been showing me Uyen Ninh, a wonderful Vietnamese young lady about to marry a young German man, and while he is not on camera, he provides insight into modern German culture. One bonds by complaining, he has instructed her.
Never in life will I be wedded to a cultural expectation such as that. Never. Nein. Nie!
But I solved the conundrum at last: I loved the Germans of history who are not remembered for complaining. In order: Beethoven's letters do show his unhappiness about many things, but when he was unhappy, he composed. Bach? Lost a wife, ten kids, and his eyesight. Made some complaints. Made way more music and kept going.
Finally, Kurt Möll: "a kind man with a gentle soul" who often observably could not keep from smiling whenever his mouth was not actually making whatever shape it needed to in order to sing! He refused to complain about even troublesome people with the words "I did not have trouble with anyone!" Got way too much done to even be bothered, coming from being a childhood survivor of World War II in a tiny German village no longer even on the map to world-famous opera star and master teacher without singing at least two of the most famous roles for his voice range. Surely at times he must have encountered trouble -- but it appears having trouble, and trouble having him, was a hard no! He was too busy enjoying the journey!
Then I thought back even further ... the Negro Spiritual comes out of one of the darkest experiences of human history ... and yes, they contain complaints ... but they are "lightened" by some of the greatest musical beauty in the world, and contain some of the most beautiful expressions of love of God and community and gratitude for all that is good ever composed. Having been raised in that, I had heard the reflection of that in Haydn's "Creation" (Haydn was Austrian, of course, and I have learned that the distinction is important to note; however, the language spoken was German), so, what I had done, in a very dark time in music in my community, was simply to go over to the sunny side of the street.
It so happens that I am an African American, and the German-speaking world's classical music was the next place in music I deeply experienced ... but the main thing is than the fact I was simply called to walk in the light, and those were the best resources available to me as a musician in bud at that wee age. Now, of full age, wherever such echoes can be heard, I can be at home.
"And so, Frau Mathews, though you love bass, and you love men in the image of your father and mine the best, some tenor from a place you have never thought of might carry you off as his wife, and you may forget most of your German yet again in favor of a new language, and never be the worse for it."
A week ago, we would have had a huge laugh about that, but ...
"That could be taken for a joke," I said, "but I realize you are serious and that you are right."
The Ghost of Musical Greatness Past smiled with deep satisfaction.
"My A student," he said. "You know my manner in my mortality: I sang in such a way that if all a listener wanted to do was enjoy the beauty of the music, I would not trouble their mind with more, but if one came to learn, I taught ... of music, of technique, of stage presence ... of history, and even deeper matters."
"Always of love, by voice and legacy," I said.
"There is no deeper matter, Frau Mathews. To have love, or not, with the consequences thereof: there is no deeper matter, and since I was blessed with the deepest possible human voice, it would have been a sin and a shame for me not to teach that! Since you also have the deepest possible female voice, it is good that you are indeed my A student!
"But now, my A student, I have an even deeper lesson for you. You have today pressed through to something of the utmost importance, a gap that few never see, much less can cross ... but, there is a bridge, and you have crossed it. I told you last spring: du hast übergangen! Four seasons I have waited to show you this!"
"Thank you for your patience with me," I said as I went to his open arms.
"Natürlich, mein goldenes Blumenkind -- natürlich!" he said, and danced me quite around the top of Alamo Square for joy ... love met gratitude ... energy amped up!
At last to a quieter place spot to sit and rest ...
... and there he unfolded his lesson.
"When you were young, your grandmother and mother and early Sunday School teachers made sure you knew this truth ...
"Your elders desired you to know that, despite the decline of your own neighborhood and the racism your people have long endured, God still had the world, and everyone in it, in His hands, per Psalm 24:1. What was then unspoken, but I will echo now that you are 44, is that in both and common and special grace, He can provide for anyone out of anywhere that He pleases. There is no limit to even natural abundance, to say nothing of spiritual abundance."
"That is what the song and Psalm 24 says ... you're doing a double echo!"
"I waited four seasons, so you can expect me to ham it up just a little, Frau Mathews."
"If ever there were a humble ham of the operatic stage!" I said as I rolled laughing. "Just stealing whole shows, making little parts into the only thing anybody even bothered to put on YouTube -- the only reason some recordings are even remembered!"
"I would not say all that, Frau Mathews, although I do not dispute you saying it."
"See?" I said, and rolled laughing again as he harmonized me with his own laughter.
