Farewell to Brian Johns (1936-2016)

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A beautiful thing to have done a good deed and never to have known.

For a number of years it has been my habit late in the evening to visit the Wikipedia “Recent Deaths” webpage.[1] This not on account of any morbid curiosity on my part, but to discover who of those that have passed on will reveal new things to me. Necropolises are our greatest universities. The dead are our truest teachers. And I have left the richer not only to be reminded that I have been given another day of grace, but also with an addition of valuable knowledge from visiting these lives which have come full circle. People from all walks and schools of life. Lessons are everywhere to be found. Sometimes, too, these visits have been touched with an additional and deeper gratitude. I come face-to-face with men and women I have met at some time during my own life either incidentally or in a more personal space.

On the evening of the 1st of January 2016 I read of the passing of one of these people that I had encountered in those more personal spaces. A man who was a paper boy and a factory hand when growing up to afterwards wear a number of different hats with great distinction in the corporate, business, and academic worlds.[2] I met Brian Johns for a brief but decisive moment in my life in one of his many personifications as managing director of the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) 1987-1992.[3] It was during this evening when I visited the “Recent Deaths” webpage that one of the clues for his compassion and affection towards me would reveal itself. But first something of the context behind our correspondence and the two meetings at SBS.

At the time I was living through one of the two life experiences which would in their own season and for their own reason, take apart and change me forever. I had made the heartrending decision to ask to be relieved of my priesthood and was seeing out the last months of my diaconate.[4] I was increasingly becoming estranged from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in Sydney and had fallen into a deep melancholia (a more correct word for depression).[5] In short, outside my immediate family I was almost completely alone and on the edge of letting go of everything which I had up to that time lived and worked towards. Support from those places where I would have normally expected was not forthcoming and this was made known to me in some heartless ways. In reality, there is no one to blame, more often than not we move and respond from within a space we alone create and inhabit. I was a greatly idealistic twenty-nine year old who could now envision no future for himself. In a moment of desperation I thought my one way out (excepting for my ongoing battles with suicidal ideation) was broadcast journalism. I loved to write and to communicate with people and to listen to their stories. I felt I could do well in the media. It would have been utterly marvellous I thought, to do the research and then to sit down in a chair in front of an audience and do the interview.

This is when Brian Johns enters into my story, around late August or early September of 1990.

Somehow during those weeks of numbness and inertia I managed to put together a few words outlining as best I could my current situation and what I was hoping for in terms of the future. I addressed and posted this letter not to one of the department secretaries or programme directors, but directly to the SBS Managing Director Mr Brian Johns! And that’s where I thought it would end. Immediately afterwards I was embarrassed thinking that even if that rambling letter would reach this man what on earth would he make of me? A week or two had passed when a phone call came through to our home in Kingsgrove from the Managing Director’s private secretary asking to speak with “Father Jeremiah Michael”. Brian had actually received my letter, had read it, and asked to meet with me. It is not possible to spend our entire lives living in a world of pure perception. At last some little light at the end of the tunnel. 

I was not the young man of even a few years earlier. My once unshakeable and booming confidence was very close to being completely shattered. I was frightened of exploring new territories and had decided to never again open up my heart. To make matters worse, I had started to binge drink in a futile effort to shut away the pain. But somehow, by the grace of God, I had always been able to find that extra bit of reserve I have needed to keep moving forward. And so I nervously made an appointment with Brian’s secretary to meet with him on an afternoon of the following week. I prepared the best I could, put the alcohol and those awful anti-depressants away, and read up on the basics of news media.

It will not be possible to forget the days leading up to my meeting with Brian. I was very much anxious during the cab ride and was fearful of becoming physically ill. I needed a drink or to be sick. It had become difficult to tell the difference. A few years earlier in 1987 in my mid-twenties during the Roman Catholic-Eastern Orthodox Joint Declaration at the Vatican where I had been present to witness this historic moment, I was together with a group of young inter-denominational clerics introduced to Pope John Paul II.[6] Certainly, I was nervous and anxious then, but not as apprehensive or hesitant as I was during the hours heading into this present moment. I had an entirely different perception of myself back then in Rome and now in lots of ways I was another man. Except for the fact that hope and my belief in the Creator, would refuse to wholly go away.

