All photos taken by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, on Buena Vista Hill in San Francisco, May 13, 2024
See, when you finally get it ... when at last the secrets of life start to open up to you, then you understand really late Beethoven and what you were supposed to learn from him ...
In this third movement of his 15th string quartet, Beethoven put into notes his grateful recognition that he was alive after a grave illness because God chose to heal him, and gave this movement a long German name: "Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart. I learned that genesen means healthy from Brahms 'In dem Kirchhofe' ... so, in addition to me knowing the history of this piece, I also can actually read it: "Holy Thanks-singing [for] a healing to the Deity, in the Lydian mode."
But it was the second section's name that came back to me first: "Neue Kraft fuehlend," or, "feeling new strength." It came back to me because when I was coming to terms last week with the part of moving into a life of rest that required acknowledging the hard truth of why those losses in 2022 and 2023 were necessary, there was a moment in which I literally felt new strength coming into mind and body when I had made the acknowledgements necessary and was grateful that all that was past -- I literally felt the healing.
I also realized there was a new path to consciously explore ... I had been cycling from gratitude to grief ... but also as much if not more often between gratitude and new strength ... a day in July was literally my turning point, sitting on top of Buena Vista Hill in the glory of its early summer. From grief to gratitude to new strength -- it was the first time I had felt the burden come completely off of my broken heart, and it was just in time, for in six days the idea for my fifth book would come to me. I truly did find clarity of mind and strength of heart.
The thing about gratitude, even generally, is that it puts us in mind of all the abundance there is that we are privy to RIGHT NOW instead of the scarcity of whatever else there may be ... now, in my life as a Christian I am going to be even more specific than Beethoven in terms of the object of said gratitude, but even GENERALLY, the act of remembering and thinking of blessings breaks up the patterns of thought that can spiral toward despair ... that thought that grief and loss are all there is and all there ever will be. Gratitude is an act of turning toward all the light that is still there, and beginning the journey upward to it.
Gratitude is also a way of returning love -- a multiplier. On the mortal plane, time and life and resources at hand are sometimes limited, but grace, love, and joy never are ... so "thank you" returns the immortal portion to the giver and inspires further action that sends grace, love, and joy around again ... and as it is on the horizontal plane, it is also vertically -- as a Christian, gratitude is commanded, and the practice of it in every way multiplies blessings!
Now, what I have written is anathema to the culture I live in -- late-stage capitalism meets old-style chattel making ... humans being worked into the ground ... said humans becoming more desperate while still feeling entitled and that someone owes them something and they shouldn't have to be thankful for what somebody owes them. So, what is happening is that people are caught in systems of total scarcity: limited physical resources and no flow of immortal resources through the system. Instead of grace, love, and joy, the constant resentment, desperation, and malice eventually destroy whatever life there is.
The tragedy of life is that *if people in these situations think such a system of living is all there is, if they have become adept at working it, if they have accepted what the poet Milton put in the mouth of Lucifer in Paradise Lost -- "Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven" -- and are content so long as they can look or punch down on those they feel are less than themselves -- if they do not believe anything better is possible or worth the price it will cost in the system they are in, they cannot be rescued, because they will not be rescued.
I was born in a local community thus perishing, with all the available coping strategies and fights for territory and status in a dying space in full effect. It died. Most people were swept like dust in the wind, scattered either to far corners to continue to keep up the same patterns, into prison, or into the grave. I was born into a pocket of thriving survivors, however, who brought me up in the old African American Christian values that harmonize with true Christian values practiced everywhere in the world ... everywhere in the world that some idea of Christ is not enslaved for the making of profit, everywhere that the idea of Christ is not used as a hammer to oppress people into believing they are only good to be under the heel of "superior people," I find harmony in every culture, a Holy Accord strong enough to be heard through the tragedies of the world, and to bridge the gaps between cultures.
I did not choose where I was born, and how I was brought up. My only choice is gratitude, which includes walking as I have been called by God, using the best models of my elders and those in harmony with them. My life, actually, depends on active gratitude. It has since I had a choice in the matter.
In retrospect, looking back at 2022 and 2023, I had never before been immersed in community in which total scarcity reigns. Not that there were not well-equipped people in it ... but, frankly, there are people who are well-equipped through knowing how to play the games on other people, and people who are well-equipped by good work in other spheres and want to come look down on people they feel are inferior.
I could have been such a person, too. I cannot express in words the gratitude I have for being called away from such a life, first being born in but not of, and then to come out again from being so immersed. I am grateful Beethoven is so much greater a composer than I am as well. He put into notes what words sometimes cannot cover, and when I listen to this quartet movement and think of him restored to health and feeling new strength, and knowing his biography and what he still would accomplish as a musician and a person in those additional two years ... and when I think of coming through what I have in this last two years and the whole 43-year span when my generation was not even slated to survive as free people, much less thrive, but here I am on Hive ... this movement expresses my feelings on the horizontal level while I can go talk with God and those people who have poured into me directly and express what can be expressed.
