I was walking around Alamo Square one fine morning before going to a meeting I really did not want to take ... but I have learned to leave early and enjoy myself along the way and center myself in peace and gratitude, address why I feel impatient or anxious and pray for the people at the meeting and the purpose of it, and then to go on. I had well over an hour before I had to move on in earnest, so I took my time and enjoyed ... instead of pleasure and displeasure adjacent, I enjoyed seeing summer present and autumn easing up beside it...
... and all the golden-green of late summer before the fireworks arrive in October...
Little did I know: I was about to get off into a situation so deep it requires neo-classical ambient restless music. I discovered Lama House this week, and yes, "Swerve Space" was about to be a thing ... the chord progressions around that ostinato glide over the rules about voice leading I learned to make some glorious progressions it took me days to work out although they are simple enough once you know what is happening ... but it is a lot to take in ... I had it on loop and went to sleep to it one night and finally understood in the morning ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmT-Uw083Z8
And yes, my mind was about to be blown that much ... my favorite ethereal master singer and teacher had quite a story to tell me about his week since he had last seen me, deeper than even his great voice!
But first the end from the beginning ... I found my favorite seat of peace available...
... and that he had anticipated my arrival.
"So, we are just going to get this out of the way first, Frau Mathews, since I forgot to get you lunch last week," the Ghost of Musical Greatness Past purred as he materialized, all salt and pepper hair and golden-brown summer suit, appearing at about 50 years of age.
"You are still human, and so we forget things sometimes -- I forgot too," I said as I walked into his embrace.
"If I were still in the ego, I would have been very angry with myself and with you, but when such things occur I realize there is a lesson intended for me, since I am human and finite and thus can still learn," he said. "I also have all the time in eternity, so I was not dismayed when it was not explained to me immediately. It was time for choir rehearsal on high, and I was very much ready to sing for joy, so delighted I was with how you are learning your lessons and enjoying your peace! Jerome Hines and Martti Talvela, being so much bigger and taller than me, just started shaking their heads as I walked in, knowing they had their work cut out for them!"
"You are a bouncing bass, after all!" I said, and cracked up laughing.
"It is a good thing that risers and such do not break on high!" he said as he laughed. "But also there is fullness of joy, so my bounce is no bother and neither is the teasing I get about it!"
"Afterwards, Jerome turned to me and said, 'For today I am assigned to you as you are assigned to Ms. Mathews, for she has learned much from both of us in the last decade, and is progressing so rapidly with you that I have been preparing myself to provide you further insight.' As you know, Jerome on earth was eighteen years my senior and also lived almost five years longer, and has been on high since fourteen years before I came, so he in every way has insight I am glad to learn from him. I had to get in an extra bounce, I was so happy!"
"You always were one of those looking for a reason to get in that extra bounce," I said.
"Guilty as charged, Frau Mathews -- and, it is germane, for Jerome smiled to see it and said, 'Tell me something -- do we ever not have a reason to add an extra bounce of holy joy here?' I told him, 'No -- it is just a question of paying attention to where and Whose we are.' So then he said to me, 'Do we ever feel here like we are missing anything we might need or even want?' I said, 'No, we are blessed beyond even imagining what more we could want!' So then he said, 'I am going to sing a well-known prayer for you, and I want you to think about whether this is something that Ms. Mathews considers as just a prayer to say, or whether, however she works it in to her actual communication to the throne room here, she means it and is conforming her life to it."
Jerome Hines not only sang: he composed an opera about the life of Christ called "I Am the Way" -- it is not performed often any more, but there are still portions of it left in recording, and to me, the setting of the Lord's Prayer is among the most striking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YaH4ZVwpqs
"I agree with your assessment, Frau Mathews, and so did the choir members who came back into the rehearsal space ... it was such an honor. Jerome rarely sings solo, even given our overloaded rotation designed for eternity to get through, even given the great soloist he is ... twenty-two years into that humility and love so suffices him and everyone that we do not compete or compare but sing when called, and we enjoy each other on a level I know you long for down here, Frau Mathews, and do your best to encourage in yourself and those around you.
"That was half of Jerome's point; I realized as he was singing it. You are no dreamer, Frau Mathews: you envision and long for things and then do your best to enact what you can. So, to the extent that you recognize that it is no light thing to say: 'Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done, in Earth as it is in Heaven,' you have conformed your life based on what you know of that."
"Of course, Jerome does not bounce, being temperamentally quite different than I am, but, being in the presence of the One Who instructed us to pray that way while singing that obedience that he himself on Earth rendered as much as he could think to do so -- this was overwhelming to him, and we had to give him quite some time to prostrate in the throne room and just give thanks. There is never any hurry, of course, so, some days later he and I caught up with each other to continue my lesson."
"'I did not intend to be delayed these four days, Kurt, but, sometimes these lessons teach themselves -- do you think in such a moment of joy and gratitude that I ever thought that I would not get back to you in time for your next lesson with Frau Mathews?'"
