Going through an old collection of assorted papers and cards, I came across a postcard I’d bought in Bermuda. I like to collect art postcards, sometimes I send them, sometimes I don’t. This one apparently, I kept. It was a reproduction of a watercolour by Andrew Wyeth entitled “The Bermudian”. It depicted a black woman from another time, a time we may want to forget, but never should. She was dressed in white, sitting, bare arms crossed, looking exhausted, in a chair beside a pale blue gray louvered door. The wall behind her white, scratched and stained by the years, the weather, by life. Art was and continues to be, I hope, in the very air you breathe in Bermuda. Painters, poets, and writers have all gone there to relax, to go on vacation, to take a step out of their everyday lives and have discovered that Art was waiting for them even there. Names you’ll undoubtably recognize, some who you’ll never meet. Winslow Homer, Georgia O’Keefe, Frank L. Baum, Alfred Hitchcock, Marsden Hartley, John Lennon. Most, if not all were renewed, revitalized, inspired and perhaps even reborn. John came away from his experience of Bermuda with that beautiful, last album, Double Fantasy, named for a flamboyant Hibiscus growing in the Botanical Gardens.
A very dedicated and energetic Bermudian began to realize that the history of his island home was being beautifully depicted by these extraordinary people, and so began a long voyage for him and like-minded Bermudians, to collect as much of the work as they could. A valuable legacy for all Bermudians now, and those still to come. In March of 2013, I journeyed back for the first time in 22 years, and I was excited to see how far this project had come. A museum had been built on the grounds of Camden House and the Botanical Gardens. I paid a visit to this museum filled with works by Bermudian and International Artists and there in the gift shop I discovered a gorgeous little book entitled Lennon Bermuda. With the book came 2 CD’s of some of the music of John’s, recorded by various Bermudian musicians. It surprised me to learn that he had visited, no one had made mention of it. But then, Bermudians are like that. Unless you’re a high ranking member of the Royal Family, they honour your privacy. I bought the book and read it on the flight home. The book told of John’s sail to Bermuda, and his many experiences during the few months he was there, the summer of 1980, meeting new people, spending time with Sean, writing music. One story, out of all the stories, emerged and got my attention.
Let me tell my story so you’ll understand the significance for me.
I was very fortunate to have lived in Bermuda for almost 10 years. I was even more fortunate to have found a small white cottage by the side of the sea. Actually, a small part of the sea, for Harrington Sound was a large lake-like expanse of water fed by the sea through underground caves and a narrow inlet. The cottage had been built in a niche carved by man out of the limestone hillside. It was about 40 feet above the water, set back about 6 feet, so that sitting on the verandah we could look below and watch the fish in the glass-like water. When we went snorkeling, we discovered a small underwater cave directly below the house, where we often saw lobsters tucked into the very back, they would come out to touch their antennas to our wiggling fingers.
The cottage was the guest cottage to the big house, a beautiful 2 story house with a great lawn, the center formed by a collapsed cave. Lots of trees, Casaurinas, Frangipani, Hibiscus, Oleanders, and the border of the property left wild, Asparagus fern, Fennel and a little poison ivy. Our cottage had a tiny lawn on one side but the front was steep, dropping sharply 20 feet above the water, left wild. The back of the house was narrow with a high wall behind. A planter had been built that was as high as the walls of the cottage. Nothing much grew there except some scraggily geraniums as there was very little sun. The wall continued up several more feet and above was the beginnings of Mrs. Wilkinson’s estate. Her house was on the point of the small peninsula that defined one side of the cove. But her carriage house was above us.
Over the years it was converted to a proper cottage. Mrs. Wilkinson actually lived in it for a time while her house underwent repairs from a fire. I remember the day. The smoke was horrendous, pouring out from under the roof, rolling like a massive storm front.
Eventually she moved back home and the cottage, having by now been completely renovated, was let to young newlyweds. He was the son of a Bermudian of Scottish heritage. I believe his wife was American, a lovely girl, unfortunately afflicted with Lupus.
One beautiful evening as the sun was setting across the Sound, bagpipes began to play the most sublimely romantic yet sorrowful music I had ever heard. I gave myself over to all the emotions I’d held in check for so long, laughing and crying quietly so not to miss a single note. Forgetting to breathe, as if that would keep me in the moment.
It was the young man. John was his name. He was playing the Piobrochs (Piobaireachd), ancient Scottish music developed along with the evolution of the pipes. The music was written to commemorate the many occasions of man; gatherings, a call-to-arms, weddings, funerals and to honour fallen heroes.They are powerful, they are transcendent, they are cathartic. They invade your heart, causing it to expand and overflow with emotions, turning your sadness to anguish, your joy to elation, your yearnings to lust. Having grown up in Canada, my listening experiences with bagpipes varied but never ever included this music, the truth of the pipes. Yes, I found them rousing when the Black Watch or the RCMP, went on parade with drums and kilts, and fantastic headdresses, but mostly the music was always the same, Amazing Grace, and other songs of that ilk and if the piper was mediocre, well you understand.
I went to visit my neighbour the next day and he told me how he had come to learn to play the bagpipes and those legendary Scottish airs. He’d been trained by a master piper, a friend of his father’s living in New York. He, himself, was a goodly way towards being a master piper and may be one as I write these words many years later.
As always, I like to see what folks are reading, what art they have on their walls and as I gazed around the tiny cottage, my eyes discerned a framed letter. I went for a closer look and discovered it was signed by John Lennon, with the pencil drawing of his face that I’m sure we all recognize. I don’t remember reading the letter, I probably didn’t. As I grew up, my psyche was formed by hard and fast rules, the most important being, “one must never pry”. A bad thing to have if you want to be a writer. I was left to assume that this young man had bought it from some auction house, some estate sale. I was in the process of leaving my husband which meant leaving Bermuda, so I missed the adventure of getting to know this young couple.
John Lennon was for me a hero of my generation. I suppose he was a disappointment to his first wife and son, to some of his friends and colleagues, pulled as he was in many directions by his art and his humanity. Caught in a tug of war by people, friends, fans, strangers, who needed him to be only one of the many potential lives he had in him to be. But he found a way in the end to be almost all, if not all, of the men who made up the whole of John Lennon. Or so I believe. His death was unlooked for, uncalled for, knocking the breath from your lungs, propelling you to your knees in grief, but somehow inevitable. We can’t seem to rest easy with greatness in our midst. Some of us ‘dirty rascals’ need to defeat the ‘kings and queens’ of the castles.
In the stories of John Lennon in Bermuda, I read of his sail across the Atlantic, his time with his son, and the first hand accounts of his new found friends. The places he visited, the adventures he had. He and Sean rented a lovely cottage near the city of Hamilton where they spent a time most revitalizing and inspirational. It came to him one evening, a glorious sound over the waters and through the oleanders. The Piobrochs came to him I think as it came to me. He wrote a letter to the Piper. The very same I saw framed in that tiny cottage on Harrington Sound. My eyes can never more behold a sunset without my ears straining to hear the Piobrochs. And learning that John shared the same experience as I did, my thoughts often turn to him as well.