As soon as I walked into the foyer of the SBS building at Milsons Point (unless I am mistaken the move to Artarmon had yet to take place)[7] I became positive and I allowed for an excitement to rush through my body which I had not felt for a long time. I was still a cleric and was dressed in my black and freshly pressed cassock. My shoes were spit-polished from the night before. More than a few quizzical stares came my way. I explained to the reception the reason behind my visit and was soon sitting in the waiting room leading into the executive offices of the Managing Director. There was a deep sense of relief as if I had succeeded in escaping from a dangerous place. Though I knew my present situation was complicated and there was more waiting for me, here at least were some lovely shards of light.

It was Brian himself who stepped out and invited me into his modestly furnished office. It was a room stacked with books. I remember from the start being impressed with his old world elegance and demeanour. Well dressed and softly spoken with a striking mane of thick greying hair, he cut an impressive figure. You knew immediately with Brian Johns, that you would have to bat straight to get his attention. On his desk, I was taken aback to find, that he had open and was in fact reading a typed MS of my poetry which I had included in my initial correspondence. It was I must confess what writers term juvenilia. Yet here was a man who had previously been a publishing director with Penguin Books taking interest in my earliest literary efforts. Even now as I write these lines, I smile at one of our first exchanges. Brian quickly asked me what it was “exactly that I wanted”. I was overwhelmed by this incredible opportunity and trust which was directly cast my way. I fumbled for a response and came out with a less then convincing “I would like to read the news.”

He smiled warmly and encouragingly, he asked a few more questions, and then said, “Okay, Jeremiah, we will speak again.” What happened afterwards and my reasons for not carrying through with Brian’s amazingly generous response is for another day. I wrote a letter telling him “I was not in the right frame of mind and that I was extremely sorry for robbing him of his valuable time”. But a few weeks later I back-tracked and Brian once more, unbelievably for someone in his position, reached out to me again. However, for a second time I told him I was in no condition to go ahead with such a “visible career move" when I was so close to “abandoning my priestly vocation” and that I was heading for England to enter a retreat.

I flew out to London soon afterwards as the First Gulf War (1990-1) was getting underway and the world was entering into yet another of its post WWII apocalyptic moods. I asked and was given permission to spend time with the monastic community of Saint John the Baptist in Essex, Tolleshunt Knights.[8] The abbot at the time was the recently sainted Father Sophrony.[9]  At Heathrow Airport everywhere there were signs of the war, the surrounds replete with heavy armaments and soldiery. I, too, on a much smaller scale was to enter into my own private war. It was to last for many years with as many twists and turns as Tiamat’s tail.

The heart of these paragraphs has to do with the generosity and kindness that a man in a high professional post would express to another man whose life was at a crossroads. I started these paragraphs with the promise of revealing a clue which communicated to me in a profoundly moving way a hidden connection between myself and Brian, and why he seemed to understand where even some of my oldest and dearest friends could not. Here was a stranger, who discovered more in me in only a few hours of conversation, what others could not over the duration of many years. I learnt much about friendship during those agonizing months and it would become a subject of lasting fascination for me.

I did not know until a few days ago that Brian himself had been a seminarian at Saint Columba’s Seminary and was preparing for the priesthood.[10] Incredibly and in another lovely twist, our vocations would again career into each other when much later we would both be awarded professorships.

My final correspondence with Brian was a quarter of a century ago. A letter sent from London a day or two after my arrival, and a postcard from Madrid a month after my request to be relieved of my priesthood had been granted by the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Our lives are to be measured by good deeds and little else. It is where it all begins and where it will all end.

Thank you dear Brian, requiescat in pace.

