Dear Kathy, Charles, Simon, Lyndall and Margaret, and Friends of Nicholas,
It was a huge shock for all of us to hear about Nicholas` death last Sunday afternoon. He died as the result of a climbing accident on the mountain which he loved so much. He would have been 22 years old in two weeks' time.
The fact that there are so many of us here today speaks volumes about Nicholas as a person; particularly as he was a person who, since his early teens, was acutely aware of being somehow different to those around him and who felt himself to be something of an outsider in nearly all the circles in which he moved. When we look back over his life, as it was my privilege to do together with his family in these past days, and when we try to form a picture of who he is, we soon discover that from birth to death there is nothing which one would call "ordinary" about his whole life. He was truly an exceptional person who led an exceptional life filled with exceptional energy and enthusiasm.
He was born shortly after midnight on 4 th April 1984 in the False Bay Hospital in Fish Hoek. The birth itself was uncomplicated but outside of the hospital there was turmoil. The whole mountain around Fish Hoek was engulfed in the flames of a raging runaway bush fire. In retrospect this seemed like an omen of his own fiery enthusiasm which was later to become one of the dominating characteristics of his life.
Nicholas was a very easy child. He was strong and healthy with a huge appetite, boundless energy and a great dislike of shoes, all of which remained with him for the rest of his life. When he was two the family moved from St. James to Kenilworth where Simon, his brother, was born. Once Nicholas had got used to the idea of having a sibling they became inseparable. Their imaginations fired up by stories that Kathy told them about children sailing around the lake district, they proceeded to turn everything at hand into a boat. The flagship was the jungle gym in the garden which was fitted with mast and sails, rudder and keel, and together they sailed the world. Later Lyndall joined the merry crew but Nicholas never relinquished his position as the skipper who made all the important decisions. He knew that the third crew member was going to be girl because he had wished for a sister at the wishing well in Kirstenbosch. It was as simple as that. This conviction that he would eventually get what he strove for never left him.
At a very young age he revealed his ability to lead others through the contagious effect of his wild imagination. Kathy relates how at three years of age he was taken to a playground in Rondebosch where a group of boys more than twice his age were lounging around kicking their heels against an old car and looking bored. Little Nicholas marched up to the group and said "Can't you see that that's a fire engine you're sitting on; can't you see that that jungle gym is a house that's on fire and that we've got to put it out!" In no time at all they were caught up in his picture and became enthusiastic fire men quite willing to follow the orders of their little fire chief. This lively imagination meant that nothing in the world looked ordinary through his eyes. Every plank was a potential boat, every piece of scrap metal became a fantastical machine and his flagship was equipped with a legendary engine room. Throughout his life he woke up hungry and rearing to go and he wouldn't let up until he fell into bed again that night.
He was six when this zest for life first focused on music. Kathy had introduced them all to Mozart and his musical feats as a young boy. "If Mozart can do it, so can I" said Nicholas. He and Simon proceeded to scratch around in Charles' old music scores, and extracted all the most interesting and complicated looking notes, stuck them together randomly as a piece and proudly presented them to Charles to play on the piano. The cacophonous results of this first effort didn't phase him in the least and at the age of twelve he was interviewed on Fine Music Radio and his latest composition was broadcast live. Although proud as punch at the time this episode became an endless source of excruciating embarrassment later on when he discovered a little more about composition. His best presents ever were a rather dry and boring book on harmony and complimentary tickets to concerts
In the city hall. Nicholas visited as many concerts as he possibly could. At 14 he first received help from Peter Klatzow from U.C.T., who appreciated his enthusiasm and recognized his budding talent. In the last two years he once again became a student of Peter Klatzow, this time officially at U.C.T.
A second passion which he nurtured parallel to his love of music eminated from his days as skipper of the Flagship Jungle-gym. He loved boats and sailing, particularly the technical side of what made boats work, and he would devour boat building books and manuals and he assimilated a great deal of knowledge in this field. This interest led him to the sea cubs and later the sea scouts and it was here that he had his closest circle of friends. It was here that he met up with Timothy Crombie and they became longstanding scouting and hiking friends. They went right through to become Springbok Scouts together. Scouting really appealed to Nicholas as he loved making things and finding creative ways of overcoming obstacles.
