Christian Asplund - Composer

Jan. 15, 1984

A Remembrance…

            It had all the prospects of being a happy journey.  After two months of yellow winter in Springs[?] at the eastern wing tip of the Rand, any escape was likely to be a happy one.  And a move to Cape Town, and the relative comfort of the mission office was a gift of golden promise.

            Springs was a mine dump of a town, and the rented front bedroom of a row duplex on Grung Road was our pit.  Elder Nelson and I slept in a hard narrow bed together, with narrower worn grey wool blankets that had to be supplemented with coats and newspaper before they provided adequate protection against winter winds in that unheated, half-lit room.

            The landlord was a fat Boer who drove truck and kept his wife and kids in line with a fast fist.  She was pleasant and perky, worked hard and tried to be nice but she had to work as a waitress at nights while her husband cheated with neighbours.  And she was aggressively homely and a terrible cook.

            Elder Nelson was given—a young gay blade who, as Mormon culture often dictated, had sown his oats and was now ready for rites of passage.  To his credit it must be noted that he was as anxious and ready to make the change, and those who sent him must have been anxious to see the change made.  The substance of his preparation did not match his willingness.  One evening after a couple of weeks of work we sat down for individual scripture study.  After several quiet moments he lifted his head from whatever book and asked with deep concern—“Who was this Moses, anyway?”

            And as with most “converts” he was aggressive and impatient.  He pedaled his bike a little too fast, pushed a little too hard at the doors.  “Good morning.  We are ministers visiting your neighbourhood.  We’d like to leave a message and a prayer in your home.  Can we come in?”  That was the “door approach.”  It’s successful use was premised on the truism that it is difficult for people to say “no” to another person—hence the question requiring such a simple response is more likely to achieve success than an approach which offers a greater selection of responses.  The theory[1] and practice were far apart in my experience.  And rejection is something I’ve never been able to callous myself for.  each morning, each street, each door represented a test of faith.  It was a bad sign when the bed-sitter on Grung Road began to look like a haven.

            So taking leave of that cold and greenless frontier, half a world away from anything friendly and familiar was a happy prospect.

            The train[2] from Johannesburg to Cape Town would take 2 nights, and that was a happy prospect.  I could read and sleep without the hanging weight of schedule or companion.  The secret on South African railways, when riding second class at least—was to get an unfull compartment.  The compartments held four, but with great discomfort.  The beds were tight, the basin located by Satanic design to destroy any chance of happy and civilized community.  And the length of the trip meant that every inclination to courtesy, every cultivation of pleasant and amusing conduct, every pretense of kindness and generosity, could be quickly eroded.  It’s bad enough to have people getting on my nerves—but when I know that I’m getting on their nerves it does me in.

            The point I am making is that I was booked into an empty compartment.  It was mine alone.  And so the journey was in every aspect, looking very promising.  I was feeling fantastic.  Here I was, engaged in a holy enterprise, heading for the Mediterranean delights of the Cape of Good Hope with a fantastic anthology of short stories, a warm clean bed, solitude and scenery.  The train jostled out of Johannesburg softly rocking through the colourless late afternoon and the big yellow mine heaps.  I was off to be mission secretary, in a clean and regular office, with supportive people who would love and appreciate whatever I was doing.  My head fell back and my consciousness rose to that nether world between dream and reality.

            It was then I heard the bump and grinding of the sliding door.

            –Actually as it now comes back to me that’s not quite how it happened.  The train was still in Jo’burg station just about to leave when the door rolled open and the young lad heaved in sat spread on the seat with his eyes closed breathing quickly.  He was very young—19 maybe—with a pasty smooth face, unformed and amorally fresh but marked by a large black eye.  His hair was short and his clothing was remnants and pieces of a uniform.  The train started and the sub-conductor flew in quickly.  The young man told his story.  He was a British sailor stationed at Simonstown.  He had gone with some friends to tour Johannesburg and there had been waylaid, his money, most of his clothes and most of his identification.  He had something, I think he called it a pay card, which his senior yeoman or whatever had told him he could present to the railway and it would get him back to his ship.  The sub-ticket taker listened intently to the young midlander who talked in the slang of Manchester and the sea.  They were both about the same age but the ticket-taker was an Afrikaans farm boy and they may as well have been on separate planets.  The trainman took the card, muttered something and went off.