 

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_in_2016

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Johns_(businessman)

[3] http://www.sbs.com.au/

[4] http://orthodoxwiki.org/Presbyter [I was ordained into the diaconate as a celibate with the view towards a bishopric].

[5] William Styron rightly made this distinction between depression and melancholia in his own memoir of his struggle with mental illness in the memorable Darkness Visible. http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/12/the-hope-that-william-styrons-darkness-visible-offers-25-years-later/383406/

[6] https://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP2DIM1.HTM

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Broadcasting_Service

[8] http://www.thyateira.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=373&Itemid=163

[9] http://orthodoxwiki.org/Sophrony_(Sakharov)

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Johns_(businessman)

Eastern Orthodox Liturgical Chant

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Music has been a part of my life ever since I was a little child, a significant witness to the passing of the years. I can still remember. Whether it was listening to the Divine Liturgy, which Mother would play on her treasured vinyl records (LPs), or to the easy listening stations at the Reno Café, where the old Philips radio was forever on. And later by choice, when I was older, music would accompany me everywhere from the city across the ocean and into the desert. Whatever the condition of the heart, as King David one of the authors of the Psalms well knew, there is consolation in music. But I have even from my childhood noted a difference between what we might call sacred and secular music.[1] It seemed the natural distinction to make. And the manifest difference between the two? In very simple terms, sacred music relates to God, to ‘the divine’, whereas secular music will typically relate to the human, ‘to the earthly’. Sacred music as well, has a tradition of being accepted as a music genre set apart for worship by a large group of a believing community. It is conventionally in the form of a chant (“a rhythmic speaking or singing”).[2] Another difference between the sacred and the secular is that the former is text confirmed in scripture and liturgical texts, and does not stimulate or arouse violence or wickedness,[3] which secular music can do.

This is a tremendous topic and one which can stimulate much discussion, especially when it comes to definitions and to people’s biases of what actually constitutes the sacred.[4] It could be as difficult as trying to get behind Dostoyevsky’s enigmatic “[b]eauty will save the world” spoken by the Christ-like figure the epileptic Prince Myshkin. But technically, at least, chant, is one of the signature characteristics of sacred music together with its connection to ritual and cultic practices. I can be moved to tears, for example, when I listen to Kris Kristofferson’s country gospel “Why Me, Lord?”[5] Or Barbara Streisand’s haunting rendition of “Avinu Malkeinu”.[6] Where would musicologists place these songs in a canon of religious music? I know they swell up an enduring gratitude in my own heart. The spine-tingling Christos Anesti sung by Irene Papas [7] which was adapted by Vangelis from the traditional hymn is another piece of music which can test the boundaries for the definition of a music style or form. Nor as a Christian, is the magnificent Azan from Sheikh Abdul majeed,[8] or listening to Cantor Moishe Oysher,[9] something which does not deeply touch and act upon my spirit. Gregorian chant synonymous with the Roman Catholic Church plays a part in my devotions, as do the inspiring chants of the Taizé community. From the masters of classical music there is an impressive list of great requiems in the dramatic tradition of the concert oratorio. The purpose behind sacred music, or at least that music which is specifically set aside for worship, is to lead to interior reflection and spiritual growth.

“Nothing elevates the soul,” writes Saint John Chrysostom, “nothing gives it wings as a liturgical hymn does.” In modern terms this could be transliterated into Hunter S. Thompson’s poetics on music as “energy” and “fuel”.

