Awareness

AMONG all the moods of the spirit, that of simple awareness is the most precious.

It is so utterly natural that, when it recurs, it makes almost every other mood seem artificial; and the great wonder about it is that it does not obtain all the time. But, for some reason connected with the inhibitions of our humanity, it is rare and precarious. As one reviews the months and seasons of the year, its moments of complete visitation shine out notably.

Another name for it is just realization. It does not concern itself with new discovery, with surprise; it contents itself (and how deeply contents us!) with that which sums up and transcends everything else. While it persists, we know what we are, what the world is, what life means, what God and the angels are about; we escape from the inexplicable blindness and pretense that hold us all the rest of the time — we see and understand.

To different people, different environments favor the experience. Musiclovers are most apt to be visited by it in the galleries of music halls; devout Catholics woo it when they kneel before the Blessed Sacrament; naturelovers stand peculiarly open to it among hills and woods, or beside the sea.

The place where it happens is never forgotten; henceforth it is marked with an invisible sign, designated Bethel. Jacob’s comment is often repeated, with the significant deletion of one word: ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it.’ The mental maps of people who have lived long in one locality are apt to be sown with stars indicating the occurrence of the supreme event. There is the silent brook in the heart of the meadow, where the old abandoned road crosses on the dilapidated bridge. There is the grassy hollow, high on the hillside, warm and drowsy with sunshine, fragrant with pennyroyal, visited by butterflies and the shadows of summer clouds. There is a great tree, with spreading roots, on the edge of the woods. And there are the woods themselves, deep and still and brooding, the holiest and starriest spots of all.

Just what is it that has come to pass in these places? One has looked at the world, — really looked at it, not merely caught a glimpse of it from behind veils of illusion and preoccupation, — and, like God on his great seventh day, has found it very good. Holding one’s breath, lest body hamper soul, one has gazed straight at, and deep into, things, dwelling upon the line of a hill, steeping one’s vision in the blue of the sky, the golden-brown of the brook, exploring largely the green expanse of a meadow. One has listened to the song of the birds and insects, the lapping of the water, the chanting of the wind, and has really heard them, not merely caught confused echoes of them. Over the vast periods of geologic and evolutionary time, one has voyaged, fearless and unhesitating, reaching back, back, seeing how all our present life is bound up with that which has been, how past and present and future exist in one breath. One has prayed to God, and, praying, has seen Him face to face. One has been aware.

Perhaps it is identification that has worked the trick. In really looking at the world one has lost one’s self in it, and thus has been enabled to understand it as never before. Some poet (Sarah Cleghorn, I think) has suggested that immortality may consist in exactly this losing of one’s self, and that the ultimate meaning of Christ’s most mystic utterance is this ineffable finding of a lost life. And yet, all the time, one’s self is there, intensely alive and alert; and, though it is one with what it looks at, it is also separate. The situation is paradoxical. Probably the supreme awareness of death will be needed to clear it up for us.

Moments of awareness are august, and one tries to meet them reverently. But sometimes they come so unexpectedly that one is unprepared; and now and then they even display a whimsical humor, which endears them greatly to our human hearts. Among all the places where they have visited me, there is only one where I can ever count on finding them again, and that is, of all incongruous spots, my garbage-pail!

This is the way it happens: for hours I have been busy in the kitchen, mixing, stirring, baking, washing, hurrying back and forth between the pantry and the sink, too utterly given over to practical affairs to cast so much as a glance out of the window. My entire universe has consisted in four kitchen walls. At last, the bread and the cake have been baked, the dinner prepared and eaten, the dishes washed, and now, as a last item in cleaning up, I seize the old tin plate, full of refuse, and start pell-mell for the garbage-pail behind the woodshed. It is only another, a final, practical detail, and I lose no time about it. Out through the kitchen door I go precipitately.

But, behold! what is this? As I stand, with the lid of the garbage-pail in one hand and my empty tin plate in the other, something arrests me. I look wonderingly about me. Then — oh, beauty and sweetness of the summer day! serenity and detachment of the summer world! — I am invaded, flooded by it, caught away into it, dazzled by its exceeding loveliness. Before me the orchard lies, peaceful and green, with birds in its widely branching old trees, crickets and butterflies in its grass, blue sky above it, and golden sunshine irradiating it. Beside me is the glowing garden, and beyond are the untroubled hills. What a wide, happy, quiet world — my world, the world where we all of us belong! And what an unholy, unnecessary fuss I have been making ! Beside the garbage-pail, just where I am, I — But Sarah Cleghorn has the right words for this, too: —

Could we be always aware, if we tried? Probably not, for then we might almost as well be dead. Could we be so more frequently? Doubtless we could, and should. The whole trend of evolution seems to lie away from nescience and blindness, toward intelligence; away from the partial to the whole. The divine condition cannot be induced, can hardly ever even be anticipated; but it can be wooed, and can be waited on with a humble mind. The soul’s inner moorings can be kept simple and flexible, easily slipped. Readiness and expectation can become habits of the heart. Each one of us is a tiny part of a stupendous, developing Reality, and each one of us is also as much the whole Reality as any other part. Some day we shall be eternally aware of this. Meanwhile, we shall presumably live more sanely and wisely, more largely and freely, if we secure as many moments of temporal knowledge as possible.

