Wickedness Never Was Happiness

 "No one mourns the wicked."  This is according to Stephen Schwartz in his hit musical "Wicked" (which is a tremendous amount of fun and quite entertaining, for you 17 people in America who haven't seen it yet). At first blush this would appear to be true.  How many people shed a tear at the demise of Pol Pot, Vlad the Impaler, Usama bin Laden?  Perhaps a few family members or faithful adherents were moved to mourn, but I think it's safe to say that the public at large skipped their funerals.  These men, however, are extreme examples of wickedness, the kind most of us never encounter on a daily basis.  We face a more garden-variety type of "bad;" people who simply make wrong choices.

I have a good friend who is running down the wrong path as fast as his skinny legs can carry him.  It is like watching a B horror movie in which you scream at the teenage girl, "Why on Earth are you going into the unlit basement to open the door with the bloodstains on it?"  My friend is bound and determined to open that door, despite my screams.  To further compound matters, I am the only person in his immediate circle that clearly sees the danger.  His other associates are cheering from the stands.  I am the lone voice crying in the wilderness, and I mourn.

It is not unlike the day I learned about Ralph Vaughn Williams.  He is a British composer of beautiful orchestral, choral, and vocal music.  If you are feeling the weight of the world on your shoulders, try listening to "The Lark Ascending" or "Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis" and your day will be lightened.  He is also the arranger of beautiful hymn melodies that are in Christian hymnals everywhere,  Kingsfold, Laßt Uns Erfreuen, and Sine Nomine, to name a few.  With such inspiring music in his portfolio, I naturally assumed he led an equally inspiring life.  It was with great disappointment that I read about his long term affair with the already married Ursula Wood that lasted 15 years before he married her.  I mourned.  Ralph is by no means alone, of course.  Debussy had a string of affairs, beginning at age 18 with Blanche Vasnier, the wife of a Parisian lawyer.  Let's not forget every musician's favorite infant terrible, the composer Richard Wagner, who not only had deplorably racist political views, but ran off with Mrs. von Bülow as well.

"So what?" you may well ask.  "This is how the world is.  What people do in their private lives is private."  Perhaps.  But I believe we all need heroes, someone to admire, look up to, believe in.  It can be the rich and famous or more "ordinary" people, like an uncle, grandmother, or friend.  And every time they make a less than noble choice, even in "private," we are all diminished.  A little more light has left the world, a little more ignominy has crept in.

I can't change the rich and famous.  Hugh Heffner won't listen to me any more than Debussy would have.  But we should all be the lone voice within our sphere of influence, speaking with boldness when people we admire and care about head in the wrong direction.  We can all yell, "Turn on the light!  It's over here!"  It is the hope of humanity.  Mr. Schwartz, talented though he is,  got it wrong.  We all mourn the wicked.

Ralph Vaughn Williams

Richard Wagner

Claude Debussy