"You take such joy, Frau Mathews, in these matters, and of course that makes sense: you also were raised by humble, often hilarious people. Your father and grandparents are all humble people from small towns as I was, and you cling to all of us ferociously as models. So, you did not grow up learning pride and prejudice, in the face of the possibility of *being blessed and a blessing, relative to the whole world, in a time in history in which that is actually possible. Not only do you have the internet. Not only do you have Web 1 and 2. You have Web 3 -- Hive, and all its Proof-of-Brain capacity -- and through it, you are daily walking, abiding, adorning, and appearing in a way that blesses around the world.
"So, not only do you believe 'He's Got the Whole World in His Hands,' but you are living it already, and it has not occurred to you that you cannot or should not because you were not raised in all the immaturity and ignorance and resulting pride and prejudice, that blocks most people. When given a chance to have companions by dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of that type -- to regress, in order to fit in -- you have always turned away."
"I'm not called to regress -- certainly not on purpose," I said. "I have done my best to hear and follow Him Who has called me, and He bids me ever keep climbing."
"You do well, Frau Mathews, to continue to take good heed to that Voice."
For a moment, his expression clouded -- as one of his fans in Golden Gate Park had observed, he had some memories ... but I put my arms around him, and he smiled at my gentle but firm interruption of those memories, of my literally pulling him back.
"When getting you that chocolate bar last week at BiRite," he said, "I did have in mind how you described the flavor of Opal Apple you so enjoyed in November: complexity and depth of flavor with deep sweetness. You described then apples, banana, and pineapple in a fruit salad, so I knew that bar with similar notes would please as well. But in choosing both, I was being guided by my impressions of you, Frau Mathews, you complex, and deep, and oh, so kind -- so sweet in your kindness!"
His return embrace was exceptionally tender.
"Danke schön," he said.
"Bitte schön," I said.
He closed his eyes and relaxed into my embrace, the tension going out of him, and I could suddenly see that he was resting from a flashback ... Germany's devastation, seen through the eyes of a young child ... but he had turned from the view into the warm, golden light that was gently flooding the scene, and was beginning to float in that light.
"You have me talking like you, Frau Mathews," he said, and then went into his low falsetto to playfully imitate me, pitch-perfect: "What pain? I forgot what pain was!"
"Glad to be of reciprocal service," I purred after laughing.
"I know ... your joy, coming from the gratitude you have from all the lifting of your spirit that I have done with my singing, is absolutely sending me, Frau Mathews. Had I not such an intense though brief flashback and thus had to come back from so far ... and I may still dance you around this hill and up to Cloud 9 and back in a little while. When love meets its reflection ... ."
He was slowly glowing up, like a battery being recharged, and that just made me so happy ... which intensified the effect on and from him. It looked like an extra beam of sunlight had come through the trees in the dappled sunlight we were sitting in, on what already was a glorious day ...
And of course at this point people were trying to see where that beam could possibly be coming from ... they just stared at both of us and then started looking up into the trees ... the romantic comedy of errors was claiming new victims and it was mostly hilarious ... yet it is a fact across cultures, ebony, ivory, and love and gratitude do make quite the bright combination ...
... and as light is indeed a spectrum, including all colors visible and invisible to the human eye, I understood even better ... from everywhere, and to everywhere, across the spectrum, where light met light in love and gratitude, there would be blessing. Gentle Giant Nurse and I had hit it off for the same reason my grand old soldier and I had ... which then raised a whole pre-Valentine's Day question ... but, that's for February!
Meanwhile, pride and prejudice vs. appreciation for love and light were sorting themselves out before our eyes ... some of the reactions were no laughing matter ... not so much that I should love a big, handsome German, for Europeans have worked very hard to be universally admired, and of them, Germany has given the world much to admire in its better centuries of history. But that he also should clearly love me ... jealousy of what I as a Black woman am thought to never be worthy to receive, envy from those who think they should have it, but don't ... even in San Francisco, where the Ku Klux Klan has rallied eight blocks from my door as late as 2016, and where the sitting president plans to roll military through the streets in hatred of immigrants of Latino descent, pride and prejudice are a problem!
I thought then of Schubert's less happy "Sehnsucht" ...
