The Ghost of Musical Greatness put me on notice that he knew what was going on last week.
I can no more predict the future than you can, but I am taller and older than you, and I look now from a higher perspective. I think you are being given a foreshadowing of some nearer events than you think, because I have heard the music of your recent dreams ... I see why Vladimir Pasyukov is back on your mind.
I admitted how I felt about it...
I keep hearing a crossover that I don't think has been done before in choral music. It's kinda scaring me.
He cut me no slack.
And there would be cause to be afraid, except when you consider that if you are in the peace of the presence of the One Who made you and called you and loves you best of all, and thus you hear, you may know that it is for you to hear and do.
When an imposing basso from the great beyond pins you down from that high a plain, what you gotta do is go get busy. But, still as fully mortal, it can be difficult.
The above is the piece of music that almost ended Rachmaninoff's career -- his First Symphony, of all things! That was a rather profound musical effort to have fail in public acclaim, and he felt that, deeply. My heart went out to him, because I was also reminded last week:
You have had pain and grief where it would hurt the most, for it seems so unjust: there is nothing worse than being frustrated in sincere love. Now, and only now, is the purpose of all your grief of the past three years fulfilled, for just this year you have learned the humility of respecting your finite limits, including in the matter of your abundant but not infinite capacity for love. It is not only that there is no bridge and there never was. It is also that you cannot ever build it. You have learned that you are not the One Whose love can make something of nothing -- you are accepting that you are, in fact, not God.
Failure is the thing that separates not just mortal from immortal -- immortal forces of evil will someday immortally know their failure and defeat -- but also the Creation from the Creator, Who does what He wants when He wants and succeeds always in it.
But failure is also the occasion for us as humans to strike out on new paths, to learn and to grow and find the actual path to our success.
Rachmaninoff's comeback is one of the most beautiful melodies -- and best-known -- ever penned, and the process is beautifully explained and as beautifully played by Daniel Anastasio here.
So, I sat down over the weekend and just started swinging for the fences ... I reached out to basso profundo Eric Hollaway and found out the piece I was thinking of arranging is one of his favorites, so I buckled down and got a draft done ... in another field I got an invitation to apply to speak to a lot more folks a second time before the deadline, because I overlooked the first ... in another, managing a new YouTube channel ad getting to pick out how a lot of the content will be built working with a fantastic editor ... none of this could be attempted while still thinking about how to build a bridge to get other people where they are not ready to go.
It is not only that there is no bridge and there never was. It is also that you cannot ever build it.
The force of that, even delivered through the portal of imagination by the most beautiful male voice I have ever heard, hits hard -- even the echo of the reality was devastating ... and yet, demolition sometimes clears the path for new things to grow and be built. It is not the preferred method when it is your finest hopes and dreams, but what price having the path cleared for you to climb the way you are to go?
What a way to end the summer ... on a rare late afternoon walk I took a different route to go halfway up Buena Vista Hill from my home ... going up one I went down on my last great walk in January. I wanted to see how I felt ... the last month of the year that I would attempt topping the hill from home would likely be November ... perhaps in a mild December with little wind ... but it is mid-September now ... so, even in this little way, I was swinging for the fences for the future.
"I see I shall have to be very careful how I snatch excuses from you in the future, Frau Mathews, and how I talk to you about how not trying to do what you can't frees you to do what you can ... you are out here reversing easy downward routes into harder upward ones, applying to speak to hundreds of thousands of people, and more! I cannot imagine what will happen if I just spend time encouraging you this week -- for all I know, you might retry Strawberry Hill or something!"
"You know, I remember having learned from a YouTuber who married a German that Germans bond over finding things to complain about even if nothing is wrong, so I see why you are coming back to earth fussing."
The Ghost of Musical Greatness Past laughed himself clear out of gravity on that one -- not a man much given to complaining, historically, which is among the reasons that I was drawn to him once learning more about him. Why complain when you can better the situation by helping the people in it? But he also loved a good joke, and so --.
