Along with my friends Tosh and Lorna and Dal, three Americans I hung out with that year I spent in Munich in 1961-2, I had another friend from Scotland. Elizabeth was from Perth and we met during an intermission one day at a performance at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz, if memory serves. We went out for coffee afterwards and soon became fast friends.
When the year came to a close, and I told Elizabeth that I was going to make my way to England, Scotland and Ireland before heading back to the States, she insisted I should stop by her home. She assured me her parents would make me welcome. There was no way I could resist an invitation like that.
When I got to Perth, her parents were there to meet me and bring me home. There was also a German au pair girl staying with them and after dinner that first night, she and I went to the kitchen together to do the dishes. She was homesick for Germany, lonesome as hell, and made it clear to me how much she appreciated the ability to speak German again. Can't remember her name now. Let's call her Heike.
At one point, the parents sent one of their young boys into the kitchen to ask us to stop laughing. We had been having a jolly good time and it struck the parents as inappropriate behavior. I was face to face, for the first time in my life, with people who actually incorporated the saying, "Puritans are those people who live in fear that somewhere, someone is having a good time."
The Wilsons were members of a group, founded in 1921, known first as the Moral Re-Armament Movement, and later as the Oxford Group. It was the brainchild of Frank Buchman. Buchman started out as an American Lutheran pastor, but over time came to eschew denominational distinctions, church hierarchy, and insisted his movement needed no leader other than Christ himself.
The Oxford Group is credited with being at the center of resistance to Nazism in Norway, Denmark and Germany itself. In America, one of its spin-offs generated what we know today as Alcoholics Anonymous. They clearly helped make the argument that religion is a force for good in the world. At the time of my stay in Perth, Scotland, though, I was more focused on the question, "Why is it that good people do bad things?" After our "raucous" kitchen incident (my word would have been exuberant, maybe - raucous was theirs), we all went into the living room and put on a record which Heike had bought of the new musical My Fair Lady. When we got to the part where Eliza Doolittle's father sings "I'm gettin' married in the morning!" and "Wiv' a little bit o' luck" we had to take it off. Too much a celebration of evil.
I wrote Elizabeth a letter thanking her for her wonderful offer, trying hard to separate out our falling out, her parents' and mine - I left the following morning, to Heike's great dismay - from what was, after all, a marvelous act of generosity to a stranger. But the event stuck with me, and over the years has marked my image of Scotland. Just as I came to see Germany in terms of the spectrum from jackbooted thugs to beer, dancing, Kaffee, Kuchen and Gemütlichkeit, I came to see Scotland in terms of the spectrum from tight-assed religion to hardy, sturdy folk, honest as the day is long, remarkably generous kindly people who nonetheless live by their national motto: "Nemo me impune lacessit," the Scottish analogue to "Nobody messes with Texas."
Some years later I attended a wedding in a Scottish village, picturesque beyond words, with its country church, selected because the groom was Scottish and the bride's family had lived there. The attendees were a sophisticated lot, including even somebody with connections to the Dutch royal family. During the ceremony the village preacher chose Ephesians 5:22-23 for his text for some reason, maybe because his knickers were too tight: "Wives, be submissive to your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head and Savior of the church, which is His body." No harm done that couldn't be alleviated by a few snickers here and there.
One of the signs that the circle of my life is closing is the fact that I am revisiting so much of my past these days. The focussed recollections of growing up are usually pleasurable; the Sturm und Drang moments of despair are simultaneously moments of proof that I was able to survive the slings and arrows. And one of the greatest pleasures is being able to use the advantage of time to reframe many of the negative moments into positive ones. In my early 20s, for example, I used to squirm at the memory that as a teenager I used to sit at a piano playing hymns when all the other guys were out playing baseball. These days, I find myself tuning in to the Wednesday noontime organ concerts from the Mormon Tabernacle. I've come full circle. I absolutely love the old familiar hymns of my youth, properly sung. My feet no longer move automatically to play the bass notes the way they did after I did that stint as a church organist for a while, but I watch in admiration those whose feet can perform that task.
I have to tell you that while nothing provides more pleasure than a good piano concerto performance of Rachmaninoff or Chopin, another part of the brain is also moved by a good pipe organ rendition of Ein Feste Burg, or Come, Come Ye Saints, especially when done by one of the Tabernacle organists.
Religion. I wanted for so many years to beat it with a stick. Still do, sometimes, when in its organized form it gets so nasty. But it its meditative form (I am consciously avoiding the term spiritual) it's one of those ways humans have of processing meaning, and its power continues to surprise me.
I spent the morning this morning revisiting that beautiful child I watched grow up, Alexander Malofeev. Here he is now, in what I believe is his most recent public performance, playing Scriabin at the Verbier festival, a young genius in his early 20s, full of passion. And here he is, at the age of 11, when he first began to garner international attention for his prodigious ability. I've seen practically everything in between. If you want more, there's a pretty good survey available here.
And here are two versions of a hymn by a guy known as "Brother James" based on the 23rd Psalm, one sung by an angelic boys' choir (is there any other kind?) from England, where they really know how to gussy up their little boys in medieval drag.
And one done by those smoothly blended voices from Temple Square in Salt Lake City. People who have been known for using religion to bully. Here, though, they're passing on that Scotsman's lovely musical meditation. You may call it religiously inspired. I prefer to walk in, take a pew, and marvel at what the human race can do when it gathers collectively to good purpose.
In last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, there's a great article on Willy Nelson. Among other things I learned from it was his love for Frank Sinatra.
I should not be surprised that the love of one kind of music opens the door for many more kinds of music.
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