            I was just sitting there in my charcoal suit and white shirt pretending to read.  It annoyed me no end that I had lost—or appeared to be losing—my exclusive lodging.  I was annoyed and impatient and was sure I didn’t want to compound the loss of quietude and restfulness by getting involved in the unsavoury business.  Aside from the midland accent—I had gone to school and had worked summers with such fellows.  In my experience they skirted the edge [of] anarchy and trouble and did not mind plunging in once in a while.  Lampwick—the friend of Pinocchio—wasn’t he just that.

            The train ambled along.  The ticket taker didn’t return.  I pretended to read.  So the boy started it off.  Not directly.  He sighed a few times, and groaned.  Then he fiddled around to bring down the basin and I had to move.  He excused himself and finally asked me if I knew how to work it.

            I showed him and returned to my book—ever more annoyed.  “My petty officer told me if I got into trouble I could just use my pay card and it would get me a place on a train back to my ship.”  Something like that.  I resisted.  Smiled weakly and attempted to signal that I was not really interested without really communicating it directly.  Civilized people can read such signals and do.  It was clear he was not civilized.  And he told me the story again.  The modifications in this second version only increased my scepticism [sic].

            Finally he hit upon the trick.  Only in desperation, but he got the lever nonetheless.

            “What do you do?” he asked.  “You’re an American aren’t you?  What are you doing in South Africa?”

            Now that meant I either had to answer and engage with him—or I had to freeze him out.  there was no room for signals among my options.  Well, I told him I was Canadian and I was a missionary.

            He did not have time to respond before the ticket taker returned with a very impatient conductor.  I heard the story a third time and I heard about the paid [sic] card.

            The conductor was tough—a red bulldog face and not much talk.  But he said enough to indicate that he’d never heard of pay cards being good for railway fare and he wasn’t going to have too much sympathy for this irresponsible young free-loader.  For the next couple of hours there were numerous trips back & forth—with the conductor, with the sailor.  Where they went & what was said I studiously ignored.  Finally the sailor returned—alone, subdued.  As a civilized person I could read the signals.  He would be allowed to remain on the train but not without a fare paid in humiliation and a resignation to harsh words and hostility.  We sat quietly until the dining car steward came around selling tickets for dinner.  I bought one—6 or 7 shillings probably—and as I did so it dawned on me that the sailor had no money and 36-40 hours without food would be a long haul—especially since he probably hadn’t eaten since the night previous.  It was a Hamlet act that passed quickly.  To do or not to do.  The steward was gone before I could sort out the situation.  And I was left in my morass.  After all, I was on an errand for the Lord.  But he had shattered my solitude and I barely had enough money for myself.  It was frustrating that the charitable impulse was not instinctive.  And if the charity was given after contemplation, it would be grudging—embarrassing to both giver and receiver.  And so I sat, the problem getting larger as evening settled and the supper bells chimed.

            Just then the sliding compartment door ground open and the bulldog conductor pushed in.  He had a tough screwed face that couldn’t have ever smiled, and the brusque tough manner of one who never agonized about the problems of dealing with dead beats and drunks.  The sailor fell back in fright.  “You’ll need some food,” said the conductor, and handed the sailor a 10 shilling note.  He left as quickly and as ruthlessly as he had come.

            I have replayed that moment many times.  I, the Levite, had passed by the man set upon by thieves.  And when I returned the Samaritan had come to claim my blessing.

            And as I have contemplated the situation it has expanded in my vision.  Sometimes I see the whole train.  First class—up ahead—were two to a compartment with silver & leather.

            Behind us were the third class carriages with wooden seats—five or six times as many people crowded into wall-less cars—no bedding, no food service and all the black passengers.

            Mid-morning we dragged into a station on the karroo[?] and we stuck our heads out of the window to catch some air and to see the lay of the land.  The town was along the track to the left, dominated by red-roofed church and the yellow brick bungalow where the domissie[?] lived.  There were a few tree puffs and a sorry park.

            To the right a barbed-wire barricade ran up to the tracks.  Behind it were the mud & thatch and corrugated iron sheds where the blacks and coloureds lived with the rude brush pens that held their goats.  The children & the goats ranged wantonly over the dusty quarter and ran towards the train with large & quizzical smiles between the wire.  The sailor and I looked at them wondering what was appropriate and before we could decide the train left.