The intention behind this little introduction was to share some paragons of the sacred music from my own community of worship, the Eastern Orthodox Church. Outwardly traceable to the classical age of the Greeks but strongly influenced by the “Jewish Synagogue chant and psalmody”, eastern liturgical chant in its present recognizable form was developed in the earliest years of the Byzantine Empire.[10] Below are samples of the chant which is not to be confused with the Byzantine music of the courtly ceremonials.[11]  If you do not have time to listen to all the pieces, then might I suggest the cantor who is considered the principal of his generation, Theodoros Vasilikos, and the angelic Cherubic Hymn from the Novospassky Monastery Choir:

Lucio Dalla’s Caruso

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Qui dove il mare luccica e dove tira forte il vento Su una vecchia terrazza davanti al golfo di Sorriento…
Here, where the seas shines, and the wind howls, on the old terrace beside the gulf of Sorrento…

On an afternoon in the summer of 1986 the Italian singer-songwriter Lucio Dalla (1943-2012) wrote what was to become one of the most beautiful and heartrending songs of recent times. It has been covered by an impressive number of the world’s finest singers on a diverse range of stages and in different tones. The song is the unforgettable Caruso.[1] The story behind its inspiration was revealed by Dalla himself in an interview he gave to an Italian newspaper. He relates a story told to him by the owners of a hotel in Sorrento where Dalla lodged for some nights.[2] It was the hotel where the great Italian tenor Enrico Caruso himself had stayed shortly before his death from peritonitis in 1921. He was aged 48. At the time he was suffering from pleurisy and empyema and was in awful pain. The celebrated Caruso was giving singing lessons to a young girl with whom he would become infatuated. Lucio Dalla stayed in the same room, the “Caruso suite”. It was this impromptu story, of an impossible love emanating from a dying man who looks into the eyes of a beautiful girl in full bloom, which inspired the singer-songwriter and registered the song into our imagination.[3]

E’ una catena ormai Che scioglie il sangue dint’e vene sai…
It is a chain by now that heats the blood inside the veins, you know…

I first heard Caruso from Pavarotti and Bocelli. It resonated deeply from the start for its mesmerizing melody and elegiac lyrics. Even so, it was only when I was older that it struck me for all of its other implications. This happened when I unearthed the breath-taking Lara Fabian who gives perhaps the most impressionable of all the performances. Mercedes Sossa, the legendary Argentine singer known as “La Negra”, is probably the most soulful. I listen to the song often. It transports me to different destinations. Not only as I grow older and consider the decay and ruin of my own flesh, but particularly when I reflect on the relationship I have with my wife and on the miraculous circumstances which brought us together.

Ti volti e vedi la tua vita come la scia di un’elica…
You turn and see your life through the white wash astern…

The English philosopher Roger Scruton who specializes in aesthetics (the study of beauty and taste) has recently published a marvellously engaging and intelligent piece on the BBC’s A Point of View where he considers what it is that makes for great music.[4] One of his key contentions is that good music is “a language shaped by our deepest feelings” and not “put together on a computer from a repertoire of standard effects”. Dalla’s delicate song in the celebrated tradition of the canzone Napoletana does sit comfortably in the first category.

‘Bumping’ into Audrey Hepburn

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In 1971 halfway through fourth class and enthusiastically exploring the limits of a ten year old’s “autonomy” my schooling was all of a sudden interrupted. It was the year two Australians were crowned Wimbledon champions and the United States landed a fourth crew on the Moon. I would not travel so far or so high, but take flight I would. Mother upon hearing from my old and irascible teacher Mr K. that I was “shocking” became visibly despondent and decided that if there was to be any hope for her errant son he needed to be “sent away”. Father for one, was none too happy with the idea that his “only begotten” would fly the coop a lot earlier than expected. I was to leave for Greece post-haste to live with my Aunt and Uncle and two older cousins, where I would continue with school during the latter part of the seven year Greek military junta.[1] My new home for the next twelve months would be in the port city of Piraeus made internationally famous by Manos Hadjidakis’ film score “Children of Piraeus” in Never on Sunday (1960).

