Favorite Characters

Posted on by Julianne Ardian Lee
Dylan Matheson

Lately I’ve been asked several times who my favorite character is in Her Mother’s Daughter. Particularly, I’m asked about the fictional characters, because the historical figures are who they were and I must portray them as believably themselves.

But with the fictional folk I get to decide who they are, and even within the requirements of plot that leaves me a lot of room for creativity. Some of them end up being like people I’d want to know, and others not so much. But…favorite? Some may stand out more than others. Even the bad guys can hold a special place in my personal pecking order. A clearly imagined and well-crafted villain is as much a pleasure to read or write as the most stalwart yet Achilles-heeled hero.

For Her Mother’s Daughter there weren’t terribly many fictional characters. The story spans the entirety of Mary Tudor’s life, and that life was filled with well-known people. A few of the point-of-view characters are fictional, and among those I suppose the one who strikes me as most likeable is Niccolò Delarosa, the lute player.

In the story he first appears as a musician in Henry’s court, when Mary begins her rehabilitation to her father’s good graces after the death of Anne Boleyn. He’s an Italian of ordinary lineage, but his proficiency with his instrument and his ability to keep his head down and his mouth shut earn him a career in the royal court. And, to his great agony, he has a crush on the king’s daughter. Poor Niccolò spends the next two decades or so, in Henry’s court then in Mary’s, cherishing her. So near, and yet so far. She longing to be loved, and he wishing to oblige, but never able to say so or express his feelings in any way. Over the years he observes the failure of her marriage, and her unhappiness, unable to do anything about it.

I see him as an ordinary guy with a good heart. A solid citizen, good at his job, and loyal to his master and then his mistress. To me, he falls into the category of the sort of guy I’d like to know. The sort who are all too rare in real life. They exist—I’ve known some—and Niccolò is the essence of those good men I’ve known.

But by far the best of the good guys I’ve written was Dylan Matheson. In my first published novel the main character was a classic fish-out-of-water, ordinary-guy-in-extraordinary-circumstances, square-jawed hero. He was a joy. It amused me to hear about him from readers, for it seemed the women all wanted to meet Dylan and the men all thought they were just like Dylan. (I think we should get them all together!)

Son of the Sword is a time travel story in which a modern guy is swept back to 18th century Scotland and the Jacobite Rebellions. There he meets the love of his life, Caitrionagh, and heroism ensues with the aid of an irrepressible Irish faerie named Sinnan. He was with me for three novels, and when it was time to say goodbye in the fourth book, writing his death scene was like pulling teeth. I didn’t want to do it, but it was time.

Each time I end a book or a series I have to leave characters and move on to new ones. It’s tempting to continue the story past its true ending, but that doesn’t serve the narrative or the audience. Once Dylan’s story was done, he had to die.

Having written sixteen novels for publication, and twelve unsold manuscripts before that, I’ve said goodbye to dozens of characters. But Dylan is the one I remember most fondly.

 

Why I Workshop

Posted on by Julianne Ardian Lee

It was January of 1987 when I decided to make professional publication my goal. I’d completed one novel, which still has never sold (and shouldn’t ever see the light of day,) and on that dreary winter afternoon I began another. I also bought my first copy of Writers’ Digest at the Hendersonville Bookstore, which is now a nail salon.

Of course I was clueless. I’d been writing as a hobbyist since I was twelve, but didn’t have the faintest idea where to look for a chink in the battlement of professional publishing. I’d never heard the term “over the transom,” and the Internet at that point was limited to government employees, university students, small, isolated bulletin boards. and Usenet. I was five years away from buying my first computer, and spent my days typing out my early work on a $75 manual typewriter. A year later, having completed and polished my second novel, I took it down to the printing shop to photocopy it, and began sending it out.

Then I went to work on my third unsold manuscript.

I only ever sent my work to professional publishers (nowadays called “royalty” or “traditional” publishers), because back then self-publishing, or “vanity” publishing, cost far more money than I had just lying around, and I had no desire to become a book distributor. Print-on-demand didn’t exist. Ebooks were a distant dream that smacked of Star Trek. Traditional publishing was what we just called “publishing.” I wrote manuscripts and sent them to New York, and the machine I wrote them on did not have an electrical plug, never mind a monitor.