 

[Marginal notations:]

            We were each enlisted to fight for interests beyond us.

            That moment where you can’t tell which train is moving—the one you are on or the one next to it.

---

 

[1] Marginalia: “That I’d bought at the bookstore W.H. Smith”

 

[2] Marginalia: “Blue train.”

Growing Old; Getting Better
by C. Thomas Asplund
From The Kingston Whig Standard, 13 October 1984

When I was a smoothfaced 17, I took a job as what used to be called a “cub reporter” on the daily newspaper in my hometown. There wasn’t a lot to report in that sleepy prairie city, so the “cub” was stuck detailing a dismal and limited world. Yet what I remember most about that calling was the power it carried. Though most of the time I wrote obituaries or covered police court, whenever I telephoned anyone – the mayor, police chief, whomever – and said, in my cracked voice, “This is Tom Asplund from the Herald,” the response would be deferential beyond my adolescent dreams.
As I now roll through what I hope is middle age, I am encouraged by well-wishers to remember that “I’m not getting older; I’m getting better.” That encourages me to think of my salad days (when I was green in judgment, cold in blood, as Shakespeare said) and wonder if my friends wishes are gold or brass. Sometimes it is easy to believe that life distils and becomes more concentrated as it runs out.
On the sports page I used to follow the career of a public school friend who became a professional hockey player. I’ll confess envy. It must be satisfying to be a Big-Leager in something or other. That’s what he became. A promising rooky they say – just about the time I was a cub reporter. He hadn’t become a star before the pundits were classifying him as a “competent journeyman.” In the twinkling of an eye, it seemed, though I was barely out of college and newly married, he had graduated to “grizzled veteran.” He retired when I was just starting a career. I’m not a grandparent yet, but I saw him on television not long ago playing in an oldtimers’ game.
Which brings me back to my 17th year. It’s just that I was so inefficient and wasteful. There was too much to come, and I just wasn’t careful enough about getting the best of it as it came by.
For example, the soft-hearted city editor called the cub reporter in to say that valiant service with obits and police court deserved reward. Gladys Swarthout – renowned Metropolitan Opera soprano – was to give a concert in our little prairie city. And I was given a ticket, and an appointment to interview her during intermission. It didn’t matter, as I later learned, that I drew the assignment because a pre-wedding stag planned for Al, foreman in the composing room, engaged the rest of the editorial staff. It was to be my first major interview. And even if I had never heard of Gladys Swarthout, the Metropolitan Opera was definitely Big League.
The concert was held in the capital Theatre with the movie screen drawn up, and the piano from Westminster United Church borrowed for the occasion. Miss Swarthout strode out like a panther and the breath was knocked out of me. Her black satin gown glimmered at its edges like coal black cream. Her face was so luminescent she almost glittered like Ginger Rogers! Her eyes reached out and drew us in . It didn’t matter how she sang. If the voice cracked a little, I was in love. And she was, as my research had revealed, not only a Metropolitan soprano but a movie star – the Rose of the Rancho. She was a jewel of light. It was as if the movie screen had not been rolled up.

A MONTH OF SUNDAYS
Pages from a Journal

Matthew came to me quietly as I was shaving on Easter Sunday morning, gently pushing in under my arm.
“Can I have a flower to wear for Easter?”