And, oh, BY THE WAY, thank you, Q-Inspired Community, for inspiring me to thrive as a storyteller across MULTIPLE modalities of communication!
Now when I think of Hive, and Q-Inspired ... the latter a light within a light ...
... but Hive ... why can't we get people to see this and join up? To us it is so obvious what a wonderful community we have -- how is it that more people are not here?
I know now. I have learned the hard way that we underestimate how committed people are to systems of total scarcity, and Web 2 at least offers the currency of mass attention -- Web 2 SEEMS LIKE a wealthy place in that respect. Hive is a hard sell by comparison ... if you do not have the energy for a climb toward the light, Hive is a hard, hard sell.
But all Hive, and those of us on it, are actually doing is a generalized version of this ...
... and those looking up for light in dark places, who are tempered for the climb, keep finding it. I did. You did. Others will as well. We just have to keep holding out the light.
As I was listening to music and walking, grateful to have a schedule such that I can be out walking and photographing in these beautiful spring days, I realized that these threads are those that caused Jerome Hines, Martti Talvela, Kurt Möll, and most recently Wout Oosterkamp to stand out to me ... amazing bass voices, humble (and tragic, in the case of the Finnish and German bass) backgrounds, transcendent gifts, and GRATITUDE, expressed in that they turned around and blessed everyone around them and shone the light on to the next generations.
Mr. Talvela did not live as long as the other three basses, but he literally took his last step, blessing his daughter. Mr. Hines and Herr Möll were with their students to their very last years of strength, and have parallel records of blessing those they encountered and spent time with in the course of their work. Mr. Oosterkamp closed his professional career in teaching, and is now a Benedictine monk in his mid-seventies, still serving his community small and large in the area of the local monastery's ministry.
I have never met any of these four men. Their careers and three of their lives were over before I even knew they existed, but their legacies are so bright that even though the only connection I have is the Internet, all four have deeply inspired and enlightened me. They are still doing what they always did, with the help and the gratitude of those they left behind, posting them and their stories up to be known -- so it is the combined light of all those people, too, and it is my honor to bring all that light to Web 3, too, extending it even more.
With all these thoughts it at last occurred to me ... I'm deeply uncomfortable with the idea of "stardom" as it is misappropriated through the lens of total scarcity ... but what people are really looking for, in any star, is light. The world system makes stars for money's sake ... but the truly great stars, those who leave a legacy of light and love, understand that was what they were called to do, and so do it. Jerome Hines, over his long life, stands out profoundly in this regard; he has been in his section in the heavenly choir 21 years and people are STILL posting up stories of what he did for them for time and eternity, and half those stories have nothing to do with music!
The other thing this tells me: even though in 2022 and 2023 I could not in the midst of so many I loved move them, being at distance allows me to still shine a light. The thing about real stars: none of them are in grappling distance, and none of them are of a nature such that they can be harnessed by a system of total scarcity. The sunshine is not a capitalist endeavor; there is no cost to enjoy it.
One of the things I most appreciate about Hive: it has no connection to the old legacy system built on oppression. It is Beethoven's dream from 1810, realized 210 years later ... we come here, share what is within us that connects on a human level in an increasingly inhuman world, and receive support to continue. Of course crypto has its ups and downs, and Hive's position on exchanges is also ever changing ... looked at through the lens of scarcity, Hive does not seem like much. But to those who perceive abundance, are grateful, and know they are called to pass the light on and will be sustained as they are called, and were called here, this is a wonderful place to call home ... and to a home within a home, here in Q-Inspired.
And now, in closing -- surprise, a shorter post today -- a sung story of light dying, at least to appearances, plunging into and lost in the wild grave of the waves ... but light cannot die ... to those who seek quiet and holy things to abide among them, that light will be seen again, beautiful on top of those waves, under the stars above -- the sky and sea both filled with light though the night is dark ... light triumphant and available even in the midst of darkness for all those who seek it. For voice, and for legacy to match ... well, there is a reason my favorite musician is my favorite! But do get comfortable ... he is still adding to the folks that were (probably) knocked clean out on the floor on a May day in Ludwigsburg, caught by surprise at the beauty of this live recording.
All this Music are great, I enjoyed listening to them 👍 Very Classical, I loved Kort Moll loewe voice 🌟
Thank you for reading and listening!
Kurt Moll was the greatest German deep bass in the second half of the 20th century ... now you know why!