"'No, for all things are beautiful in His good time -- it is not possible that anything He intends to do for anyone be late, so therefore we, in concert with Him, can never be late either, although we can be later than we intend, not knowing how far our plan varies from His.'
" 'Which brings me to why your forgetting about Frau Mathews's lunch last week was of course in the plan -- your intention was correct, but the time was this week. Her needs for last week were fully met by your faithfully echoing the One Who sent you in providing perspective and guidance.'"
"'I sometimes am concerned about that, Jerome -- the stewardship I have been given is so immense, and there is always a gap, because I am forever finite, between the perfect love that I am sent to represent, and what I can actually do. In a sense, I am even more conscious of it now than I would have been if I were still of the earth.'"
"I hear you, my brother -- the knowledge of the gap actually gets bigger as you go along because we get to know Him ever better, and how infinite He is becomes more and more clear -- and how much more our gratitude for His grace with us redeemed finite beings also grows, with our joy!'
"'But there are two things you have not considered, and Martti Talvela posed this question to me about this lesson: "Has our German colleague not realized that on the fictional side of the fourth wall, Frau Mathews actually never needs to eat?"'
"I was never going to say that to you, for I appreciate your kindness and, shall we say, your Germanity," I said, and watched him roll laughing at that before adding, "but I was wondering when you were going to stop being so concerned about it."
"Nie -- never!" he cried, "for I shall forever have been called out of the Germanic tribes and nations, and so as I have the means, no one around me for all eternity shall lack gutes essen!
"But, as a more serious matter, Frau Mathews, Jerome and Martti were not told everything that I was because I was given the charge to walk with you. I was told to apply gentle reminders to you to take better care of yourself and to attend to all matters of your health including your sleep and your getting enough proper food. You are so resilient that neither you nor anyone else knew the danger you were in except on high. Now, for my part, I am German, and we Germans are direct in our methods! So if I am supposed to be reminding anyone to sleep or eat, I get about doing that with all I have to work with!"
"Hello, Knockout Zone," I said. "You spent about 18 months giving me invitations to sleep that no one could refuse -- and here you are today starting with lunch!"
"Because it is the proper time for you to be sure of your strength before you go into a stressful situation," he said, "and also because up front that may be how I need to do that in future for it to be done at all. Jerome had much to tell me about that matter, for he said, 'You have been telling Ms. Mathews yourself, for more than a year, that you are feeling very much at home with her because she is living in such a way that her and our eternal home's joys are coming down into her life. So, I ask you again: when you are at home, do you ever feel here like you are missing anything we might need or even want?"
"'No; I am blessed beyond even imagining what more I could need or want.'"
"'And so is she -- she is walking more and more and more in that awareness, and so you are forgetting simply because you are experiencing with her the mutual joy that we enjoy, there on Earth. You yourself have taught her the two words for blessed in German, the one meaning blessed by signification or decree, not unlike the Latin roots for benediction, and the other meaning bliss, and taught her that she can live in both by attending to her calling, as we do here. So, do you think that any finite being can think about lunch when filled with the consciousness of being double-blessed, and knowing that comes infinitely from on high?'
"I had to think about this, Frau Mathews -- it explained so much about you, and how you have kept going and going -- encountering and leaning into that blessedness, again and again, even before you had conceptualized it as clearly as you can today. But Jerome interrupted me with a laugh.
"I wasn't talking about Ms. Mathews. I was talking about you -- you being and teaching about being double-blessed, and then watching her come more into the knowledge of that, and therefore you being doubly double-blessed because of your joy in witnessing her experiencing this with fuller knowledge while still on earth. Of course you forgot about lunch, just like you forget about gravity and have to be reminded about your immortal voice being too much for the earth -- you're still finite. You cannot remember such earthly matters during such disclosures of things as they are here, nor is there any need that you should do so. All is in the plan for you as well as her -- so, all is well!'
"This staggered me, Frau Mathews, for I had not thought about all that!"
"I have to hand it to Mr. Hines," I said, "because that indeed was deep."
"He was not even then finished, Frau Mathews. As you know from watching him as a one-of-a-kind Boris Godunov, nobody finishes a scene with more grateful glory than Jerome does! He said to me, 'Our beloved student was taken from those who mind only the pursuits of this earth so she might realize that she is and how to walk as double-blessed, and even then ... .' "
My companion suddenly stopped, and then grinned with delight, because --
"Top of the morning to you, Ms. Mathews," Mr. Hines said for his first cameo. "Believe I'll just sing it myself."
I just plopped down just as happy as the ethereal bass by me, who at last just got to be a fan, too ... and for very good reason!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E37gmxAnC-s
We clapped and clapped and clapped, and Mr. Hines bowed and bowed.
"I'll be back later," he said, and bowed once more before disappearing.
"That makes the point better than what I could explain," my companion said to me. "Now that is a bass voice -- how you ever even paid attention to me, I don't know!"
