AT THE CHURCH OF THE HEAVENLY ARCHITECT


…And crossing the broad avenue I come upon a modest brick building on which  a sign is hung.  It reads: Church of the Heavenly Architect.  Immediately I hear again, but more clearly, the soft music that has drawn me here, that music from the edge of remembrance.

And entering, I quietly close the door behind me, and so proceed with echoing footsteps down the aisle, toward the sounds, which seem to emanate from the sanctuary.  And there, just outside its entrance, to the side, is Ofterdingen, bent over his desk, with his narrow glasses.  I look and see that he is writing on white paper with green ink and gold, and violet, apricot and azure.  There are words I recognize, for I have seen them somewhere long ago, and decorative curls, as in an illuminated manuscript.  

The artist, becoming aware of my presence, smiles absently, and, indicating the   sanctuary, just beyond, with a shrug of his shoulders, he resumes working.  As I turn to go he calls softly, “But he won’t help you.”  

I have no time to puzzle over his meaning, for in another  moment I have entered through the oval opening and stepped inside the lemon-colored chamber with its pale dome hung an uncertain distance above, its ferns scattered about in brown basins.  And I see the instrumentalists playing the music I’ve been pursuing; someone is conducting them with his back to me.  Hearing me enter, he turns, and the music stops.

Then, directly, he comes striding toward  me and grasps my palm - the Architect, the author of us all, he who broods on the inscrutable nature of his being, Andreacchi.  

And in this instant I understand what had taken possession of my spirit and called me across the world; I understand that I was fashioned for this purpose, and was always, in answering my deepest desires, fulfilling my destiny, harking to the call of him who made me.  I think of Ofterdingen in the next room, and comprehend his contented industry: here at last, in this obscure building, is transcendence, the Blue Flower.

“What you do not understand,” says the Architect (reading my thoughts) “is that I am the needy one; it is you - all of you - whose activities can redeem my existence.”  
 

“Are you Ceniti?” I manage, off the subject and flustered.
 

“That’s rather complicated,” he replies.
 

 I make another attempt.  “What is Ofterdingen writing?”
 

 “He’s recopying something I composed a long time ago, called Spiritual Flowers.”
 

 Quietly, from deep within the sanctuary, the music resumes, unprompted by any conductor; it continues as an undercurrent to our conversation.
“Yes,” I say, searching my memory (my memory, which no longer seems a private set of recollections, but somehow a part of his memory!) - “a long time ago.  There are many things here from the past, so that this place is both strange and familiar.”
 

 “Strangely familiar.”
 

 “I don’t understand.”
 

 “Neither did I, until this hour, for I was never fully aware of what was unfolding.”
 

 “You created us…in the hope…of finding answers?”
 

”Yes, in the hope, not the certainty, since I could not predict or control your paths, but also in the faith that this Ofterdingen, this bright poetic hero, would not cease from his quest until he had searched out the ways of  my life and found, in the apparent randomness of my scattered and forgotten labor, a pattern, a meaning, and gathered it here, in this place.”
 

 “Through his works does the creator recognize himself,” I say, and he nods.
 

 “But what is this music?” I ask.
 

 “It’s from long ago - my Apocalypse - the first big thing I ever made, and in making, realized this is what I’m meant to do.  But it sounds now in a revised, purified, version…”
 

 “You’re trying to do to your life and work what Ceniti did to Romanticism: remake it in the wisdom of experienced!”
 

 “Yes, of course.  The world’s woes are the sum of the sins of individuals.  Improve yourself and mend the world a little.”
 

 “So you’ve tired of life as a string of imperfections,  artistic and personal, you’ve given up fleeing from errors, finding refuge in the new? “
 

 “I’ve found there’s no escape - but also no real winning. “
 

 “Your flaws attend each new endeavor?”
 

 “Worse than that - take this Apocalypse for example.  For all the extravagance of its symbolism the message of the text is attractively clear to a young person: believe in the Word and become part of the Elect in the New Jerusalem.  After completing this work, I turned gradually toward other modes of spirituality,  but it’s hard to say if my musical development triggered the religious shift or vice versa.  Either way, what I find appealing in the early work, after all these years, is the vivid plasticity of the music which reflects the
drama of the text’s eschatological vision.  But as I attempt to revise …”
 

 “You find the musical extravagance inseparable from the chauvinism of the text.”
 

 “The driving rhythms, the super - charged harmonies, are only diluted in the process of refinement.”

“Perhaps this is the dilemma of existence: to be is to err.  Our works, our lives, no matter how many chances we get, are always  about choices, and choice implies imperfection. Good music’s either intensely subjective or an  ocean of oblivion, unforgettable or impossible to remember.”

“With no ultimate reconciliation possible.”
 

“No final transcendence.”
 

“The Blue Flower is the state of perfection prior to creation, a creation that

yearns to be, to fall, to err.”
 

“To live, to sing.”
 

“And in living we sing of return to the Blue Flower.”
 

“Your life pursues itself in endless circles.  But perhaps there is a way out.”
 

“No, there is not.”
 

“There is, but you don’t wish face it.”
 

“You mean stop playing this game?”
 

“Or at least make something else the center.”
 

“In that case you’d be among the first things to disappear.”
 

“A sacrifice - which is exactly what’s required of you.  Instead of the Jesus of the Apocalypse, listen to the Jesus of the Gospels, neither warrior nor philosopher, the gentle healer, the Good Shepherd.”
 

“Good Shepherd - that’s the name of the church where I was raised…Are you saying all this is over?”
 

“I’m asking you to consider you’re not the only real thing in the world, that you too have been created to rise above your present condition and in so doing redeem some inarticulate god…”
“

Who needs me…”
 

“As you needed me.”

All of a sudden, as I ponder  this, he is gone, and I find Ofterdingen standing at my elbow.  
 

“Crazy world,” I say pleasantly.  “I can’t keep straight who’s inside and what’s outside of what.”
 

“The important thing,” he begins - but then he too disappears, and I am alone inside the Invisible City of Kitezh.