Four years and four unsold manuscripts later, frustration crept in and I began to realize I was getting nowhere. I’d subscribed to Writers’ Digest and read it every month, but it told me nothing that wasn’t known by every other yahoo with a typewriter looking for an editor or agent. One of those things it told us all was when and where there were workshops all over the country. Workshop. It rang in my ears like vacation. No interruptions, no distractions, no worries but to put one word next to another.

I found one in Louisville, KY, a week-long novels retreat in the dead of winter, when my husband was home and could run the household while I was gone. I took a Christmas job in the gift-wrapping department of Castner Knott, and earned enough cash to pay for the trip and tuition.

The Green River Writers’ first Novels In Progress Workshop in January 1991 was, for me, better than a vacation. It was a palpable step in the right direction. Each day I was there I only wrote, read books, and talked about writing and books. My mentor was Jim Wayne Miller, a noted Appalachian poet and award-winning novelist. Each evening students would hang out in the dorm lobby, chatting long into the night about the craft of writing. Some were poets just trying their hand at long form fiction. Some, like me, were committed novelists who rarely wrote short stories, much less poetry. In that one week I was steeped in the craft, then when the weekend came we all got to meet with editors and agents flown in from New York and North Carolina.

I had hives. I’d met rock stars without flinching, but I’d never before spoken to a genuine editor or agent and had no clue what to expect. Turned out these were very kind people, but weirdly none of them had any interest in fiction. Odd they should come to a novels workshop, but still I came away with a far better sense of the business than I’d had going in. It was experience I could use in future cover letters, and I did.

I attended the GRW NIPW for two more years as a student. Every year I learned something important. Each time I went, the support and camaraderie charged my batteries for the work of writing and submitting that work during the following year. I always went with the knowledge I was making good use of my time, and the conviction I was moving closer to publication. I figured if I kept improving as a writer, eventually they would have to publish my work.

My third year I had the most astonishing compliment from Jim Wayne Miller, who was again my mentor. I’d brought my guitar because I liked to play during breaks from the writing. One day I was alone in the dorm lobby, playing and singing “Darkness on the Edge of Town.” Jim Wayne arrived, and headed for his office, but he stopped to listen. When I finished, he asked, “Did you write that?”

I wish. I replied, “No, that’s Bruce Springsteen.”

He proceeded toward his door, but said as he went, “Oh. Sounds like you.”

I was flattered into little, bitty pieces and got scattered all over the floor. Yes, I’m bragging. For a writer, those moments are few and far between, and we must make the most of them.

In any case, I did make actual progress with my writing from the workshopping. My confidence improved, my actual skill improved so that, starting with my sixth unsold manuscript they began to become truly publishable.

It took another several years and an equal number of unsold manuscripts before I finally sold my thirteenth novel from an outline. For several years after that I taught at that same workshop. I learned as much by mentoring as I had as a student. This year I intend to go looking for a retreat for professionals, where I can spend a week or so doing nothing but writing, reading, and talking about writing and reading.

I feel like a vacation.

Role Model, Not Runway Model

Posted on by Julianne Ardian Lee

I’ve heard a great deal about the new movie, Wonder Woman, based on the old DC comic. All over Facebook, everywhere I look, people are kvelling over it, so I figured I’d better go see it before I heard so much there was was no longer any point in buying a ticket. Particularly since the buzz I was hearing was exactly the opposite of what I’d expected to hear.  In my lifetime, “strong female character” usually meant “scantily clad sex goddess.” Where breasts were freakishly oversized and impossibly perky, and waists were too narrow to pass a pea. I expected this Wonder Woman to be no different from the smattering of comic book heroines who had gone before, but now I was hearing, “Nay, nay, she’s not like those others!”

I was skeptical, even though these reports came from many I respect and trust on this. Esther Friesner. Jennifer Roberson, women who know from the Fantasy genre. But I’d been burned too many times before.