"It's not a competition and you already know that," I said. "He is the reason I ever heard you, actually ... so he and Mr. Talvela and you all have a special place in my heart. I have not forgotten him ... as I write of these matters, his writing is ever in the back of my mind. He was the all-around communicator as a musician, and taught me that was possible."
"Then also you may know from him, Frau Mathews, what else we discussed: in the season of your quietude, you will never walk alone, but also, you will be brought to new companions that you and they may doubly double-blessed, rejoicing in the highest good of each other. He told me that I am now both echo of the Love Above, and forerunner of your future companions."
"OK, whoa," I said.
"Indeed!" our favorite ethereal bass said. "You would have thought I had taken root like one of these trees, standing there and processing this insight for two days!
"Jerome, also having all the time in eternity, then said to me, 'Our beloved student has in common with us that she is a master teacher and communicator, though in humbler spheres, and so she looks on her students as we looked on ours and were doubly double-blessed -- she knows what that is, and may know what it is to be kept to great ages because of that.
"Already, three times in three years, Ms. Mathews has survived and bounced back from what could have been deadly illness, while we lived and worked years beyond when we would have because our students still had things for us to enjoy with them. I was not planning to be on stage again at 80, and I know Carnegie Hall at 73 was the last thing you had in mind -- and our students and friends have us continually teaching online, which is how Ms. Mathews found and started studying with us! She too may have a greatly extended career -- she is on track!'
"'It would serve her right, Jerome since we have been dragged out of permanent retirement onto Web 3 by her -- we shall laugh in the eternal ages when she is dragged onto Web 5 or 6!'"
I started laughing a bit ahead of the eternal ages at that!
"Y'all are indeed still human on high - turnabout is still considered fair play!" I said.
"You are already legendary to your own students, and even a few of your peers, so we may as well laugh about it," he purred. "That's already what you would consider in English 'a done deal' because of your deep presence on Web 2, and eventually, they will discover your vast Hive output on Web 3."
"Well, yeah, I guess," I said.
"I have already been through this transition in human experience," he said. "I sang for tens of thousands, and the grief of my beloveds opened the door for them to have me sing for millions, and my whole official career took place before the burgeoning of social media. When you pass on, Frau Mathews, being a child of the Internet age and having made such a footprint, there is no telling what those who do not want to let you go and to be forgotten may do."
"But there is a difference. You are a European in a European-dominated world. I am not ... nor do I have any need or want to be remembered except on high."
"With all due respect, Frau Mathews: that is not up to you. What is up to you is to leave the best and fullest legacy that you can, as it was to me. I did not foresee, when I sang at with the San Francisco Opera in 1984, that my voice would echo down to one who was a toddler then, and that I would in fiction resume my career in San Francisco's most beautiful natural places because of her response to what she heard -- but again, I am blessed beyond what I could ever think to need or want! So are you! Do you think any of today's racists and sexists can close any door thus opened to you, now or hereafter?"
"Well, when you put it like that," I said, and he laughed.
"Remember: I am a European indeed, but just a humble German villager born in 1938," he said. "Remember that if a bomb headed for Cologne had fallen sufficiently offline, I would not have seen six years old -- and every door outside West Germany could have been slammed to me because of Germany's actions to 1945. I was graced, Frau Mathews... and you are graced and double-blessed. No one can gainsay it!"
He reached out and embraced me.
"From here you must descend into the world's affairs, and they are not the great stages of the world that Jerome and I, in our time, commanded -- and all is well, for although you certainly have the ability, you prefer an humbler place, and that is what you are graciously granted. Be faithful as you are called, and that is enough."
"Thank you for the brunch," I said. "This will help!"
"Of course, mein geliebtes, goldenes Blumenkind ... although I need nothing any more of the food of earth since I have dined in Heaven, I shall feast my eyes upon this day, and you in this sunshine caring for yourself and rejoicing -- ach, mein goldenes Blumenkind!"
He just sat down on the stump with me, his back providing a comfortable back rest for me, and glowed up all the while, such that when I had finished eating and stood to thank him again, he was so bright that were he not in full sun, he would have been immediately noticeable as with a light not of this world.
"I am doubly double-blessed, Frau Mathews, as Jerome explained to me and I understand even better now," he said. "This is the whole of love's desire: to see the beloved blessed, and double-blessed, and when you have met another whose heart is tempered as your own, able to receive and eager to show gratitude and return that love ... I have learned myself more of what I have to teach."
He took a long moment to compose himself, for he had another thought.
"As Jerome said, as such things are disclosed to us, it is very hard to think of other matters, but this one, though it belongs to your life on earth, fits. It is hard for you to imagine fully mortal companions -- peers -- that are doubly double-blessed to see you blessed because it is rare, but also, Frau Mathews, on earth, we all have a shadow."
He looked up.
"It is September, and though it is still summer, this should just work -- I am just tall enough -- but in winter perhaps I shall teach this again more extensively. But for now, consider this: suppose there is only one great light. People speak of their days in the sun, so suppose that is the