The first few weeks were entirely miserable. I missed my home. I missed my parents. I missed my friends. And the little transistor radio I brought over with me, to listen to the doyen of rugby league callers, Frank Hyde on 2SM, was to my shock and horror not working! In spite of everything, not surprisingly perhaps given the resilience of a young child, I would slowly find myself getting used to this strikingly different environment. The little shop-front home that Aunt M. had refurbished to sell an odd assortment of school supplies (to make ends meet after Uncle N. was ‘decommissioned’ from his high naval post by the junta), was situated on a marvellously named street Aghiou Orous (Holy Mount). Providence would have that many years later I would spend long periods of time on the Holy Mountain itself, the famous monastic community in Northern Greece.[2]

Next door to our little home lived an old couple. One afternoon there was a commotion, a wailing of young and older female voices. A large crowd had gathered. The old man had passed away in the morning, “died suddenly in his sleep”, they said. I peered through the window and there he was in full view lying in wake. He was the first dead person I had ever seen and the first time I beheld that other, more terrifying, face of God. Up the road lived a gypsy family in a ramshackle of a place, the youngest daughter was a fiercely attractive rebel, she was two years older than me and I would be very happy to see her. A few streets down the famous (occasionally riotous) taverna with its big underbelly of Greek culture, which for a little kid, was a world unto its own. At my new school, no doubt on account of my ‘alien’ place of origin, I was made the class captain. During the weekdays we would salute the portraits of the Colonel’s and on Sundays in strict parallel lines marched to church.

Mother would come to Greece early in 1973 to bring me back and so together we would make a second return journey to Australia (ten years earlier we had voyaged to the old country on board the broken-down ocean liner Ellinis).[3] Along with our suitcases on this occasion, I can still remember, we also packed a large carton of books. The assorted collection included cookbooks, an encyclopaedic etiquette manual, and a variety of popular magazines. But what particularly caught my attention was the stack of beautiful looking hardcovers. These books were thick and bound in fine colourful cloth. In gold lettering on the front and spine were printed the title and name of the author. I rediscovered these treasures a few years later crammed in a wardrobe and it seemed to me, if the creases on the pages were any indication, they had been read or at least had been thumbed through. These finely crafted volumes were translations of classics into Modern Greek. Amongst the mix where Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Hugo’s Les Misérables, a collection of Shakespeare’s plays, an anthology of Plato’s writings, and Kathryn Hulme’s The Nun’s Story . This last title was made famous by Audrey Hepburn’s portrayal of Sister Luke in the popular film directed by Fred Zinnemann (1959).  

And it was probably from this time onwards that my love for books can be traced.

I was proficient enough in my second language to make an attempt at these classics when I entered high school, for I have nowhere mentioned the riotous years spent in Greek afternoon school, and how unimaginably horrifying when the classes happened to fall on footy training days! Of course, the sheer thickness of these handsome books, not to mention their subject matter, quickly discouraged me but for one exception, The Nun’s Story [4]. It fascinated me for some reason which would be entirely inexplicable if not for the byzantine atmosphere which permeated our home. It also proved to be quite the omen given how my life would afterwards evolve. I skipped over the words I could not understand and in a short time had completed my first serious work of literature. And in Modern Greek to boot!

Hulme’s book was based on the real life story of a devout young Belgian named Marie Louise Habets, daughter of a famous surgeon. In 1926 she entered a religious order, the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary. Following in the footsteps of Habets, Sister Luke who in the novel similarly to her real life counterpart worked as a nurse in the Congo would also depart from the institutional religious life. Though at times thinking of themselves as “failures” neither lost their faith, nor assumed that giving up the habit meant ‘divorce’ from God. Would Maximilian Kolbe, for example, who volunteered to die in the place of a stranger at the Nazi death camp in Auschwitz, been any less of a divine soul if he had taken “off” his cassock the night before? In the novel Sister Luke confidently voices to her chaplain that God already knows the motives which drive us. “I have given too many cups of water in His name and He knows I would go on doing it, whether working for Him as a nun or as a war nurse.” Martin Edmond, the author of that deeply thoughtful contemplation of Collin McCahon’s temporary disappearance in Centennial Park,[5] would speak for most of us when he writes, “…in every life there is a mystery that can never wholly be divulged. We all take secrets with us to the grave and the most profound of those secrets is who we really are.”