A MYSTERIOUS PROFESSION

FOR years I have been fascinated by the mystery of why men become bassviol players.

There are eight bass-viol players in a modern orchestra. They stand in the back row , wearing drooping moustaches and eyeglasses. The latter, no doubt, are necessary, because for years they have strained their eyes looking for the little parts allotted to them by the composer.

And now comes a burning question. Here is a body of innocent and Godfearing men, honest taxpayers, and, according to our divorce courts, faithful husbands. They are almost wholly lacking in criminal tendencies. Search our jails. Are the glittering crimes of the country committed by bass-viol players ? Can this profession honestly boast of any first-class kidnappers, murderers, or swindlers? The answer is — no!

Why then do the composers manifest toward them such an utter lack of trust?

In looking over the average orchestral score, we find that bass-viols are usually permitted only to double in the lower octave a few bass notes while the violoncellos are playing; the cellos at this point are usually showing off, and getting all the credit from the audience. There are some rare exceptions to this rule. For example, Beethoven, with a broad-minded spirit and a certain feeling of optimism, confides to the bassviols the business of working up a tempest in the storm of the Seventh Symphony. It did my heart good to see the octette rally to the occasion. No longer did they stand there as if suffering from sleeping sickness. Their bows and front hair started tossing angrily; the heavy strings vibrated wildly; heavy rumblings threatened the tranquil calm of a few minutes before — restlessness surcharged the atmosphere, growing steadily more menacing. The tides of wind and rain rushed violently on, until, finally, thunderous furies rode the air, shrieking their cries of rage. I felt myself swept up in the arms of the tempest; the wind howled, the sea moaned, a ship crashed — and all this hypnotic effect from these frock-coated bass-viol players!

Usually, however, they have the driest of parts to play: melodies are carried by the other instruments, and when the bass-viol play at all, they very often have to play the same note sixteen times in succession.

‘Ah!’ you exclaim, ‘how easy!’

But is it easy? To play the same note sixteen times would bore me so that I am sure I should become absent-minded, and at the wrong moment come crashing noisily in with the next phrase. It also might be claimed that much of the time the bass-viols do nothing. But this is not as easy as it appears; for, when they are not playing, they have to know what the rest of the orchestra is doing every minute, and not infrequently they are obliged to count as many as sixty-four measures in order to come neatly in on the beat of the sixty-fifth. This requires concentration of no mean order.

The small parts allotted to the bassviol, however, are vitally important. Take the bass away from the performance of a musical composition, and the thing weakly collapses. The amateur pianist goes in heavily for this crime; the right hand does not know what the left hand doeth. In an orchestra the bass-viols furnish the foundation of the musical structure, and are just as essential to the performance as the strong man in Keith’s Vaudeville, who does an acrobatic act with five others, supporting them on his head and shoulders. He, however, wins applause after the performance. He runs forward in his pink-silk tights and green-plush trunks, and takes all the bows.

But the bass-viol player at the end of a concert has no such thrill. The next thing he has to consider is getting the animal home, for nothing can be left in the concert hall. He struggles to the door, and makes for the nearest subway. This is at 5.15 P.M. — the rush hour; he must not only get it in the car, but he must park it there with nice precision, not running the bayonet through the foot of his nearest neighbor, or letting the head, all keyed up as it is, fall hysterically about. Let one of our New York philanthropists carry a bass-viol from 59th Street to the Bronx, via the subway, during the rush hour. I am sure he would add to his philanthropies the new humane measure of supplying Carnegie Hall with a Ford truck, to be backed up after concerts to carry away the bass-viols to Hoboken, Flatbush, and the Bronx.

The drawbacks to playing this instrument are perfectly obvious. It would be interesting to know if there are any pleasures derived from it. Certainly no pleasure comes from playing it as a solo instrument; no musical literature has been written for it, so bass-viol players cannot enjoy playing, either for themselves or for their friends. This is where the mystery lies.

We know that, these men could apply their musicianship to another instrument not having these drawbacks. What, then, impels them to adopt this weird pursuit? Are they sordid slackers who, for good pay, prefer a minimum amount of work? For, of course, they put forth less physical effort in their playing than men in the other positions in t he orchestra. Or are they great altruists, who, for the sake of having symphonies played, buckle on their frockcoats and sacrifice themselves on the altar of music?