... and realized something: the character there is not so much in darkness, but in fog, and he sees through the fog a glimpse of light, and the vision of a world in sunlight, and decides to chance everything to get into a boat that has all sail set for him -- not made by the "gods" of that foggy place, but from outside -- and thus, a miracle from a different power, done for him. Little wonder that just being free of the fog itself makes for a blessed world, and he does not care where he lands in "Selige Welt," just so long as it is in the light!
"You may fairly consider the fog the accumulated pride and prejudice of any culture that settles over its citizens. Frau Mathews. There is nowhere among humanity where light is not abundant, and yet we are fallen, mortal, sinful -- the justifications and rationalizations permitted in any culture for the approved evils are indeed a thick and heavy fog between the eyes of the people and all truth. One cannot see any idea of a future through it, and if it is bad enough, one cannot even see one's fellow humans, or even one's hand in front of one's face -- one cannot even see one's self.
"This is why people can look at anyone and everyone, including themselves, and never see them for real because of the fog of pride ... what they believe they deserve, and are or are not getting out of life ... and the fog of prejudice ... what they believe they deserve relative to their belief about people being inferior or superior to them. You make a good observation of my privilege, Frau Mathews. Few were the people in the world, compared to your experience, who would not think that with my looks and my voice that I would not be worthy of pretty much anything the world has to offer. Where I would have suffered relative to you, if I had been a proud man, was that I myself would have been afraid to seek aid and comfort when I needed it -- for superior men do not need such!"
"Oh, of course not -- not an uebermensch!" I said.
"I need not tell you how many German men died for pride -- among millions of others," he said. "I keep telling you I'm just a little bass, a mere German villager, as a joke ... but then again, not.
"Yet you actually have as much choice in life as I have, in reality, and all the laws and policies that bigots ever conceived are in denial of that truth, but also their acknowledgment that they have no natural means to constrain you. I would be an offense to them for ignoring their efforts and seeing you in reality."
"Which is why one would have to think again about how things would go if Mr. Dawnstruck, the Cherubic Painter, or Gentle Giant Nurse had been serious about me at a time like this -- not so many decades back, 'race-traitors' were killed here too."
"Nazi Germany is only nine decades back, Frau Mathews. Doing the right thing by all people has always been a risk, though ... before that, imagine my grandfather having fallen in love with a Herero woman from Namibia. Before that, imagine an acolyte of Martin Luther falling in love with a Catholic woman before the Peace of Westphalia. The stories of Romeo and Juliet, and also Othello, hit us so deeply because pride and prejudice cannot endure the light of love dispersing their power over people.
"Still further back: Satan, the epitome of pride and prejudice, judging himself greater than his fellow servants and worthy of God's own seat, could not endure the love between God and man. He could not endure that the situation at the end of Genesis 2 continue. Always, evil acts in this way: it will seek to destroy the harmonies of love and will accept chaos and ruin as a result ... only for love to always return and move right along, eternally!"
Again, he flashed back, but this time it was beautiful ... to those elders of his in Buir and roundabout, loving the refugees of Cologne through the horrors of losing World War II while some dark-haired little boy with an unusually low, deep childhood voice just watched it all, soaking all that love in ... kind of like a certain little brown-eyed, golden-brown girl with an unusually low, deep childhood voice, in a dying African American community forty years later, just watched her elders uphold and strengthen what remained, and soaked all that love in ...
"And, like a certain little bass you chose as mentor, you at about the same age have become radiant as you have leaned into what you learned," he said. "Walk, abide, adorn, appear ... and we will speak of how to righteously associate with people, graciously appropriate things, and release all as needed along the way.
"Consider this, Frau Mathews: if I were a proud man, would I see you? Would I, at a moment in which the coldness of my worst earthly memories was overcoming me, be able to see through the fog of pride and prejudice to the light of your love?"
"No," I said. "You really have just explained what goes wrong so often in human relationships ... we are lost in the fog of our own pride and prejudice, and cannot see the blessings right in front of us."
"Which is why the answer always is 'walk in the light,' Frau Mathews. You witnessed me today, confronted with that terrible flashback, crossing over to the sunny side of the street. Of course I shall go back up on high, where pain cannot enter ... and someday, you also will pass over ... but I model for you how in this life we can choose to be loved as all that we are, not as we perform, not as we wish people to believe that we are."
He paused, and then added, "The reward of honest humility is great, in the face of willing love. I am staying calm, of course, for I have a lesson to teach, but your joyful willingness to share the comfort of your love still has me floating, Frau Mathews. Though I am not on high, this place and this moment also have become a space in which I feel only love, and peace, and warmth, the burden of the sorrows of earth again lifted from me."