I take you back to 1966. Star Trek.  The much vaunted, ground-breaking, women-and-minorities-on-the-bridge show. The one that started out with Majel Barrett playing the second-in-command. But by the time the series was picked up and aired, she’d been swapped out for a man and relegated to the sidelines as a nurse with a crush on that man. Where all the women on that bridge wore mini skirts and cleavage as deep as the Snake River Canyon, and all had jobs socially acceptable for women in the mid-twentieth century. Three cheers for Nichelle Nichols, but Lieutenant Uhura was still a telephone operator, Nurse Chapel was, well, a nurse, and Yeoman Rand was a secretary trotting around with an enormous cleavage, fake eyelashes, blonde dye job, and steno notepad. Who had a crush on the Captain. I was twelve and unimpressed. Even worse was the final episode of the series, “Turnabout Intruder,” in which Captain Kirk’s body was taken over by a former lover who wanted to be a man. The moral of the story being the eternal question as posed by the captain, “Why can’t women just be happy as they are?” I adored Star Trek, and felt horribly betrayed by it. I wanted to be able to do things without being told that, “Nice girls don’t…” I’ve known my whole life I wasn’t a nice girl, and Star Trek went boldly nowhere for me.

In the decade following, 1976, I was excited to learn of a new adventure series about female investigators. I thrilled at the idea of women going out and doing things. Kicking butt and taking names. Fighting crime. Being applauded for using their brains and brawn.

Ha!

You know who I’m talking about. The night Charlie’s Angels first aired I eagerly planted myself in front of the TV, fully expecting to be vindicated at long last. But as the hour progressed, uneasiness crept in. It was like biting into a bright, red, polished apple and finding it mealy and full of worms. The women weren’t in charge. They were ordered around by a disembodied voice named Charlie. They weren’t all that smart; they were guided by a eunuch named Bosley. They kicked no butt, they took no names. Mostly they ran around with impossibly fluffy hair and absurdly big teeth. At the end of the episode, when a black-suited-and-helmeted figure was revealed to be the blonde one, and she removed her helmet with a flourish and a shake of her head to restore her coif, I was done.  Charlie’s Angels was not the breakthrough I’d dreamed of.

Neither was Kate Jackson’s next outing, The Scarecrow and Mrs. King, where every episode ended with a huge fistfight in which Ms. Jackson cowered in the corner, watching Bruce Boxleitner save the day. She made me want to smack her sideways.

That same decade, the Wonder Woman TV series did not attract my attention. Cleavage and hair, dancing not fighting, always for the boys not the girls. I never, ever wanted to be Lynda Carter, and didn’t watch even one episode.

Moving along, into the new era of live-action comic book movies that are all about the CGI, these days I’m old enough to get that these movies are for teenage boys who are looking for a poster to tack to the ceiling over the bed. I’ve spent the past forty years expecting little from female adventure characters. Not that I ever expected a female superhero to be real, I’ve given up hope of ever seeing one who could be credible and share the screen with an equally strong male character. So going into that theatre, I expected little from Gal Gadot.

(We interrupt this post for a spoiler alert for Wonder Woman. Proceed with caution.)

Oh.

My.

God.

From the beginning of this movie there is no sense of catering to teenage boys. The Amazon warriors all move like warriors, wearing their Greek-ish outfits similarly to the men in 300.  These women are athletic enough to make the CGI moves credible. They have muscles that look as if they could do the things they are shown to do. They are attractive, but not all boobs and flowing hair.

Ms. Gadot is a gorgeous young lady, and entirely credible in the role of a young goddess out to save humanity from itself. No smirky, sly, over-sexed bombshell. She is straightforward, has the courage of her convictions, is intelligent, brave, and utterly unaware of the condescension of men around her. She barrels through, full speed ahead, taking little notice of stuffy old men who think she should be at home sewing her trousseau.  Sometimes played for laughs, but not clumsily, and her earnestness remains consistent throughout.  Gal Gadot plays Diana as full immersion in a personality unaffected by the socialization of sexism. What a joy!

Also, I saw the thigh-jiggle I’d heard about. Yes, Wonder Woman’s thigh jiggled on landing, like a real woman’s would. Her breasts were normal: not flat, not enhanced, not crammed into a Wonder Bra. Her hair was normal. Pretty enough, but never impossibly fluffy and not once did she toss her head to make it flow. Sometimes it was even messy. I wanted to cheer.

Finally, Chris Pine (that fellow who redeemed the role of Captain Kirk) as Steve Trevor, provided a magnificent foil/love interest for Diana. Steve, though often at a loss to know what to say, is the kind of guy unfazed by a woman who is not afraid to do stuff and follow her own conscience. The kind of guy who can fight alongside her effectively as an equal without having to prove himself superior or in charge. Yes, they do exist, and they should be encouraged to reproduce.