It took a moment to focus on this serene request will all the sleepy distractions of a Sunday morning.
“Could you get me one out of the garden?”
There were three or four inches of left over snow and a raw wind; but partly from distractedness and partly from his gentle intensity, I reflexively looked at the garden before I did an abrupt double take. “It’s too early for flowers in the garden,” I whined. “You know that!”
“Well what about finding a flower around the house?” Absolutely no peevishness. Just the fantastic faith of a five-year-old.
There were no flowers around the house, no matter what the intensity of his faith. I looked at him and his upturned face and the shag of hair over his toboggan accident scar. He had his bowtie on upside down and the remains of a drink of milk on his lips. All were upturned. He looked like he was smiling three times. But there still were no flowers in the house.
He went his way and I charged upstairs to collect the baby and things for church. As I passed the bathroom door I spotted Marni at the bathroom cupboard scissoring some Kleenex.
“What in heavens name are you doing when it’s time for church?”
“Fixing a flower for Matthew,” she replied evenly.
He stood by silently, breathing partly through his teeth watching her hands with that triple smile and satisfaction in his eye. Marni pinned it on his jacket and he wore it away like a Victoria Cross.
I would have been embarrassed to display the gladness brought to me by the charm and sentiment of the moment. But I indulged myself inwardly. I saved moments throughout the day to recollect the moment, swelling shamelessly with the pleasure of the indulgence.
But I’m like most Puritans. The sunniness of satisfaction can be clouded with blackness. Such a moment is fragile, because we are so fragile – to time and fashion and fortune. Such pure beauty lapses with my attention, with the sense others have of what is beautiful, with my memory, with a moment of anger or self-pity.
That evening television news brought pictures of Vietnamese boat people – huddling, pushing, hoping, grasping. As I watched I wondered how many beautiful moments had passed from their memories.

***********

So here he was –barreling through the night down the little hemisphere towards some Church assignment. A sacred errand. a holy duty. A righteous moment. Through the valley of the shadow. through that tunnel of head light, headlong, scarcely in control, on the edge of existence. The air was rushing through a crack in the window, roaring like the fury of perdition as he squirmed to stay awake and in control. His idle mind turned it into the melodrama of a science fiction movie.
Rushing through the ether. Everything depended on his control, it seemed, all life and the existence of the universe. He had to maintain control as he freighted his family through this dark void valley towards this holy errand.
They rushed past spinning, empty gas stations, tumbling homes lighted and enclosed behind island windows. He couldn’t rest or let down his guard. To lose control meant the destruction of all that was left alive – himself and the innocents in the back of his station wagon. He could hear his children rustling and muttering in the shadow of his lee. Cars rushed towards him with mad headlight eyes. They seemed bent on his annihilation, pointed at him for wild collision until at the last moment they turned brainlessly aside.
He rushed past towering trees and rows of planted light standards at interchanges—cold light, deserted, lighting nothing. It seemed all intelligence had fled. And what was left besides him to hold what was left together? What gravity was pulling him towards some meeting with strangers where he would scarcely be seen, scarcely be heard, scarcely matter? Were duty and faith just impersonal universal forces, like gravity and inertia?
He rattled his head and turned on the radio, trying to grab onto something from this universe that was rushing by him. He rubbed the dial over the signals, scratching, until he found something that sounded human, familiar, unthreatening, friendly.
“Loving you has made my life so beautiful.” A beckoning, happy voice. Sensual, child-like, mannered for pleasure. Something about spending life together to old age and it would all be spring-time again.
Out of the black universe he had unscrambled this message – green and dandelion-yellow amongst the lifeless, senseless shadows.
The song ended and the machine voice of the announcer interceded. “That was the late Minni Riperton.” Totally out of joint. This rainbow voice, this child voice, the only living thing in the night! “The late?” His voice cracked.
From the dark depths of his stationwagon-spaceship his wise daughter spoke: “She died about a year ago. Cancer.”

***********

There’s too much summer in it. The fields are too heavy, and the heat. There are too many yards of pastel polyester. To many branded T-shirts. Too many coloured summer shoes – the feet, I suppose, of those who publish peace. There are too many people who seem to be saying: “This is what it was like! I can imagine him here – by this tree – kneeling in the grass. With these birds singing, and these bees humming and this sun shining down.”
And there are too many lovely missionaries, wise as serpents and helpless as doves. Graceless, so that there can be space for grace.
And I try to be a fool, for heaven’s sake, and for mine. I know how important it is to make faith tangible, palpable. And hope. And charity, too. Give it a reality. Something that one can hold on to. Something to excite the imagination. But sometimes I feel the breath of the golden calf. The spiritual creation did come first. Have I spiritually created the sacred grove before I come to its tangible manifestation.
I am embarrassed that my mind is set so inwardly when it should be reaching out for divine reality. “What am I supposed to do – to think – to feel?”
By definition it is a sacred grove. I stand like Elijah’s wretches, halted between two realities. And I try to apply myself. What was it like? Can I recreate the event from these shards of physical stuff? Am I closer to the event here than elsewhere – in my pew, in my office, on my knees, in the arms of my family?
Brass plaques mark trees that stood that day. One notes a sugar maple said to be 260 years old. But only the stump is left, which soon will be black soil on the forest flower. We have a sugar maple in our back yard that is very old – for what that’s worth. All things must pass. Even sugar maples can’t afford to be proud. The water in the River Jordan flows on. It is not the same water where lepers washed. Maybe we need to be reminded that it is not – in a material sense – the same grove that Joseph knew. The trees grow and change and fall. I imagine that the grass and huckleberry stands that shrivel and come year by year are closer to that distant reality than the massive solid maple trees.

