{"id":2203,"date":"2018-07-24T12:02:53","date_gmt":"2018-07-24T16:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/?p=2203"},"modified":"2018-07-24T12:26:40","modified_gmt":"2018-07-24T16:26:40","slug":"greetings-from-pink-floyd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/greetings-from-pink-floyd\/","title":{"rendered":"Greetings from Pink Floyd"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this excerpt from Aging Starts in Your Mind: You’re Only As Old As You Feel\u00a0<\/em>Chapter 3, author Notker Wolf, shares how rock and baroque music do go together after all.\u00a0http:\/\/bit.ly\/2LLxkYi<\/a><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Chapter 3: Greetings from Pink Floyd<\/strong><\/p>\n

This summer I had a two-week holiday in a monastery on Lake Wolfgang. (My annual leave is usually shorter and sometimes canceled altogether.) While I was there, I received an invitation to the Tollwood Festival in Munich, and I must admit I didn\u2019t know exactly what it would be like: a kind of Woodstock but lasting for weeks and without the mud? It didn\u2019t matter, the offer to perform with my band in the Andechser tent was appealing.<\/p>\n

Well<\/em>, I said to myself, if Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, and others from the glorious age of rock music, with their lined faces, still dare to perform, you can do it too\u2014in any case they won\u2019t have to get you off any drugs first.<\/em> I accepted the invitation.<\/p>\n

Someone drove me from Austria to Munich. \u201cOh yes, you\u2019re the father from the mountain,\u201d said the security guard at the entrance to the Tollwood grounds with a glance into our car. Apparently, he\u2019d seen the television interview I did on the summit of the Du\u0308rrnbachhorn with Werner Schmidbauer. \u201cTell you what, I\u2019ll let you through here, then you won\u2019t have so far to walk to the tent.\u201d<\/p>\n

I already felt at home, even though I\u2019d never been here before. The guard signaled his colleagues, so the way was open all the way to the Andechser tent, and after a short sound check (the other band members had arrived earlier) we were ready for our concert, two hours of rock music in the tent from 7:30 to 9:30. Although I have to admit I sometimes left the stage. A concert that long is too much for me these days, plus I don\u2019t have the time to rehearse enough songs to fill an evening program. I\u2019m lucky if I find two or three hours at Sant\u2019Anselmo a few days before our performance to put on our CD and rehearse my parts on guitar flute. So I played in two of the four sets, and my band did the rest on their own.<\/p>\n

Apart from the singer, our band always has the same members it did in the good old days when I was Archabbot of St. Ottilien and the others were students at our school. That\u2019s a long time ago now; my fellow musicians have also grown older, but unlike me, they aren\u2019t aware of it yet.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s still tremendous fun for everyone. For example, we did a performance under the southern sky in front of a large audience at an arena in Pescara, Italy, dubbed \u201cPink Floyd Sends Greetings from Pompeii,\u201d that was unforgettable. As was as our show soon afterward in Seeon, a magnificent monastery on a lake island in Bavaria. Seeon has made a name for itself as an event location, and I was invited to give a lecture there to the managers of the Ingolstadt hospital. \u201cBring your band along,\u201d they said. After the talk at dinner in the magnificent, colorful refectory, I still had my doubts about playing in this setting, wondering if rock and Baroque really went together. But a little later the set got going and I enjoyed playing as usual, and the experience was a real miracle.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what the head of trauma called it anyway\u2014it was absolutely unbelievable how all differences disappeared immediately, all formalities forgotten, all inhibitions gone. Everyone danced until they were ready to drop: consultants, lawyers, administrative staff, the whole management team, men and women, all mixed up together. Rock and baroque do go together after all.<\/p>\n

This was followed the next evening with a performance in Carinthia, Austria, inside the venerable walls of St. Paul, where on the following morning I would be saying the celebratory Mass and preaching, before flying back to Rome in the evening.<\/p>\n