Please, let’s have more adventure stories like this. It’s too late for me, but I’m certain there’s a generation of girls who will eat this up and go on to do great things.

Dramatic License

Posted on by Julianne Ardian Lee

Still in the Pacific Northwest, coping with the aftermath of my father’s death. Today I offer the Author’s Note from the first book I wrote as Anne Rutherford, “The Opening Night Murder, ” where I address the issue of dramatic license in historical fiction.

In my associations with other authors, often I’m drawn into debate about the moral obligation of historical fiction writers to be true to historical fact. Other authors I know claim their stories never deviate from history by so much as a single word or thought. Anything less, they say, is Untruth and perpetuates Confusion among the uneducated and ill-read masses.

They lie.

I agree that unless one is deliberately and openly writing what is called “alternate history” one should stick as close to the known facts as humanly possible. Hollywood often makes us groan and fidget to see, for instance, William Wallace in a kilt or Jane Grey dewy-eyed and in love with the husband foisted on her by her father. Or Mary I fat and ugly. Or a svelte Henry VIII with a buzz cut and bedroom eyes. I could go on, but I’m sure Gentle Reader gets the picture. Hollywood often gets it wrong, and we expect better from literature.

However, in any work of historical fiction there is a point at which known fact fails us and the drama must be served. It is impossible to know exactly what was said or done in private chambers, and even more difficult to know the inner thoughts of the people whose stories the author is trying to tell. At some point one must start making things up. Storytelling is the glue that makes sense out of random facts. One does one’s best to keep the conjecture to a minimum, and to stay within reasonable limits of plausibility, but there is no getting away from the fact that one’s job is to fill in blanks left by historical documents that tell only a fraction of what went on.

In The Opening Night Murder, to avoid being chained to the history of either the King’s Company or the Duke’s Men, ordinarily I would have invented a fictional theatre to house my fictional troupe and characters for my story. But then I still would have had to place it on an actual London street where no theatre existed. No matter how hard one tries, there’s always the line where fact butts up against fiction.

So why not use Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, located near what is now Porter Street in the Southwark district of London? Unfortunately, that theatre was torn down in 1644, sixteen years before our story opens.

Dang.

However, this is fiction. If I can invent a theatre and place it on a spot where no theatre actually stood in 1660, then why not resurrect the Old Globe and put it where it was originally?

Further, with a little hand-waving, why not let this fictional troupe of actors perform Shakespeare’s plays even though only two theatres were allowed a monopoly on “serious” dramas? It’s true that the King’s Company and the Duke’s Men were given patents and Shakespeare’s works divided between them, lesser companies were allowed to perform older forms of comedy, mummeries and mime. But it is also true that one reason for the patents given to the King’s and the Duke’s companies was to control new playwrights who might satirize the king. So my fictional troupe has been given fictional permission to perform the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, which could not ever be about the current regime.

Although it is my sincere wish not to annoy my Gentle Reader, who might cry, “But no! That didn’t happen!” I reply, “Of course it didn’t happen. In the words of another great playwright, Oscar Wilde, That’s what fiction means.

 

Cattle Call

Posted on by Julianne Ardian Lee

 

Due to a family emergency, this week’s column is a favorite from four years ago. There is a brief update below.

I’m not going to be the next Fox Network Master Chef. Let me tell you how I know this.

For those who are Chef Ramsay clueless, Master Chef is one of about half a dozen “reality” shows produced by Chef Gordon Ramsay, a chef of haute cuisine who owns restaurants in London, Glasgow, and Los Angeles. As a television personality, Ramsay is quite a character. He’s known for his foul mouth and wide mean streak, yet his shows strike a chord in that he is sharply tuned in to other people, and that is what makes his shows work. In Master Chef, a hundred amateur cooks are chosen from across the country to compete in several weeks of cooking competition elimination challenges, from which only one emerges the winner of $250,000. Simple enough on the surface, but not so simple when you understand that the contest is not about the food so much as it is about the people. That is why, when the producers went looking for a hundred cooks for Season Four, they called it an audition. This isn’t a contest, it’s a drama.

 

So I decided to bop down to the audition in Nashville last Saturday. I’ve been cooking for family since I was eleven, and I figured with forty-five years of experience behind me I might have a shot at this. I, too, am a character and there is no reason I shouldn’t fit in with the folks in that competition. The worst that could happen is that they could sneer at me like Ramsay and his buddies often do, and send me home. I’ve been sneered at; they don’t scare me.

