“I remember quite well, I remember quite well, when I was walking in Jerusalem just like John,” he sang.
I really don’t know why Mike Heron’s “A Very Cellular Song” struck me with such force—no, force is not the right word—struck me with such intensity, and so profoundly, but it did.
At first, it was the word “Jerusalem.” I almost started to cry when I heard it. The word found a latent chord within me and suddenly plucked it, and I resonated.
My friend, who had insisted, “You have got to hear this album,” at my request replayed the “Good Night Song” part of the whole Cellular song, and there it was again, a deep longing resonating throughout. But earlier in the song this time, with the words “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” for I had not heard, or thought of the 23rd Psalm for years, and there it was alive and whispering. Yes, even though—and this might seem a little odd, but nonetheless true—I only knew Psalm 23 in Swedish, yet I knew precisely where the words Mike sang came from.
(By the way, I arranged and recorded a version of the Good Night Song a while back, and you can find that rendition here).
And then came the end of “A Very Cellular Song,” and what I have since come to regard as the most beautiful Metta supplication ever written, said, or sung:
May the long time sun shine upon you
All love surround you
And the pure light within you
Guide you all the way on— Mike Heron
And not only once, this beautiful prayer, but again, and again, and again. I believe I did cry at this point, though still surprised at my behavior and not at all sure what on earth was going on.
But Jerusalem and Psalm 23 winged my thoughts northward, to my maternal grandmother, and her so fervent Christianity. I had been steeped in it. So steeped in it, for so long, that I had even—as a ten-year old—done all that I could to be “saved” in a tent-meeting, just to make my grandma happy. It didn’t quite work, but she was happy nonetheless.
The deep chord that Mike and Robin had struck inside me this late summer day in 1968, and which stirred such longing, such sad longing, was the spirit itself, the true me.
It is hard to wrestle this down into words, but I knew, leaving my friend’s house that evening (still light as day in the Swedish summer), that I had been touched, and deeply, and that I had to alter my life’s course from the material to the spiritual. Simply had to. My priorities wildly rearranging.
This was the summer of 1968, the summer that I worked at Santa Maria Hospital in Helsingborg, and which I recounted in my “About Ananda” essay (go here for the full essay). But it was hearing the Incredible String Band that afternoon that opened me up to eventually set me looking for what on earth made me think.
I don’t think I slept much that night, thinking of Mommi (which is what we called my grandma) and of all she had told me about the Bible—which at the time had been just so many good stories, but now felt deeply relevant.
And I found something missing, found that some crucial part of me had almost died. By looking and remembering, I fanned the flames of my dying spirit all night, and by morning he was stirring again.
My next question: Who are these guys (Mike Heron and Robin Williamson), and how could they have touched me so?
The first thing I did the next day was find a record store (yes, they were called that then, and the records you bough were called LPs—for Long Playing—and they spun around the turntable at a rate of 33 1/3 spins a minute). I found one, and there learned that yes, the Incredible String Band had three albums out. I bought them all. The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter of course, which is what I had heard the day before, and also their first, and self-titled The Incredible String Band, as well as The 5000 Spirits or The Layers of the Onion, their second.
As luck would have it, my roommate at the hospital had a good stereo system (which I set out to monopolize, I must confess) and over the next few days, I didn’t do much else—apart for showing up at work, and leaving when done—than listening to these wonderful, wonderful songs, which all spoke to me. Spoke to me. Spoke to me on that same deep internal-chord level as Mike’s Cellular Song had done the first time.
These guys were on to something, and they had invited me along. This was magical. And it was as if a door had opened, that now allowed safe passage through all my layers of confusion and uncertainty a deep and precise understanding of what they were saying. It was as if each song was a koan and I could answer them all just by listening.
“Sitting here with my arms around my music,” sang Mike, and I knew precisely how it was that you could have your arms around your music.
“The fallen leaves that jewel the ground, they know the art of dying,” sang Robin, and how I saw and understood how that could be. Not only could be, but in fact was.
“And my tree would listen to all that I’d say,” sang Mike, and yes, of course trees could listen.
“I have nothing to do, I have nowhere to go, and I’m not in the slightest way upset,” sang Mike, and whereas this, only weeks before would have seemed to me a very upsetting situation indeed, I suddenly saw that you are where you are, and where you are—wherever that is, and whatever you’re doing—is home. And absolutely nothing to worry about.
