Philosophy

A few weeks after I returned to Europe, last Spring, I had to send my condolences twice. A colleague whom I barely knew very sadly gave birth to a baby that had passed away in the whomb a few days earlier. Maybe a week later one of my famous organ teachers, Piet Kee, passed away at a very high (but not high enough) age, after a very productive life of (in alphabetical order) composing, performing, and teaching (of course, I can’t speak about his personal life).

I told the friend I used to hang out with at the time about this strange coincidence. I got a bit philosophical about it, more, I think, than the friend could deal with.

“I’m obviously not going to say this to the mother of the baby,” I said. “But the thing is, no matter how difficult, to believe that the baby’s life is not worth a penny less than Piet Kee’s.”

My friend tried to avoid a fight, I think.

“Hm,” she said. “Not less valuable, perhaps. But less rich, no?”

I tried to put it differently.

“I mean, for reasons we can obviously not fathom, it was their time to go. For both of them, their life was complete.”

My friend almost got angry, but not quite.

“It was,” I tried one more time, “meant to be that way. For both of them.”

I’ll never forget what she said.

“Well, I just think it was terribly bad luck, for that mother,” she said. (If you know Dutch, the expression my friend used was “domme pech.”)

“You can call it that,” I made one last attempt. “Or Fate. Or God. I like that better than ‘bad luck’. Don’t you?”

She didn’t.

How to measure whether a life is complete? Piet Kee counted on at least another ten years, in the footsteps of his equally famous father. What do we know about the life of an almost-nine-month-old? What do we know about the life that was awaiting him (it was a boy)? But it’s our obligation, I think, to believe that the kiddo’s life was no less meaningful, no less important, no less wonderful than Kee’s. Heck, it’s got to be that way, or the whole universe is a joke.

Remembering Kee (1): At the Cinema

When I came back to The Netherlands in mid-May of this year, it was very much on my mind to visit my old organ teacher Piet Kee. But the first weeks were busy, and I figured there was no hurry in contacting Kee; yes, he was 90 years old, but since his dad had made it to 99, it seemed reasonable to expect that Piet would still be with us for quite a while.

Boy, was that a mistake. Kee passed away within two weeks of my being back in Haarlem.

That’s now almost exactly a month ago and I have spoken about Kee quite a bit with colleagues and close friends. Many, many memories, and my intention is to write them down here, a bit as I get to them (or as they get to me). Here is a first one.

I was reminded of this when I went to see a movie in Haarlem’s outstanding independent cinema, the Filmschuur. We saw The Bookshop, a nice enough movie that I enjoyed watching for the second time, this time in the company of a friend. At the end, as it happens with movies, the titles rolled down the screen. People start leaving the room. We stay seated a little longer.

“Many years ago,” I tell my younger friend, “I went to see a movie in the old Filmschuur, over in the Smedestraat. An Italian movie, Tuscany, beautiful pictures, but goodness knows what it was about. One of those movies.

“Anyway, I walk into the cinema, and there are Piet Kee and his wife. I sit down next to them, how could I not, they were friendly, both parties bien étonnés de se trouver ensemble, so to speak.

“At the end of the film, like now”—I said to my friend—“the titles roll down the screen. People start leaving, but not Piet Kee and his wife, nor, of course, I.

“Piet Kee turns to me. ‘Ik heb zo’n hekel aan mensen die meteen weglopen,’ he says, somewhat quietly, but nonetheless very clearly.” I hate people who walk out immediately (although admittedly ‘hate’ sounds  little too harsh in English.)

“I have often thought about that,” I said to my friend. “Of course, it had nothing to do with music, but in a way everything with Piet Kee’s artistry. Respect for the work of art. For the music. For the performance. And for the performer, of course.”

My friend encouraged me to blog about my memories of Kee, so thanks to her, there’s the first one. Many to come.