"Indeed, that blessed me, Frau Mathews -- danke schön!" he said as he rounded the next corner and walked down laughing to meet me.
"Gern geschehen," I said as he folded me into his long arms with a smile.
"I am actually very excited about what you have done and trying not to scare you!" he said. "I am no longer capable of impatience, but hopeful anticipation is still definitely much enjoyed!"
"Listen, since we are doing this fussing thing, it's September and you are already glowing up like we are skipping Halloween and going directly to Christmas -- can you please curb your enthusiasm?"
He laughed and glowed up even more, of course.
"Absolut nicht!" he merrily thundered. "Absolutely not -- instead, I have a surprise for you, since you are doing all this swinging -- it makes an intriguing kind of two-step!
I had to remember that he grew up in the time when Django Reinhardt had done gypsy jazz ... this echoed back that far ... and of course compounded the hilarity ... dancing a two-step up a hill in the late afternoon with an ethereal classical basso profondo old enough to remember gypsy jazz (and young enough to have missed Nazi repression of it) figured I would love a jazz and metal crossover that is itself not supposed to be possible but somehow is ... just like what I had drafted in choral music was probably not supposed to work, but it was working ... oh well ... sometimes you just have to keep on swinging, uphill, and just enjoy the journey!
There were not that many people out on the hill because of the route of the day ... so the paths were definitely open for us to get way on up there ...
... to a path I had not seen before ...
... but although I love a new path, I allowed myself to be danced right past it ... I remembered in time a previous lesson that I could know if I was honest with myself that every new path was not for me, and I knew the hill well ... those were the backsides of trees I had seen from a lower path that climbs much more gradually. This meant that somewhere down around the corner -- and in fact, the view of the hill in the upper right suggests it in how steeply it shoots up -- there is a dropoff with no bottom until one reaches that lower path. It must be navigable to some distance out of sight, but it had to be someone with more need for concealment or food resources (lots of blackberries) than me to take that risk.
I averted my eyes from it by laying my head in my dancing partner's immense chest, and heard and felt his deep satisfaction.
"Sehr gut, mein geliebtes Blumenkind," he purred. "Indeed you are attending to the lessons from last summer to this one. There will be many new paths before you as the seasons change, and by honest discernment, you may choose what is best for you. Your strength has recovered from the winter; you could get a good distance along that path, but by wisdom we attain to clearer views ...
" ... and avoid problems that others without such discernment cannot avoid ...
"... and also, Frau Mathews, you have learned the side of being loved, the lesson of two years, for love will not force you to avoid that which you are intent upon learning yourself, but will also delight deeply in leading you away from danger as you respond with trust."
The timbre of his deep voice was shimmering, like moonlight to the electrum side -- silver, but with gold added -- over the ocean at midnight, its black depths nonetheless layered with soft light with a play of brilliance as the swells rise and fall ... reminded me of the slow movement of one of Rachmaninoff's cello sonatas, and the glorious way the cello and piano share this radiant beauty.
A beautiful nasturtium wondering whether it should follow its much older and now seed-podded sibling at last bloomed bravely out in the midst of all this ... not late, right in the time prepared for it...
"Just like you, Frau Mathews, finding these opportunities in the proper time, for as it is said, all things are beautiful in their time."
A pang stabbed at my heart still ... if only so many I had loved would come ... if only they would find the path up ... but, I laid my head in that massive chest and rested from the thought ... there was no point.
This time, he reached up his massive right hand and cradled my head with it, an act of massive tenderness that was an analog for the way his voice cradled my aching heart at that moment.
"I once sang in Brahms some of the words of I Corinthians 13, and it is written in the chapter that love hopes all things. Even though you can build no bridge, Frau Mathews, you see that there are paths up that others can use. You may not descend upon them one instant to try to carry others up, but rest in hope, Frau Mathews, for all those who are coming will come."