Yet another field of interest was his deep felt love of words and poetry. This side of him was nurtured by his grandmother who would read and re-read a poem to him and really enter into the sound of all its words. Words too were not ordinary for him.
Another interest which he developed at the age of 14 was the creative possibilities of photography. Here Ugo Riviera was his guiding mentor and he allowed Nicholas to experiment in his dark room. He loved the interplay of light and darkness, of sun and colour, of form and texture and he looked at the world with hungry artist's eyes, always looking for the extraordinary behind the commonplace.
Nicholas was very bright and he sailed through school without any effort at all. This allowed him to devote a great deal of time and energy to his outside interests. One particular chapter of his Waldorf Education which made a profound impression on him was the Parsival Camp in Class Twelve where the whole class hiked the length of the Peninsula mountains from Cape Point to Table Mountain, each night hearing episodes of the Parsival story. On the one hand this awakened a new love of the Cape mountains; on the other, it fed his deeply enquiring mind and awoke new questions about human existence and our role on earth. This in turn led to a very earnest study of the works of Rudolf Steiner. After school the study of Anthroposophy became one of his main focuses of interest particularly his grappling with the Philosophy of Freedom. He lived with huge questions about the world and the state of humanity in the modern world and he wanted to explore these and bring about change together with other young people. He threw himself into youth work in the Kgotla conferences, meetings and concerts. He loaded himself up with endless tasks in this regard while studying composition at U.C.T. at the same time. There were times when his questions and concerns would almost overwhelm him and he would seek refuge in his music.
It seemed incongruous with this torrent of life that it should so suddenly come to an end. At first when something as inexplicable as this happens we are almost consumed by our own sense of loss and bereavement. For we have lost a loved member of our community, a friend, a brother, a son. We are shocked and wounded. We need to mourn and to heal.
And yet there is another truth hidden in every tragedy, in every illness, in every death, and it is the gradual realization of this truth which helps us most in our healing and gives direction and purpose to our mourning. This truth is that despite the weight of the loss, there is also something very precious to be gained in it. This is very difficult for us to accept, just as it is difficult for us to grasp the sense behind his death in the midst of a young life so full of promise. But we can know that his zest for life, his energy and his enthusiasm for discovery are not lost to us. They are transformed into a quite different arena and realm of working. Perhaps Nicholas understood this.
A fairy story to which Nicholas composed a very dramatic and stirring piece of music and which he and Simon often played, was the Golden Key. It is a very short story about a young boy who discovers a golden key buried under the snow while looking for firewood. "Where there is a key there must be a lock" he says and he searches further until he finds a buried chest. At first he finds no keyhole. He perseveres and eventually finds a tiny keyhole and the key fits perfectly. The story ends:
So, he began turning it, and now we must wait until he unlocks the chest completely and lifts the cover. That's when we'll learn what wonderful things he found.
This could almost be Nicholas' own story. In it he is the boy who having discovered the key then uncovers a chest full of treasure within his own being. Through his dying the treasure chest is not lost. It is filled with unlived life forces and unfulfilled will impulses which do not simply evaporate into nothingness. Rather, they became available to all of us still here in a physical body on earth. His youthful being is a source of inspiration and guidance from which he would wish us to draw and in doing so enable him to work on.
Our task is now to find the key to the chest. And each of us has our own key. We find this key by nurturing a new and quite different relationship to him. This we can do by turning to him in our thoughts and dwelling on our very best memories of him. We can turn to him in our prayers, praying that he manages to move on in the tasks he has now to fulfill. We can direct our study of spiritual matters towards him so that he too is enriched by our efforts. In all of these we will be doing a very real deed of love which assists him on his path and opens up a new and free communion with him. It is in these loving and prayerful endeavours freely offered that we will find the key which will make it possible for him to inspire us out of his golden treasure chest.
Nicholas does indeed have a future and we have a part in it. It is in actively accompanying him on his future path that our own healing lies. This funeral service is about helping him as he begins this new task; as he takes final leave of his physical bodily nature and through the love of Christ enters into the light of the spirit world.
Perhaps it is fitting to end with a verse by Rudolf Steiner of whom Nicholas was an avid student.
Feel how full of love we look into the heights
Which called you forth to other spheres of work.
Reach out your strength from realms of Spirit
To your friends who are bereaved;
Hear the pleading of our souls
Sent to follow you in trust.
