I get by with a little help from my friends

"There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal."  Thus wrote C.S. Lewis in his collection of sermons and essays The Weight of Glory.  What a beautiful thought.  We can live ordinary lives, have ordinary days full of ordinary occupations and ordinary family responsibilities.  But we cannot be ordinary people.  Our very natures preclude that idea.

I suspect Johann Sebastian Bach appeared to live a very ordinary life.  His parents died when he was nine.  An older, married brother took him in, raised him, educated him, a common enough occurrence in 18th. century Thuringia.  Like many boys his age he attended various church schools, studied Latin, Greek, theology, and music.  He showed a great talent for music, especially the organ.  Upon leaving school he began playing the organ for various churches, moving from one congregation to another as he sought better employment.  He married his cousin, Maria Barbara, who died while he was on a trip with his employer, Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cothen.  He then married Anna Magdalena, sixteen years his junior.  These two wives bore him twenty children, ten of which lived into adulthood.  While tragic, this is nonetheless, a very ordinary attrition rate for Bach's day and time.

We remember Bach as a master composer.  By his contemporaries he was much better known and appreciated for his organ skills.  Despite his great talent, he still had to please the hierarchy, kowtow to the bosses (the minor aristocracy and church councils of Saxony and Thuringia), work under appalling conditions and deadlines, teach unappreciative music students, and apply for music jobs he deserved but did not receive.  He was often underpaid, under-appreciated, and overworked. Upon his death in 1750 his music was put away for being too old-fashioned and was very nearly lost to history.  It all sounds rather depressingly quotidian.

And yet Bach's music changed the world.  This man, who lived a most ordinary life, has influenced artists for two hundred years.  From Mozart to Mendelssohn, to George Crumb, Bach's genius has left a trail through time.  His deeply spiritual music has touched the souls of millions.  He is regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time, possibly the greatest.  Who among his peers in the dusty Baroque German towns in which he lived could have foreseen his impact, his lasting legacy?  When Bach was hired to be the Cantor of St. Thomas School after the committee's first choice declined the position, the mayor of Leipzig infamously said, "Since the best man could not be attained, mediocre ones would have to be accepted."  Mediocre, indeed.

I have many friends, none of them ordinary.  They may appear to be so to others, as they go about their lives of being husbands and wives, parents, single, divorced, students, teachers, writers, artists, businessmen, and unemployed hopefuls.  But each of them has touched me and made my life better.  Each has left their mark, an indelible print, and I will never be the same.  So don't see the ordinary in those around you .  Look for the great qualities of eternal significance in every human being.  C.S. Lewis wrote, "Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses."

Preach it, Clive!

Johann Sebastian Bach

Clive Staples Lewis

What Shall We Do With a Drunken Bieber?

Another too-rich-too-famous-too-soon child star goes off the rails, and what do we do about it? We laugh, gawk, point our fingers, shake our heads. Whatever, we say. It's not our problem. He's not my kid. Then we buy more CDs, download more songs.

I was raised in the world of classical music. My parents were quite strict about it. Music from the likes of Bieber would never have been permitted. I had never heard music by the Beatles, the Bee-Gees, or Simon and Garfunkel until well into my teens.  This had two major affects on me.  The first is that I was found to be irredeemably odd by my peers (which, although a bitter pill at age 14 has proven to be no great loss as I've matured).  The second is that I have little tolerance for privileged performer antics, on stage or off.  When my best friend told me about the Ozzy Osbourne concert she attended, I couldn't believe it was legal.  After all, I had never seen Itzahk Perlman smash his violin on the stage or Vladimir Horowitz bite off the head of a bat before playing the Tchaikovsky piano concerto.

Which is not to say that classical music hasn't had its share of musical morons, misfits, and malcontents.  Beethoven was an infamous curmudgeon.  Wagner was a spoiled, amoral, anti-Semite.  Jean Baptist Lully had such a bad temper he stabbed himself in the foot with his lead conducting baton and hastened his own demise.  The virtuosic Paganini was a gambler and notorious womanizer. The list goes on.  The difference here is that all these musicians are quite dead.  We never have been and never will be bombarded 24/7 with breathless reports of the latest indiscretion followed by wild-haired mugshots.  Their problems and peccadilloes were not quite so public.

Perhaps the classical world met their Bieber in Kathleen Battle. Battle is a fine lyric soprano.  She was a rising star in the 80's and 90's, performing all over the world, winning Grammys.  She was a Diva in the most negative sense of the word.  Reports began to surface of her abusive behavior towards fellow performers.  She was unprofessional, difficult, and demanding. She threw temper tantrums backstage.  She was THE STAR, don't you know?  Finally the manager at the Met Opera in New York City called foul and fired her, cancelling future contracts as well. This was the kiss of death to her stage career. While continuing to sing in other venues,  Ms. Battle never worked in opera again.

What can Battle teach us about the Bieb?  I have a radical idea. Let's fire him!  We, the decent people of America, refuse to financially support Justin Bieber another day. Let's stop the watching, the reading, the buying, and see what happens. My childhood dentist had a bumper sticker that read, "Ignore your teeth and they go away." What would happen if we ignored young starlets as they crash and burn?  Maybe it would allow them to return to their insignificant spot in the universe.  Maybe they could get the help they need.  If so, then it's the kindest thing we can do.

What shall we do with a drunken Bieber?

Bieber who?

The Bieb

The Battle