 

My best recipe is a pumpkin pie my mom used to make, which I made traditional in my family and it morphed into something slightly different. I call it Jack-O-Lantern Pie. Every Hallowe’en I carve a jack-o-lantern from a large pumpkin, set a candle in it, and put it out on my porch until the trick-or-treaters are done for the evening. The next morning I cut it in half, bake it until tender, then puree it. I freeze the puree for pies on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and one large, reasonably moist pumpkin will usually cover me for four deep-dish pies. After nearly thirty years of baking pies with fresh pumpkin, I can hardly look at canned pumpkin and decline to order pumpkin pie in any restaurant.

 

So I got up at dawn on Saturday to bake a pie. I often don’t make my own crust, but this time I did, and fashioned little crust-leaves for decoration. It was a thing of beauty, easily the finest pie I’ve ever made. I set it in a flat basket for transport, covered it with a new, white dishcloth, and set out for Nashville like I was headed for grandmother’s house wearing a red, hooded cape.

 

When I entered the waiting room there was a light, cheerful, friendly feel to the place. Folks sat around, waiting for their nametag number to be called, most with coolers and carriers sitting at their feet. I took a seat and turned on my Kindle, for I could see there would be a long wait. I had no idea.

 

The applicants were processed at a rate of twenty an hour, so it was two hours before my number was called. A small, bearded man hurried in and out, who turned out to be the one responsible for the atmosphere staying light, cheerful, and friendly. Otherwise, I’m sure, there would have been mutiny. He came and went, joking and smiling, and explaining to everyone what was going on at any given time. I believe he saved lives.

 

As we waited, the smell of food wafting through the room kept reminding me I had neglected to eat breakfast that morning, for my stomach was nervous and I figured I would be able to grab some lunch when I was done feeding pumpkin pie to the judge. Silly me. It was well past noon, I’d been up since six o’clock, and was ravenous. Still we waited.

 

Finally my group of twenty was marched into the judging room, lugging our coolers, carriers, and baskets. Several people carrying clipboards stood around or scurried here and there. We were instructed to stand by a table and not touch the food until told. A short, dark-haired girl came around to squirt our hands with hand sanitizer, the plating and judging procedure was explained to us, and then we were allowed to plate our food. We had three minutes.

 

I never would have thought it could take so long to put food on a plate. The first piece of pie I cut came out in two pieces. I set it aside and cut another, which obeyed nicely and didn’t fall apart. I dumped the first piece back in the pie plate and set it on the floor next to my purse, then proceeded with the whipped cream and cinnamon candy syrup, finally decorating with the pie crust leaves sprinkled with cinnamon. I was well pleased with my presentation. Three minutes up, hands off the food, and we waited.

 

First to come around was the Head Guy judge, an Hispanic-looking fellow with a pleasant smile and a gentle voice. He spent a couple of minutes with each applicant chatting first then taking a very small taste with a plastic fork. He was a bit distracted by the guy in the cowboy hat, though. Everyone who has seen this show knows there’s always one contestant from the South in a cowboy hat. I guess that’s to signal the rest of the world that he’s from the South, for we all know that Southerners wear cowboy hats everywhere. This one had brought two jars of moonshine to serve with his dish. (Let me note here that in Tennessee corn liquor is legal so long as it’s aged and taxed according to law. Which, to my mind, makes it not moonshine, but maybe that’s just me. In any case, I have such a jar myself, and I assume the stuff in those jars was duly aged and taxed.)  Head Guy saw this, and in the middle of his chat with the guy next to me turned and made a beeline for the guy serving alcohol. After a couple of shots, he returned to his task, but didn’t stay long. He hurried back to Cowboy Hat to ask for one of the jars, which he set aside before once again resuming his job. Everyone in the room laughed, but not very happily.

 

The smell of food in this room was stronger than in the room previous, and I was lucky my stomach didn’t start growling.

 

My turn. Head Guy had some nice things to say about my pretty piece of pie, and when he tasted it he said “Very nice.” So I was relieved to learn I wasn’t going to be sneered at. He asked me about the jack-o-lanternness of my pie, and further queried about why we call them jack-o-lanterns. Since I’m History Geek, I was happy to answer his question. He ended with “Good work,” and moved on.