We need here in our work on earth
Strong forces from the Spirit-land
Which we owe in thanks to our dead friends.Rudolf Steiner.
Some 7 or 8 years ago I received a telephone call out of the blue from a young man who announced himself as Nicholas Abbott. He came straight to the point. “I'm a composer” he said “and I want to show you my work”
These little incursions are rare enough in my life to be memorable. I suggested that he come around and bring me his music. On the appointed date his father duly delivered him to 22 Miller Rd and after some introductory chat he handed me a pile of manuscript paper. We sat down together and went over it. It was the first of many such encounters.
What was different about Nick, however, was that he was not seeking approval or compliments. He genuinely wanted to discuss music seriously, and he genuinely wanted to learn. What was impressive and helpful was the fact that he was already an excellent pianist and also knew an uncommon amount of music. He would turn up thereafter at 6-monthly intervals, always with new break-throughs in his music, and with more repertoire accumulated.
Soon he took to arriving on his bike, and then momentously one day informed me that if all went well, he would drive himself to my house the next time. Well it went, and the next time I saw Nick at Miller Rd, he was on four wheels rather than two. Thereafter we met regularly at College.
Nick's first two years at our wonderful College must have been frustrating. He had absorbed so much of this knowledge from his previous teachers, or had found it out for himself. He was indeed, an incredible autodidact. It was clear from our discussions that he was rapidly gaining ground in all directions. He had already scored major successes with his first Symphonic movement, played in the City Hall by the Beau Soleil orchestra and treated to a standing ovation by an enthralled audience. His piano trio was studied and performed at the Chamber Music Festival in Franschhoek. Nick wasn't merely incredibly talented – he had a gift for opening doors and making his music heard. It is a very valuable attribute for a composer to have. There was no doubt, with his personal originality, his creative flair, his drive and enthusiasm; Nick was marked for huge success. A lose stone on the mountain put an end to all of that.
I had not realised until after he had gone what a multi-talented and interested person Nick was. Of course we always discussed music. I had no idea of his Sea Scout activities, or of the mountain climbing. I had no inkling of his other intellectual and spiritual pursuits. Nick invested furiously in a multitude of activities, almost as though he knew he had to drain everything out of every day, and that there would not be many of them. I'll not forget our last encounter, a few days before the fateful weekend. We met on the steps in Strubenholm. With the mock formality we sometimes adopted I said “Hello, Mr Abbott” I paused and then said “Gosh, that sounds like Mr Rabbit!” His eyes twinkled, but he said seriously, “Yes, and you will understand why I will never call any son of mine Christopher!” There will be no sons now, and all those fiery promises of creativity and individuality must be developed on a different plane to ours. We can only guess what he might have done, or become. Go well, Nick. Your time with us was unbearably short.
Peter Klatzow DMus
Concerts Portfolio and Professor of CompositionCollege of Music
Faculty of Humanities, University of Cape Town
Rondebosch 7700 SOUTH AFRICA
Phone: (home) 683 9766 (UCT) 650 2626
websites: http://www.klatzow.uct.ac.za/index.html
see also http://www.commotio.org/Recordings.htm
I think I speak for everyone at College when I say that to have known Nicholas Abbott was a wonderful privilege.
Nicholas was passionate about music, and about sharing that passion with others, whether he was studying it, listening to it, talking about it, or, most importantly, writing his own brilliant compositions.
In these activities, and in a host of others - cycling, hiking, sailing, or making his own richly-coloured clothes - he illuminated everything and everyone that came into contact with him with the bright glow of his irresistible enthusiasm.
That light will continue to shine in the spirit of each one of us.
Nicholas, we salute you, and we thank you for sharing with us your all too brief existence.
May you rest in peace.
Hendrik Hofmeyr
A/Prof. Head, Division of History, Theory and Literature
SA College of Music, UCT
This is about and for Nicholas Abbott, known to most of you as Nic.
Did he ever feel despair? I wonder. And if so what was its colour?
He lived his life so positively, attempting to fill it to the brim, not only with doing but with being too. He was moved by the world. When he used the word "awesome" he meant it in its true sense; whatever it was touched him deeply, moved him spiritually, filled him with awe.
So I think of him as a man of fullness, full of colour, full of sound, full of himself.
He connected us together, look at all the people here today, how different we are in age, status, interests, capacities. And that was a feature of his 21st Birthday celebration too. It was a demonstration and a celebration of difference.