***********

Once on a fat fall Sunday we took a picnic to the park to share it with the wasps. As soon as we parked I ran under the trees and through heavy grass to drop the big blue thermos on a table and mark it as our own. My wife and children strung along behind, arguing about the fairness of loads and locking the car.
In a moment before they found me at the table, I spotted a popcorn box thoughtlessly dropped nearby, a few discarded kernels strewn about its mouth. And two sparrows happily snatching at the bits. One got greedy and competitive and actually ducked inside the box to finish things off. Well, that was it’s mistake. I swooped down, swept up the box and closed the flap before the bird could back out and make a startled escape. The box was fresh and new and store-bought and perfect when he adjusted its tabs and flaps just as my six-year-old son arrived at the table.
I proffered the pop-corn to my surprised offspring who had never heard of Greeks bearing gifts. He checked his slim catalogue of experience and not encountering therein reason to hesitate, tore open the box. The bird flew up and away. I gathered in that face of surprise and wonder and excitement and disappointment, and realized that I had let something go that I would never box up again.

“ONE OF THE MOST INTENSE DISCUSSIONS…”
C. Thomas Asplund

One of the most intense discussions I ever had with my father occurred when I was a young cub reporter with the Lethbridge Herald. The discussion arose because the town druggist, a man of considerable weight in the community and the father of one of my oldest childhood friends had been arrested for drunk driving, a charge which carried an automatic jail sentence. The newspaper, under pressure from friends of the convicted man in the community, had had a difficult time of resolving how to deal with the affair. I was critical of the solicitude which had been given the druggist. We published the names and consequences of many criminals and I didn’t see why he deserved preferential treatment. My father listened to my vigorous, principled, animated condemnation, and asked in a strangely timid way how I might feel were he the convicted drunk driver. The far-fetchedness of the hypothetical left me a little breathless, but I responded that I should have to treat him like anyone else. My father questioned the morality of my position and we engaged in a long debate about it that has remained unresolved and haunting in my mind ever since. It did not help as I later encountered the world and the dictum of E.M. Forester about having the decency to choose friends over institution.

MISCELLANEOUS APHORISMS AND SKETCHES
C. THOMAS ASPLUND

Parley Pratt

Poetry, like baptism & marriage is something yo have to do when mortal language fails.
Time is what we have to put up with while waiting for eternity.

Cantatrice

***********

Parley Pratt
Whenver I write poetry, I feel like I am striking the rock. If I write truth—I am not the sources. I have only recognized & described what was already there. What God created. If I claim authorship or people grant it to m, I am denied the opportunity of entering the promised land. Maybe that’s the fate of poets. To never see the promised land.

***********

There is this thing about poets today—wanting to own their words. It’s a particularly strong thing. A prophet used my poetry—my words & ideas, as I saw them. And he has been revered & credited through the decades. At first it bothered me—but then I thought, what more can I ask for than that a prophet should see the eternal—the sacred—in what I have seen. I shouldn’t be able to claim credit for drawing on the eternal, for voicing truth. It should be enough to find them, to share them.

***********

Bill waited until we got home but he was sickest of all. In fact, Raymond and I were all better the next day, but the problem hung on to Bill for about a month after that. He couldn’t take me to the airport the next morning so Raymond did. Except for the fact that somebody set a car on fire and pushed it, still burning, off an overpass on to the freeway about two minutes before we arrived at the spot with the result that the plane had to be stopped on the runway and I brought out to it in a luggage carrier to catch it, the trip home was uneventful. Thus ending my first expedition to Baja California. We had acquired research material and memories. It was, believe it or not, something which gave me a desire to see more and do more in this Country.

Coming next: Seeing Mexico from the air. A very different kind of adventure than that which has gone before.