\ue071–<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s catch our breath. I know the whispers that are going around. From one direction I hear the heavy sigh, \u201cHe\u2019ll never fit in with the rest of us.\u201d From another the warning, \u201cBe careful, you\u2019re the abbot primate, please behave accordingly.\u201d And then there are my primary school classmates, who to this very day visit me in Rome from time to time and exclaim with amazement, \u201cWerner, [my birth name] you haven\u2019t changed a bit!\u201d What can I say?<\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s probably true\u2014no one who\u2019s known me for a long time will notice any big difference today. I\u2019ve never been antisocial; my constant activity isn\u2019t a gift of old age. And, while it\u2019s true I\u2019m the abbot primate, the expression \u201cbefitting one\u2019s social status\u201d has never meant anything to me.<\/p>\n

How I go about my work, how I define my role and how I shape it, is my decision, and anything that could possibly qualify as \u201cunseemly\u201d I clarify with the Lord Jesus Christ: he\u2019s my model.<\/p>\n

Of course I\u2019m going to make mistakes, but I don\u2019t lose sleep over it because I know nobody\u2019s perfect, and I don\u2019t need to be either. Christ himself appointed the far-from-perfect Peter as the leader of his followers, a person who even disowned him when it came to the crunch. So we can go wrong, but we shouldn\u2019t let ourselves be influenced by the worriers. I\u2019m reminded of a grave inscription in the Campo Verano, a cemetery in northern Rome, which says, Non flectar<\/em>, \u201cI will not bend.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSlow down a bit,\u201d some say; \u201cPlease tone it down,\u201d say others. And I say, \u201cCome with me.\u201d Come, for example, to Altenburg Abbey close to Vienna for the interreligious song event. The first benefit concert was held there in 2012 to restore the nearby Jewish cemetery that was devastated in 1938. The abbot of Altenburg had urgently asked me to participate. \u201cWe need you, and don\u2019t forget your flute!\u201d Oh no, another appointment. But miraculously I found a gap in my schedule, and I traveled there without knowing what awaited me.<\/p>\n

With four hundred visitors, every seat in the monastery\u2019s library was filled. I was in good company. The singer was the chief rabbi of Vienna, a man with a sense of humor and a powerful voice; another rabbi played the keyboard, the Protestant bishop of Vienna was drummer, and a gentleman from the local finance ministry was saxophonist\u2014completing the spectrum, as he had left the church.<\/p>\n

Behind us was the boys choir of Altenburg, and we gave it all we\u2019d got, playing Yiddish songs and gospel songs, and receiving enthusiastic applause at the end of every number. Afterward, when everyone was standing around in the richly decorated, brightly lit library, still suffused with the music, a high-ranking politician from Lower Austria came up to me and said, \u201cYou know, Abbot Primate, our church in Austria is at such a low ebb. If it wasn\u2019t for you Benedictines. . . . You\u2019re the enlivening element.\u201d<\/p>\n

The enlivening element? I am grateful to hear that. It\u2019s exactly what I want to be. It\u2019s exactly what I wish for my order as a whole\u2014to have a stimulating effect on society, in all the places in the world where we\u2019re represented: this is one of the three great visions that guides me.<\/p>\n

To achieve this goal we must of course be alive ourselves, and this requires abandoning well-worn tracks. I can\u2019t determine the pace of the world, I have no influence on the great upheavals of the time, but we mustn\u2019t isolate ourselves from these changes, and lose contact with the world, with life, with other people. After all, what are we here for? For the world, life, and other people.<\/p>\n

I think my continuous connection with the world of rock music has had very positive consequences. First of course, for myself, because I love rock music, and after all these years it still epitomizes vitality and zest for life. Second, however, because I reach many people through this music.<\/p>\n

