The concert

As I noted in a post back in August, Timm was interested in Native American peoples and culture - hearkening back, perhaps, to a simpler, more natural way of life, where people respected much more greatly their relation to the land, knew their myths, and lived in a harmony which seems nearly impossible in our advanced, wounded and divided times.

It was an interest which had been with Timm since childhood, if we can take as evidence the set of poems Timm wrote in junior high school titled "Tales of Olde." ((Mom, could you dig those up again out of your box of memories of Timm's childhood?)). And as one who wandered far during his lifetime, traveling far west and ending up in Oregon where traces of Native American culture are still quite visible, he also carried the myths with him.

The "Aire Born" writings - apparently for a novel or novella - show Timm reading and inventing these myths as part of his surroundings, into his present. And it's not surprising to me that essential to this myth is the exploration of divine yearning in the human heart and story.

This, from an introduction to his tale:

During this ancient time there was another race of humans that disappeared long before the Europeans began to explore the west, a race not of the land but of the air. They were referred to as the Aire Born, neither men nor spirit but a hybrid, and they were the ones who had inhabited the far clouds that always punctuated the skies. While they were mortal their spiritual forefathers' essence filled their beings stretching their days over hundreds of years.

The legends of this race state that long ago when a race of spiritual beings would travel back and forth between this world and the next, one encountered an earthbound girl. The spirits often used pools of water as a gateway between the worlds and while attempting to pass through a certain pool he was stopped by the face of a beautiful women.

Knowing the law that fobade the spirits from revealing themselves to the humans he waited in the shadows of the reflection for the girl to walk away. While there she began to dip her hands into the water and wash her face and he noticed how beautiful the contours of her face were. Next she began to run a comb fashioned from bone through her black hair and he noticed how it seemed not so much to reflect the sunlight as it seemed to produce it's own light. And when she stopped combing her hair and tears began to run down her cheeks and fall into the pond he felt a stirring in his breast that he'd never known before. As a spirit they did not take spouses, bear children or even fall in love, they just always existed, but that was about to change.

What is this nature of yearning, that immortals of the air and earth-bound mortals desires each other so? What is the difference between agape and eros and filial love (brotherhoods as well as clan and tribal affiliations), each a species of love, each a patriot is own unique homeland in the heart?

Certainly Timm's history as a man of God, a lover and a friend all play into this questing theme. But the big yearning to Timm, it seems to me - the most potent and poetic, exhilarating and dangerous - was the love where all three were in play at once. To be thrice-hearted would be to be in full possession of one's heart: a thrilling idea, for such impossibles to come near, dangerous too for the inflated possibilities.

Timm tried to coin this two-sided yearning in the idea of a race or tribe of beings who lived in the middle region between high human longing and the passion of angels.

* * *

Given Timm's love of music and his aesthetic devotion to beauty, it's not surprising that his imagination would blossom round the figure of a female singer. As I mentioned before, there are numerous groups of photos in Timm's archives from concerts - most, seemingly, from the Oregon Gardens stage, and probably paying gigs, taking promotional photos. It surely must have been difficult to participate in the concerts from off-stage, knowing how much Timm loved to play the guitar and sing; being deaf in one ear from his car accident in 1981, he found it difficult to play in those settings. His own creative yearnings must have surely welled up watching those concerts.

His concert photos frequently lavish on female singers, so I'm guessing that Timm had an especial attraction them, as figures of beauty both in person and voice. Something muse-like, engendering, symbolizing the height of his own yearning for love and full expression of his heart’s longing.









All this leads up to the following tale from Timm's "Aire Born" collection, about a female singer who is most gifted, most beautiful, a woman from the tribe of the air who is in love with a mortal man named Louka, perhaps he who can see the divine in the mortal - Timm, I would venture, who dared to sing so fully of beauty, who loved his God like a beloved, pouring his full heart out for us with images so filled with the presence of a loving God that we cannot help but look at them and feel healed, if only for that moment of looking, in the delight of hearing a woman sing between this earth and heaven.




THE CONCERT

Timm O'Cobhthaigh

Tia stood before her mirror turning to her left and right admiring the way her robe flowed with her movements. She wanted to make sure that as she went through the night's performance that she was able to project the right movements to accentuate her singing. Again she turned to the left, then right and finally spun around twice as the fabric billowed in the air. Pleased with the reflected portrayal she again checked her hair and face, more a sign of her nervousness then of vanity. The sound of the voices that drifted in through the window behind her indicated that the crowd was growing. Turning she went and gazed out trying to count the swelling numbers. Not only were her own village in the arena but there were others also there from neighboring clans who had already nearly filled the 1500 available seats. Tia knew that while she wasn't the only act on stage tonight, many had come just to hear her sing. The thought sent a shiver of excitement through her body in the same way it always happened when she thought of the beautiful gift she'd been given.