 

He was followed up by the little dark-haired girl, whose question to everyone was “Tell me: Why Master Chef? Why now in your life?” Hard question to answer, since this was entirely a lark for me and I was only there to see how far I would get. I knew they wanted to hear about how I was hanging my entire existence on this contest and my heart would break if I didn’t get on the show, but I just couldn’t do it. That would be a lie. So I told the truth. I said it sounded like fun. I could see I was impressing nobody. But we segued into a chat about my grandson and his food allergies, so it wasn’t a total loss since I got to talk about the grandbaby. But then when she asked what I do, I told her I write novels for a living and her eyes glazed over. Hrm.

 

Then came more waiting. A lot more waiting, as we stood behind our tables. I looked over to my right at some fish tacos and my mouth watered. All that food in that room smelled so good! I like fish tacos. The woman to his right had something with a great deal of cheese. I like cheese.

 

People across the way began tasting each other’s dishes. I was so hungry! I hadn’t eaten since the day before. It was nearly three in the afternoon. The dish-sharing spread, and people were tasting those fish tacos and the casserole further over. My neighbors asked me for a taste of pie, and I gave them gladly. I nibbled a bit myself, but hesitated to ask others for theirs because I was afraid I would make a pig of myself. I was so hungry.

 

However, the girl to my left had something with Brussels sprouts that looked irresistible. Brussels sprouts can be very good if they’re done right, and these were very small. I asked for one.

 

Oh. My. God. It was the best Brussels sprout I’ve ever had. You could die from this Brussels sprout. I asked for the secret, then I asked for another taste. I could have eaten the whole plate.

 

We waited some more, then the judging folk read off the numbers of the applicants they wanted to stay behind. Nobody was surprised when Cowboy Hat Guy was called. Maybe I could have done what he did, but bribery just didn’t occur to me and I haven’t worn a cowboy hat since I was six. Brussels Sprouts Girl was called, and she deserved it. I was not called, and I probably deserved that. Clearly I am not, as they say often on this show, “Master Chef material.” I and my fellow rejects made that long walk to the door, just as hundreds of others have done in the Master Chef kitchen. We were blessed that we didn’t have to do it on camera.

 

I’ve been to cattle calls as an actor in Los Angeles, and I have to say those are a little easier to take. Usually what happens to an actor is that one is told to go home, then one goes home and waits for a phone call. Realization can take weeks, and it’s gradual. Last Saturday I knew I was rejected when they skipped my number and they told me to leave. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am. Don’t let the door hit your butt on the way out.

 

I don’t really know why I went. Or even why anyone goes to something like that. I guess it’s a need for others to see how special we are, and I think that’s a common enough feeling. But there are six billion people on the planet and that makes specialness either really common or impossibly rare, depending on how you look at it. In a way it’s bizarre and maybe a little pathetic. I stand guilty on both counts.

 

I’m not sorry I went. I had a day of smiles, was complimented on my Jack-O-Lantern Pie by someone who would know, and I now have a bag of fresh Brussels sprouts in my refrigerator waiting to be sautéed in bacon grease and maple syrup. Dang, those were good.

 

 

That year was the fourth season of Master Chef, which was won by a fellow from Italy named Luca. I cheered him on to victory, entirely over my disappointment at not getting a free trip to Los Angeles. I still enjoy the show, though it’s true the premise is wearing a bit thin. I tinker in the kitchen, and once a week I attend a pot luck dinner with a cluster of friends who are quasi-foodies like me. I’ve successfully made those Brussels sprouts a few times. I’ve given up my dream of being yelled at by Gordon Ramsay, and have set my sights on more reasonable goals.

When Creative People Don’t Fit In

Posted on by Julianne Ardian Lee
Methodist Church

Today I rerun an essay from my Facebook page, originally published about three years ago, when I was still a Methodist, attending a church undergoing severe upheaval. Our music minister, Bill White, was fired suddenly, for no apparent reason. Below the original essay, I present an update.

Most people understand there is a difference between people who are creative and those who are not. Those who are not often wish they were able to think up wonderfully entertaining things so they might be lauded as geniuses and artists. Those of us who do think creatively know it’s not really like that. I look at people who have stable lives and who are able to keep the imagination from wandering all over where the boogeyman lurks, and wish for that sort of peace. I would trade all my so-called talents for just one marketable skill.