“They say it’s all butterflies, don’t let your dreams get in your eyes, but Orpheus made the sunrise, ‘cause he knew how to play,” sang Robin, and of course Orpheus made the sun rise, for music was magic.
“Oh, you know all the words, and you sung all the notes, but you never quite learned the song, she sang,” sang Mike, and I saw, clear as day that even though you have all the words, and have all the notes, you might still miss the song, the song. The song was it, that intangible tangible that you would miss unless you really understood. And I understood. I did.
And when Mike sang, “I smile and shake my head and say my little ship is sinking, but I kind of like the sea that I’m on, and I don’t mind if I do drown,” I saw, with absolute clarity that death was not all it was talked up to be. I wouldn’t mind drowning either, in a sea like that; for, of course, that part that did the “didn’t minding” wouldn’t die, that was a given. And clearly so.
And the words that possibly got to me the most were also Mikes:
You know what you could be
Tell me my friend
Why you worry all the time
What you should be
For I had worried, and worried a lot, and for a long time, what I should be. And here, truth revealed: I know what I can be. Yes, I knew that, I knew that I knew, but I had never allowed my self this knowledge, this personal certainty. And here, through song, Mike offered his beautiful permission.
My life was handed back to me in that moment, for me to do with what I considered vital, not what others considered or preferred that I should do.
And in the same way that “You Know What You Could Be” opened new paths for me to travel, so Mike’s “Swift as the Wind” confirmed the wonder of what I was feeling, while it also pointed to the main pitfall along the path to the long-time sun: doubters (if you listen to them, that is), and girls (if you cannot do without them):
Thus he sang (my parentheses):
(For the voice of truth)
For my delight
Swift as the wind flies
His chariot and wings
Shine in the light of a thousand suns
For he comes from the land of no night
He comes from the land of no night(For the voice of doubt)
There is no land
The night is all around my child
You must stop imagining all this
You must stop imagining all this
For your own good
Why don’t you go with the rest and play downstairs(For the voice of truth)
Closing my eyes
I see him so clear
The blood on his sword
Flashes so bright as is
Falls to the skulls by his feet
But his eyes they know all things
His eyes they know all(For the voice of doubt)
There is no blood
No-one knows all my child
You must stop imagining all this
You must stop imagining all this
For your own good
Why don’t you go with the rest and play downstairs(For the voice of truth)
Swift as the wind
Stay if you will now
Seeing you again will be in your castle so fair
But I make take some time on the way
And I may have to spend some time downstairs
“And I may have to spend some time downstairs,” he said. And I understood. Oh, how I understood. For I knew then that the path I had to take, I would have to travel alone, but oh, how I missed my girlfriend at times, and to be wholly honest with myself, could I really live without her? I saw that Mike asked himself the same question, and I knew that what I heard, what I saw, what I felt and what I understood, was all real. All so real.
I listened to these three albums over and over and over and it’s a wonder I didn’t wear out the grooves of the LPs. They were my Bible, my light in darkness, my strength in doubt.
And it was not long thereafter that I woke up (as described in About Ananda).
And now I was waiting for their next message—their next album, which didn’t come and didn’t come and didn’t come, and I began to wonder where they had gone to.
And still it didn’t come, and then, the following Easter (1969) finally did: “Wee Tam and the Big Huge” – a double LP in England, two single LPs in Sweden.
As I listened to the first words on Wee Tam’s side A, I knew that the magic was still there, for Robin answered my long-standing question about their whereabouts: “We’re all still here, no one has gone away. Waiting, acting much too well and procrastinating.” I smiled and silently thanked him for those words.
Sitting here, some forty odd years later, recalling that magical summer, I ask myself whether I read too much into their lyrics, whether (as with infatuation) I only saw what I wanted to see, only heard the message I wanted to hear. And to that I have two answers:
The first one is that I don’t think so. I think I heard and understood what was said.
The second one is that it doesn’t matter one way or another. I woke up that summer, and I’ve stayed awake, and much of that was due to two of the best friends I have ever had: Mike Heron and Robin Williamson.
::
Afterword
Believe it or not, but four years after this magical summer, I was invited to spend Christmas with Mike and Robin at Glen Row in Innerleithen, Scotland. How that happened is another story, which I may or may not tell one day, but I should share that I so adored Mike Heron at the time (and I still do, actually) that when I finally got to sing for him, after he let me know that he really liked the song and my playing and my voice, he did see fit to point out that I did perhaps sound a little too much like Mike Heron.
That friendly point was well taken.
Ulf Wolf