First order of Wall-nut business for today: A resounding Thank You to Wally and GotyeHQ for their message of appreciation. As of today, 65 international members strong, the "Wall-nut nation" is overjoyed to be some of the voices sharing the music and inspiration. We shall continue to work our hardest to represent with respect and collaboration.
~~~
Some level of jest usually generates from the chatter amongst mutual enthusiasts. Among the dialogues on musical creation, the genesis of a song or the over-exposure of another, items dug from deep in the personal past of the artist punctuate the conversation. Like trinkets and talismans dusted off from trunks in the attic, these pieces of singular human history carry more meaning and message than perhaps any of us can truly comprehend.
Today, I step away from my ambiguity as the founder of the Wall-nuts, to examine what happens when a lifetime of personal exploration and collection draws to an apparent end.
Recently I was informed of the sudden failing health of my last remaining patriarch, the final elder of my family line. Born from first generation Scottish immigrants, he is an eclectic man with a sweeping personal narrative that I could never recount with genuine competency. He was a teacher of others, an artist, and an advocate to those who lived on the margins of society. He often abandoned his own Eurpoean, educated male privilege to listen to the voices who had long been silenced.
As my fellow 'nuts' assemble the available pieces of Wally's puzzle from often surprisingly insular sources, I consider to what extent are we doing justice to the gradually advancing life story of the man. Do we even have such a right, such a sanction, to attempt to understand his story? Of course, we are merely eroding the surface of the sand to reveal the most superficial relief of the structure. We try to care for it with great deference, like an anxious archeologist, gently applying one brush stroke at a time to uncover the treasure beneath. But can we ever overcome our naive comprehension of the being, or merely the marker left behind by fossilized history?
As I experience the impending end of a life, I wonder what stories the passing heart wishes remain for those still in the mortal coil. What memorial does a man aspire to when he sees his exit nigh?
I think back to an interview wherein Wally speaks of the image of an aging man impressing upon his youthful, inpatient kin the sterling merit of an antiquated organ propped stately in the lounge room. The younger mind finds the instrument quaint and quotidian, at best. But the old man reminisces on his long amity for the organ-it was the inspiration for song, for word, for plumbing the depths of the old man's soul. The child cannot bridge the gap to fathom what his elder recounts.
I myself may soon be sitting on the rickety bench of an aging organ that grew cobwebs and dust in the basement somewhere, having once been a source of grand sound and soulfulness. I may soon have but the stories told by technologically obsolete keys and chords.
Most of us will leave this life with only minute tales to be told, with only a few objects and images of our inner selves. Someone like Wally will someday leave behind a grand chronicle of music and imagery and inspiration. His story will be dear to many, and his passing will prompt the tears of countless eyes. But what will we have really known of him? Those of us who have not been-and may never be-genuinely dear to him as well....what will we have known?
We are but transient creatures in this ecology. Our own time in the environment is perhaps the only truly non-renewable resource we are given. What will we have done with it when the sands run down?
I will say this-I am glad to share in your stories, and those of our common source of creative inspiration. Someday those stories may be so much more than they seem. We ought to tell them while we have time.
~~~c. P 2012
If you have a story to tell about how Wally's music touched your life or that of someone dear to you, please find The Wall-nuts on Facebook and join us in our first social action story-telling project "Many Mirrors" (c) where we give a space to those who have not yet felt free to use their voice.
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