 

But I’m not here to whine about my ADD. I want to talk about our church’s music minister, who was let go this week for reasons unknown to me. Bill worked for us for nearly twenty years, hired originally as our organist, then as our music minister when the woman in that job left. He is a local professional musician, which in Nashville means quite a lot. The day in 1994 he first played for the choir at practice, he gave us an improvisational rendition of Amazing Grace that was so sublime it made that tired old tune seem fresh. When he was done, I knelt, genuflected, and cried like Wayne and Garth, “We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!” And it was true. He had a special talent none of us had ever seen in that church, and I believe we will never see again.

 

Bill thinks in music. He sometimes has difficulty with the spoken word, but in his writing and playing of music he is able to express things that the rest of us can only feel. He’s the epitome of the sort of person who thinks creatively, and for those of us who receive spiritual message best through the medium of music, he was, literally, a Godsend.

 

I am a Christian not because my parents made me go to church when I was a child (they didn’t). I am one because when I was in high school I was given a little, red New Testament, and that made me curious. I then borrowed a copy of the rock opera Jesus Christ, Superstar, and played the music until I had every word and every note memorized. Internalized. To this day, whenever a bit of that Gospel story is mentioned in church, my mind brings up the relevant phrases of that music. This is how I access my religion. Without music, I would not have had a clue. When I joined this church nearly thirty years ago, the first thing I did was to join the handbell choir, and the second thing was to join the Chancel Choir. For some of us, the sermon is secondary to the music, and I truly believe church music exists for the sake of reaching people like me.

 

Having Bill for a music minister was special enough for me, and for many other members of the choir, to stay at this church during the past several years while other church members were unhappy enough with the new minister to leave for other churches. Our church musicians, especially, were under attack for being “too traditional.”

 

And yet the Chancel Choir hung on, rather than find other churches as did 400 other church families. To hear the offertory, which Bill always executed without sheet music, letting the music simply flow from brain to fingers and on out through the piano, was by itself worth getting up at dawn to serve in the choir of a church that made us increasingly uncomfortable. We hung on because most of us had been members for decades and we at least had Bill to guide us through this rough patch.

 

But we no longer have Bill. His last choir practice was on Wednesday, and instead of practicing that night most of us cleared out our folders. I estimate about half the choir won’t ever be back, and those who would stay won’t have a choir in which to serve. The church administration has made it clear that they don’t want a traditional choir. There may never again be a Chancel Choir in that church, or a handbell choir.

 

I was in the handbell choir for nearly thirty years. My children grew up in that church. It was the first church in my life I attended more than twice. It was the first place I ever had that gave me any stability in my life, and it was the only sanctuary I had from the difficulties of culture shock when I first moved to Tennessee. I’d intended to die a member of that church. What has been done to it is unconscionable. What was done to Bill was unimaginable, even by someone with an imagination like mine.

UPDATE

About three years have passed since that dark Wednesday when my spiritual world crumbled. When I said I thought half the choir would return the following week, I was wrong. Only four of the nearly fifty remained. The rest of us left and stayed gone. The handbell choir finished up our season and went on our usual hiatus, but the following fall only one third of us returned. The new music director, who knew nothing about handbells (or reading music, for that matter), wasn’t expecting any of us to return. It was an uphill struggle to play at all.

Now, three years later, many of the choir members are singing in the community chorus directed by Bill White. He’s now a published music arranger. Our group, The Hendersonville Community Singers, will be performing some of his arrangements in our Spring Concert this coming Tuesday. (PM me for information.) While we miss the old days, there is once again the deep sense of continuity that had suddenly gone missing when he was fired from the church. Most of the folks who left the choir have found other churches. Some have passed away. For myself, I’ve gone to another denomination and am now an Episcopalian. At my new church, “traditional” is not a pejorative. It’s a tiny church, where the choir has only eight voices and I feel deeply appreciated for my strong alto voice. I’ve also formed a handbell choir there, with borrowed bells and borrowed music, and have reassembled the old carillon the Methodist Church didn’t want. We friends have played together for thirty years, and look forward to many more.

Our priest is intelligent, educated, and kind. The atmosphere in that small congregation is welcoming and non-judgmental. They’ve given us creative types a safe place where we can worship musically, the way some people are intended.