For example, in Barcelona, where I was to give a lecture to the executives of an international corporation. In the introductory session the moderator told them about our band\u2019s performance supporting the legendary Deep Purple, and when they didn\u2019t quite believe him he referred to the YouTube entry \u201cDeep Purple mit Abtprimas Notker Wolf\u2014Smoke on the Water.\u201d (Yes, we played the song together.)\u00a0https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZjJI8zBG0yQ<\/a><\/p>\n

As if on cue all the participants took out their smartphones and were too busy tapping and swiping away to listen to my words of welcome, but with this I had won them over. Abbot Primate Notker Wolf supporting Deep Purple? On stage with Ian Gillan and Steve Morse? An introduction like this greatly increases receptiveness. It breaks with convention, makes it easier to talk to people, and spares me the usual small talk.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the rock music even merges informally with the Christian message. During our Tollwood performance in the Andechser tent a banner with the words \u201cHighway to Heaven\u201d hung above the stage, a combination of the AC\/DC title \u201cHighway to Hell\u201d and the Led Zeppelin classic \u201cStairway to Heaven\u201d; I would never have worked it out myself, but of course it fit superbly. And many of the songs we play are original compositions and reflect our origins at the St. Ottilien mission monastery.<\/p>\n

My favorite song is \u201cMy Best Friend,\u201d and if you listen carefully, you\u2019ll realize that we\u2019re singing about Jesus Christ, the only one who doesn\u2019t abandon you if all your other friends let you down. To play it safe, I introduce such songs myself, also so no one in the audience thinks my black Benedictine habit is just a particularly crass stage outfit.<\/p>\n

–\ue071<\/p>\n

Travels abroad, stage performances, meetings, conferences, lectures, interviews, TV appearances, magazine columns, books, and building projects: admittedly some things in the repertoire traditionally belong neither to the responsibilities of an abbot primate nor to the role of an almost-seventy-five-year-old.<\/p>\n

One side effect is the challenge of managing my schedule. This involves never-ending tinkering: appointments constantly have to be changed, inserted, or added. Because of special requests and spontaneous inquiries, half of it ends up being improvisation, so no one else could possibly be expected to get their head around it? That\u2019s why I take my schedule into my own hands.<\/p>\n

Another side effect is amateur psychologists having reasons to whisper about me. \u201cHe needs it,\u201d they say. \u201cHe can\u2019t do without it. He\u2019s determined to make a difference and leave his mark on the history of the order. He can\u2019t stop for fear of losing his importance.\u201d Or, \u201cHe\u2019s running away from himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that I have a duty as abbot primate. It\u2019s also true that I see it as my greatest and finest duty to open as many doors to the future as possible for my order. That would scarcely be possible if I didn\u2019t keep on the move, respond to contemporary trends, try out new and perhaps even unheard of things, while at the same time giving an example of the vitality I wish for my order. We\u2019ve both reached a certain age, my order and myself\u2014in the case of the former it\u2019s 1,500 years. Wear and tear are not alien to us.<\/p>\n

But that shouldn\u2019t be a reason for either the order or me to slacken. Of course no one is irreplaceable. But as long as we live we\u2019re needed. That is a possible answer to the questions confronting anyone in the third phase of life. We may be unimportant as individuals, but the ideas we promote, the efforts we make out of love or conscientiousness, are not.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re needed. And it\u2019s wonderful to be needed. It may be quite strenuous, as in my case. But when people ask me, \u201cHow do you manage it? How can you stand it?\u201d the answer is simple: Joy is my lifeblood\u2014joy in my work, joy of meeting people, joy in music. Also joy in nature, the different shades of green of the oaks, pines, cypresses, and olive trees in the southern sunlight. Joy in the sea I like to sit by and swim in; joy in the warm golden tone of the evening light flooding into my study.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this excerpt from Aging Starts in Your Mind: You’re Only As Old As You Feel\u00a0Chapter 3, author Notker Wolf, shares how rock and baroque music do go together after all.\u00a0http:\/\/bit.ly\/2LLxkYi — Chapter 3: Greetings from Pink Floyd This summer … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paraclete-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}