The upcoming conference he was involved in organising is titled "Myself in Creation" and that describes Nicholas to a T. He was at work discovering himself. By being truly himself, truly individual, he could connect across what often divides people, linking us loosely. He refused to align himself with some generality of being, some collective response. But I think that the "creation" referred to in that title was not only of himself, it was also the unfolding universe that he was an active part of.
In my own interactions with Nicholas I experienced his gentle patience as he encouraged me (as an inept beginner cellist) to be a part of something he had composed for a get-together of our two families. One piece was A Divertimento for Weird Ensemble. The mistakes and strange sounds I made must have been awful (as opposed to awesome) to his musical ear and yet he included me in the whole (for the weird effect possibly). At the other extreme in our relationship was when he would come to me as the expert, asking for advice or information about the mind, for example, or a fairy tale. And in spite of being so musical he would ask my young daughter her opinion on whether an oboe part that he had written was acceptable from an oboist's standpoint. There was no false pretence in him and so he could and did seek advice from those more expert than himself in whatever field, and so he continued to grow, to create himself.
Arriving at 22 Wargrave Rd was always something of an adventure. Having negotiated the gate, and the created products of years at Michael-Oak and Frank Joubert, and having followed the arrowed instructions to "press here", one would try and guess who was following the barking to the front-door. If the rhythmic thumps suggested some animal with springs under its feet then one knew Nicholas would be opening that door. But how (I'm tempted to say "if") he would be dressed was anybody's guess. Boxer shorts, a wrap-around sarong, or an outlandish pair of pantaloons flaming with his own imaginative creativity might grace his lower half. His upper torso was often naked like a statue of a Greek god, and topping the lot, the hair . This efflorescence might be wildly afire or extinguished severely in a damp ponytail, (usually when he was working); on one occasion it was in a Mohawk style on another it was entirely absent.
I loved the way Nicolas engaged directly with one, he was immediately present, even in a five-minute exchange, and his mixture of intellect and humour was always invigorating.
One of the areas in which we connected was around space or emptiness or what I call the Void. The question of what lies behind or within; what comes before, and what remains after, the manifestation that is LIFE. For Nicholas music symbolised LIFE and at first I thought that silence represented for him its absence. (The absence of both music and life) Later, when I listened to his composition The Golden Key, I could understand that for him particularly music is composed of both sound and silence. They have equal weight and together express both the emptiness and the fullness of life, but also that which was before and is ever after.
In one conversation he attempted to express an idea that is probably inexpressible in words. This was of a sort of "Ideal" form of music that came from on high, from spirit, from emptiness, from the universe. Perhaps this "ideal" form was like the sound beyond sound, the God behind God. Is that "sound beyond sound" silence? the sound of silence? Possibly, but that silence is one in which all sound and thus all music and all life has its source .
Nicholas contrasted this ideal, "from on high" music to the "below" music, the earthbound, physical "acoustic café" type music. And both were important to him; the music of the senses, of the body, and that from beyond the senses. To watch him dance with such vigorous delight, filled with the throb of the music but reaching outward with his head and hair, one could feel an attempt by the carnal body to break through to another plane.
It occurs to me that his capacity to explore those ideas about emptiness or silence was made possible by the love and containment but also the space within the family that Kathy and Charles created. (I think of a shallow bowl containing that family.) Space in which he could be himself. (And this is true for Lyndall and Simon too. In the loving non intrusive space in which they live, they can flower and do flower, co-creating their own unique selves.)
I am going to play about 5 minutes from the end of Mahler's last completed symphony, the ninth, because it demonstrates the sense of man (one could also say consciousness) in relation to something much greater. Some would call that greaterness God, some emptiness, some the Oneness of All. (The Great Mother, eternal silence etc ) You can hear Mahler's idea of that relationship as the high voice of the violin interacts with the deeper strings. At length man's voice, the violin, dies or becomes incorporated in the other, and at the very end God's voice leaves us too. We are abandoned to silence. Perhaps in that silence is the sound beyond sound.
I would ask you to listen to this very quiet piece as silently, attentively and patiently as you can. You will have to strain to hear. Closing your eyes may help. You may hear Nicholas, returned to the source, within its silences.
Dr Paul Ashton
March, 2006 |
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