"How often have you lifted me -- how glad I am -- mein Herz jubelt für Sie!"
He looked at me in shock at my appropriation of his way of expressing his rejoicing over me, and then grinned, glowed up an order of magnitude, and then --
"Is there an echo in here?" he thundered merrily, and then rolled the entire city of San Francisco with peal after peal of of overjoyed laughter!
"See, I should have just let you stay calm," I said. "The seismologists are going to have a whale of a time trying to figure that out!"
"Well, I begrudge no one else any good time that I am having!"
I put my head in my hands as there were several peals of laughing aftershocks, so delightful that I had to add my laughter to it!
After that, he sat beaming a long time, and even though he resumed calmly, the glowup just stayed right where it was, like an extra sunbeam hitting us both.
"So far as our pre-Valentine's Day lessons, Frau Mathews, you have thought of some deep matters ... you will attract who you will attract, and indeed, for at least the next four years, interracial matches of the type you and Gentle Giant Nurse would make will be a bit more fraught ... but then again, how does someone like you do anything in the world?"
I thought about it, and then smiled.
"By faith," I said.
"So, circumstances may vary, and worldly costs differ with time, but still, Frau Mathews, if called, it will still be faith, hope, and love versus pride and prejudice. It always is. The answer is always the same: walk, abide, adorn, and appear in the light, and in due time, you will be called to associate and appropriate what rightly is yours with all those walking as you are."
He paused, and then shivered, and so too that whole hill, for his pleasure in teaching this lesson was becoming even more intense.
"I freely confess, Frau Mathews: I am excited for you in 2025! If there is great darkness chosen by many, what shall it like be as you, and those you can influence, determine that you shall reflect more and more love, gratitude, and light?"
"Okay, we are already glowing up ... they ain't gonna be ready for us levitating, and you know I haven't had time to call the FAA."
He laughed, and touched down with both of us in the nick of time.
"I need to get home and check in with my people who will be worried about me with all this shaking going on," I said.
"We go at once, Frau Mathews."
Up the hill to crest it ... but I felt him hold me close for a moment as I blinked while passing over, and we were rounding the corner of my street in the next moment.
"I honor the love you have for your family and community," he said gently. "Until next time, mein goldenes Blumenkind."
"Until next time, Professor," I said.
He walked me up the stairs and skipped back down, indicating his mood.
"I am so glad you liked that chocolate, Frau Mathews ... in the process of choosing it, I found out Dandelion Chocolate has a cafe, and brownies, and coffee ... it may be time for Kaffee and Kuchen again soon!"
I broke out laughing.
"In February? You mean to tell me we have not wracked up enough victims in the romantic comedy of errors yet?"
"Well," he said, "you know an old comedian of the stage can never resist a prospect like that!"
He had been hilarious as Admiral Morosus in Die Schweigsame Frau ...
"And while Reri Grist remains incomparable, I have no objection to a contralto co-star, Frau Mathews."
"You know that if you invite me, I'm coming," I said.
"You know that I am inviting you," he purred, with a huge smile, "for I can no more resist inviting you than you can resist coming!"
"That's a nice way of putting that," I said, and started laughing. "In the meantime, try not to burn Golden Gate Park down with your singing, rattling your fans about you being drunk and delirious, among other things!"
"Among other things," he purred, and laughed clear down to the bottom of his voice. "The good groundskeepers of the park are going to need every sprinkler they have, and my fans may well wish to invest in some seat belts after they have lightened their wallets to make room for the buckles -- I have to pay for coffee and brownies somehow!"
He had to run back up the stairs because I nearly rolled down, laughing!
"How am I about to be the next victim of this romantic comedy of errors?" I said.
"Wrong opera, Frau Mathews -- I shall not have you as Spohr's Jessonda, and play Dandau again! You see I ran right back up here like any good Portuguese general!"
"The Tristan that gets it right -- right on!" I said, and we laughed ... even though that is a whole post about a whole problem of an opera for another time ... but, good enough for an inside joke!
"Until next time, Frau Mathews!" he said when I was safely inside my door and waving goodbye.
He did not step up home around the corner that day, but was headed to Golden Gate to sing up our Kaffee und Kuchen money for February. I know that because as I sat at my open window and called the people I needed to reassure, every western wind seemed to still carry the sound of his merry laughter, until he at least had walked a mile of the two to the Music Concourse.