***********

“My son squirmed impatiently…”
by C. Thomas Asplund

My son squirmed impatiently away from my horseplay. Riding side by side in the car. Slap his leg firmly as my father did to me. Not coyness. Just impatience.
“That’s wh[at] my father,” I said “used to do to me,” I said, “to show me how much he… liked me.”
Off-handed. Hardly acknowledged by either of us. Silence.
Why couldn’t I say “loved” instead of “liked.” I started “loved” but I had to change it. Stupid. We talk about love all the time. I love ice cream. I’d love to. What the world needs is more love.
But I had been afraid of the word. A blasphemy that tumbled in my throat and returned to me as gosh or cripes or some other bloodless fragment.

“If I were called upon to save the world…”
by C. Thomas Asplund

If I were called upon to save the world and bring the world leaders to a proper measure of human values-I would enlist the services of several 9 or 10 year old girls.
Surely nothing in the world is as irresistible as a 9 or 10 year old girl. They are possessed of an equilibrium between total experience and total innocence that is one of nature’s most magnificent phenomena. In dress and style they manifest a total command of fashion that leaps beyond the most avant of the avant garde. And yet their execution is so refreshingly patent and literal that it reveals the beauty and vanity of fashion in one astounding picture.
They seem to understand everything, sensing the most subtle and invisible in all situations. Their ears, real and spiritual, perk up like a dogs to the silent whistle sounds beyond others’ coarser senses. And yet they are guileless.

She was aware of everything, every event and yet she was so single minded that the merest glance revealed to me immediately what he was about. She appraised me with techniques that were infinitely artful but directly simple. She was absolutely quiet but told everything with the art of the eyes and hands
Her outfit combined the latest of style in such a conglomerate that revealed the ridiculousness of each element. But she was so compellingly beautiful that—how else can it be said—my heart melted. Finally she approached me in a manner that was totally direct and totally unapologetic. She was out to exploit me and yet, in every way I knew that for that moment she cared only about my feelings and my satisfaction.

In groups, the equilibrium that gives them such unshakeable balance in most things—is an agonizing paradox. Their ability to shape and shift alliances, and pacts, to wage silent combat rivals the skills of Clemenceau and the British diplomatic corps.

“The Falstaffian, toothpick chewing vulgarism…”
by C. Thomas Asplund

The Falstaffian*, toothpick chewing vulgarism of a popular TV show was heard to voice an aphorism of rare complexity and sensitive insight.  The eyes and jaws of his companions popped in unbelief.  “Where did you hear that?” they asked.
“I read it,” he shrugged, “on a T shirt.”  Our clothes and life appetencies have, certainly in the regime of Marshall McLuhan, moved from cool to hot.  I was raised in a generation that definitely wore labels where they would never be seen.  There were people in my town who went to great trouble and expense to pull off, lead over and paint away all signs of maker or source of automobiles.
It appears that we have entered a “hot” age.  T-shirts carry much more information than I even have time to read—including the drinking preference, marital status, worldview and hobbies of the inhabitant.  Brass numbers that would out-heft a bowling  ball, hang on city residences.  Cars are rolling libraries.  We can read where and who has made tires, engine and body, who the seller was, where the car has been on each and every holiday, the political preferences of the driver, a coded witticism on the license plate together with an advertisement of the pleasures of the province of registration, and the fact that we should “use unleaded fuel only.”
On (as? and?) the outside is not a patch on the inside where bells and lights and voices are added to the printed word.
We have entered, I am going to suggest, a golden age of didacticism.  From the moment that the clock radio wakes me and encourages me to believe that it is a fine day on which to be happy if I leave my dial on CD whatever, until I roll over and mutter my last “Yes, dear,” someone is trying to cram into my head what to think and how to react.
I know it’s not all that new.  After all, I grew up during the Second World War when large bureaucracies devoted their determined effort to provide information about who was good, who was bad, why loose lips sink ships and you should save bacon fat.
In the fifties, we watched the shallow eyes of Cardinal Mindszenty, leaned about something called brain washing but got rinsed(?) away by Madison Avenue giving new meaning to “new” and “improved.”
[In t]he Sixties we were told to turn on and tune in, and every[…]

*Alternative: “The bulbous-bellied…”