Since her earliest childhood days she had received the often gushing compliments in regard to her singing. Comparison to the beauty of angels and bird songs were common while listeners forever tried to put into words the beauty they just beheld.

Even as a child and years from maturity, her voice had a power even then that was beyond her years. At first she would sing around the house while doing her chores, but this would turn out to be more of a problem when her parents would stop there own work and listen. Soon the neighbors would look lean in at the windowsills, listening and calling out requests. Finally she would have to stop what she was doing and do break into a full performance. The problem was that it would drag her chores on for hours, leaving no time to play in the clouds with her friends. Eventually she learned to only hum the tunes she loved instead of singing.

The only one who was not enamored with this new gift was Mya. When Tia started singing around the house, Mya would try to make as much noise as her chores allowed, banging the broom against the wall, stomping up and down the stairs, anything she could think of to interrupt her sisters impromptu concerts. But the harder she tried to distract Tia and the listers, the more confident Tia became casting a greater spell on all who listened. Disgusted she would often end up sulking in her room, fantasizing of her "perfect" sister blundering so badly in the middle of a song that her listeners would laugh and chide her to the point that she would run from her makeshift stage in disgrace.

While Mya's fantasies remained unknown to Tia, her jealousy was not. Looking out the window Tia tried to see if she could spot her sister in the growing throng but didn't see her. She loved her sister very much and only felt pity and confusion to the nature of her sister's condition. When Mya first began her criticisms and rude remarks about her singing, she had of course shot back, calling her sister plain and ungifted, but this only seemed to make matters worse. Later she gave up responding at all to Mya, and in return Mya quit attacking Tia, but the resentment was very much still there.

The clouds to the east were beginning to show the first tinges of the setting sun, shifting from white to orange as the first performers took the stage. The arena used for many of the summer performances was a beautifully carved structure that climbed the eastern side of one of the most prominent clouds in the village. In front of the stage rows of bench seats fanned out in a semicircle capable of accommodating nearly 1,500 attendees. Many of the children had at one time or another spent time on the stage either in a play or for a ceremony, but few were able to dominate it like Tia.

The first act was a group of young girls performing the midsummer's dance of their people, an act of thanksgiving to the forefathers for the blessing of food and safety they now enjoyed. The next act was an acrobatic troupe comprised of mostly teenage acrobats, somersaulting and cart-wheeling across the stage to the amazement of the spectators.

Five more acts would take the stage before Tia would have her turn. Tonight's song was a simple spiritual that her grandmother used to sing to her when she was very young. Stepping out onto the stage Tia was accompanied this night by just a harp, and taking a spot in the middle of the stage began her song.

In the early morning hours
As the suns light
Was chasing the night away.
I heard a still small voice
Saying won't you come
And fly with me today

Spending some time
just you and I
In a special way
So I can be
more like Thee
In each and every way

So He took me up to the heights
Of the highest heavens
And we soared through the clouds
Like a bird on the prowl
Just learning how to be free.

Spending some time
just you and I
In a special way
So I can be
more like thee
In each and every way

And when the evening sun
Was touching
the western rim
You set me down
to rest my head
Saying we'll fly again tomorrow

Spending some time
just you and I
In our special way
So I can be
more like thee
In each and every way

Spending some time
just you and I
In our special way
So I can be
more like thee
In each and every way

Not a soul breathed a word as the last notes drifted over the crowd and off towards the sunset, each mesmerized by the beauty they just witnessed. Then all at once the spell was broken and the applause thundered as everybody jumped to their feet. This was the moment Tia loved the most, having allowed herself to get caught up in the rapture of the song she now was carried away by the applause. She bowed sheepishly, never having felt completely comfortable with the crowd's exuberance, and signaled for her accompanist to bow as well. Still the crowd applauded with no signs of letting up.

Tia exited the stage but after a moment entered back on as the din continued. Two more times she would repeat this before she finally acquiesed to an encore. It was a favorite of hers and another one of the lullabies that her grandmother had sung. Somehow she felt that it real was about her grandmothers guidance in her life.

I am here,
I am near,
Ever by your side.
And by my hand
I will safely guide
You through this troubled land
And I have a plan for you
That you'll one day find.
I am here
And I am near
I will guide you on your way

I am here
I am near
Ever by your side
And by my hand
I will safely guide
You to my promised land.
Across the crystal sea we'll go
To that golden shore
And I'll wipe away every tear
That has stained your eye.

I am here,
I am near,
Ever by your side
And by my hand
I will safely guide
You through this troubled land

Later that night as Tia lay in her bed she found that her tendency to replay the evening over and over in her head, revealing in every drop of applause was this time replaced with sadness. How she wished that Loucka could have attended tonight's concert. Nothing would have pleased her more than to be able to look out over that crowd, find her lover's eyes and sing only for him.

But she knew that this could never be -- Loucka would never be able to sit in the clouds among her people since he was a man of the ground. Tears swelled in her eyes as she mulled this over again and again in her mind, making her desire for him all that much more stronger.







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