So we passed that place also, and I did not look back ... the tender and immense weight of his hand simply reinforced my decision, and I thought then of the reality of human life presented in the most gentle way ... we have a right to our decisions, and to all the inexorable weight of the consequences as well. Those who would not come had all their rights, and I thought that I had best get the best use of mine as welI, so, like in "Der Lindenbaum" from Schubert, I even closed my eyes ...
"Well, this is a summer journey still, Frau Mathews, so I am not going to sing that from Schubert's Winterreise today. Yet it is good that in your Sommerreise you have reversed the meaning. The character in Schubert's song cycle closes his eyes to avoid stopping by the linden tree while flying from all consolation to his eventual doom, while you, having looked upon a path you may not walk, have closed your eyes to temptation while accepting love's consolation. Therefore you shall also not see the signpost -- 'Der Wegweiser' -- upon which is written the sentence of death for those who continue their willful way past where they can make themselves might repent even though the paths are present."
I still had anxiety in my heart that some I had left behind, chasing their wills-o'-the-wisp, their Irrlicht, their erring lights, would meet that signpost figuratively and some even literally, because I had seen it so many times in the past ... but it was not my choice, and I needed to again rest from the thoughts.
"The blessing, Frau Mathews, of choosing what is given to you, when what is given to you is to rest in love, is yours."
After quite some time, he spoke again.
"The birds are singing sweetly today," he said. "This reminds me of a duke named Heinrich, who was just doing what he loved to do faithfully, and then found his faithfulness had him right where he was supposed to be to get a promotion!"
"To emperor, I remember from last summer," I said.
"That's right -- your memory is excellent," he said, "but I will just go over the details, just in case, when we make it to the top."
It was not long before we were there ...
... and in celebratory joy he blessed that portion of the city with his beautiful singing of Löwe's "Heinrich der Vogeler."
As I was listening, I heard something there I had not thought of in the summer before ... there is a massive difference in the earth's view between catching birds and catching a spot as emperor, but Heinrich as he is remembered in this song draws them together: he thanks God for the birds he is able to get, listens as the German nobles come surprising him at work with the news that is their will that he become emperor, and then, upon the last line, looks up and says -- transliterated roughly -- "A good catch indeed -- my God, it is Your pleasure!"
I had the thought that at some point in the future, the emperor might have looked back and missed birding and the friends he had then ... but then reminded himself about why the seasons had changed in his life, and Who had brought the change, and how much he trusted and was grateful to that One ... and then rested from looking back and longing for that which was over.
Of course, I have no idea if Germany's first emperor was quite as swell a fellow as Löwe and Kurt Möll's singing, combined, presents him as being ... one does have to keep in mind that the characters of history as they appear in art are generally idealized. But, I received the lesson nonetheless as I looked down the hill and back over the summer and its lessons, and considered this moment of waiting upon opportunity brought to me. To me, some of them seemed so large that they should not be in my reach ... but now, I understood ... it was the same good pleasure of the Blessed Hand, and my waiting had given me time to understand.
"Frau Mathews ...?"
I was in tears, I was so moved, and the Ghost of Musical Greatness Past did not at first know why, but he brightened up as I looked up at him and smiled through my tears.
"I understand," I said, "to the bottom of my heart. Not all opportunities and paths are for me, but the ones that are given to me in my calling, great or small to the world's eyes, are mine, good gifts at the pleasure of the Blessed Hand."
I paused ... I could not stop the flow of my tears.
"I don't even know what's going to come to fruition, but I feel so much joy and gratitude ... ."
"And so at the end of the summer, Frau Mathews," he said, that golden shimmer back in his voice and increasing with every sentence as he embraced me, "you have climbed to where you are supposed to be: above the old grief, above fear, above looking and stepping back to no purpose, to where you are supposed to be: realizing how blessed you are no matter the details, able to rejoice no matter which things are chosen for you, able to rest and rejoice while you wait and the seasons change. This is where we have been walking and climbing since the day I was assigned to you ... and at last, we are here. We are here."