We too often place a greater emphasis on the externals, choosing to forget: “For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you” (Matt. 7:2). Perhaps if this can be paraphrased in modern terms, I can think of nothing which comes closer than the words of Vikram Seth in the last paragraph of that magnificent memoir/ biography of his beloved Hindu Uncle Shanti and German Jewish Aunt Henny (Two Lives, 2005):[6] “May we see that we could have been born as each other.”

 

And so we returned and I would go straight into sixth class at my old primary school on King Street, which was directly across from the Reno.

 

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/23/newsid_2515000/2515819.stm

[2] http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/454

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qVpV8_7thM

[4] http://www.amazon.com/Nuns-Story-Kathryn-Hulme/dp/0316381357/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1446369298&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Nun%27s+Story

[5] http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Night-Walking-Martin-Edmond/dp/1869404831

[6] http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2006/03/13/1590269.htm

Vladimir Vavilov’s Ave Maria

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Newtown, Sydney

I was delighted the upload of Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence resonated with you. It was touching to read from one young person that listening to the spoken lyrics by Leonard Cohen helped him during some difficult days. And to hear from my dear friend, the country and western singer Sand Sheff himself, who emailed to say the song also holds a special place in his heart. Music is indeed, the universal language. It is the common space, the hearth, where we have met for thousands of years to “speak” though we might not have understood each other’s tongue.

Encouraged by this warm response I share with you another beautiful song from my “soundtrack”. This time it is an aria (an expressive melody) from the Russian guitarist and composer Vladimir Vavilov (1925-1973),[1] the enrapturing Ave Maria.[2] The composer recorded it and published it himself on the Melodiya label ascribing it to “Anonymous”.[3] It is dated to 1970.[4] Since the death of Vavilov it has often been incorrectly attributed in one of the great musical hoaxes, to the late Renaissance composer and instrumentalist Giulio Caccini.[5] It is distinct from the more well-known Schubert and J.S. Bach/ Charles Gounod versions.

There are grand pieces of ART which transcend cultures and creeds. They are profound creations which resonate throughout the ages. And this melody which speaks to us of the great grace of the Mother of our Lord, and indeed of the love and benevolence of mothers everywhere, is one of these grand pieces. One does not have to be religious to appreciate the overwhelming beauty of this song, any more than one has to be atheist to have compassion for the suffering and philosophical insights of a Friedrich Nietzsche.

Of interest the text has only the two words… the Ave Maria.   

It is a spiritual mantra, or a prayer of the heart.

Any attempts to find cynical or political influences in Vavilov’s composition have yielded no results. The composer died in poverty suffering from pancreatic cancer, at the early age of 48.

The aria became known to a wider audience when it was performed by Inese Galante and then released in her debut album Debut in 1995. The composition gained even more recognition and worldwide interest four years later in 1999 when Andrea Bocelli performed it and released it in his Sacred Arias. Also of note is the incredible performance of the counter-tenor, the Korean David DQ Lee. There are now many covers here as well. The very best of these performances given the high calibre singer who will attempt the aria (normally the classical female singing voice of a mezzo-soprano) are often referred to as performances of “effortless perfection”. Below I have selected the singers which have specifically appealed to me. Each of the performances is truly moving and magnificent in their own right. And yet if you only have time to listen to just one, then please let that be the “irreproachable” Irina Arkhipova.

Irina Arkhipova, Andrea Bocelli, Inese Galante, Denyce Graves, Ewa Izykowska, Sumi Jo, Elisabeth Kulman, David DQ Lee, Olga Pyatigorskaya

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Vavilov_(composer)

[2] Ave Maria (Hail Mary) also referred to as “The Angelical Salutation”, is the traditional and most familiar prayer in the Roman Catholic Church in honour of the Blessed Lady. It is inspired by the angel’s salutation of the Blessed Virgin (Lk 1:28).

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ave_Maria_(Vavilov)

[4] Ibid.

[5] http://www.origenmusic.com/ave-maria-vavilov.html