"The Church of Brian Wilson: Where My Faith Lives"

The Church of Brian Wilson: Where My Faith Lives

Back cover of God Only Knows: The Story of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys & the California Myth, by David Leaf. Photo by Jeff McEvoy.

Commentary compliments of and ©  by  Aimee T. Perhach

“Faith is homesickness. Faith is a lump in the throat. Faith is less a position on than a movement toward.” — Frederick Buechner

“God only knows what I’d be without you.”

God only knows what I’d be without Brian Wilson.

It is no exaggeration to say that his music saved my life. It is his music that has sustained me through every personal and existential crisis since early 2019. When I first listened to Pet Sounds in its entirety, it was a musical experience that, despite growing up deeply musical, was like none I had ever experienced before.

More to the point of this piece, despite growing up deeply religious, it was a spiritual experience like none I had ever known before.

I was 26 when I first listened to Pet Sounds all the way through. I had certainly known and loved “God Only Knows” for a long time, and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” stood out to me when I had heard an album dissection on a radio program a few years prior in honor of the 50th anniversary of Pet Sounds. And yet, even then I didn’t seek the album out. The only way I can account for that was that it just wasn’t the right time for me to truly hear it yet. Perhaps everything happens at the time it is meant to. That’s what I would like to believe, anyway.

I will say that the first night I heard it — late at night, all alone in the dark — it was like being struck by lightning. I walked around in a daze for days thinking only of what I had heard, and spending every spare moment I could, listening again. I looked for every scrap of information I could find about that music… and the man who created it. Nothing was ever the same for me. It’s not that everything suddenly got better, because it didn’t.

But suddenly… I wasn’t going through my pain alone.

Brian Wilson himself said in an interview in 1988 with David Leaf (quoted in his book, God Only Knows: The Story of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys & the California Myth): “We wanted somebody somewhere to understand what we’d gone through, and at the same time they could say, ‘Well, I did too. And I can vouch that I went through the same thing. I feel very close to that song.’ You know, that’s the same old story for years now — people say, ‘I love that song.’ What they’re really saying is, ‘That song makes me feel spiritual.’ You know, that’s all it is. It takes away fear. It adds strength. It’s life-supporting.”

For an artist who usually reveals himself only on vinyl, this was a remarkable revelation. It had always been easier for him to bare his soul on record. Consider a song like “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times.” A song about the struggle to belong, to be part of something. It’s a song for me. Or for someone like me who is the perpetual outsider, who has never known what it is to “fit in”…for someone who experiences great anguish when those old feelings come on where I become painfully self-aware of my lack of belonging. It’s like the world is a puzzle and everyone fits together, and I’m never the right piece. Brian sings, “Sometimes I feel very sad.”

As another example: “Midnight’s Another Day” is a latter day song of Brian’s that struck a deep chord with me. It serves as an accurate description of the chronic depression I live with. The same feeling of estrangement and detachment described in “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times.”

All these voices

All these memories

Made me feel like stone.

All these people

They make me feel so alone.

And yet, at one point I realized that this song didn’t just resonate with me on just an emotional level. It also spoke to my spiritual struggles, as well. This was akin to the dark night of the soul of which Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross wrote, most notably in his works Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night. God is sometimes most revealed in the way His absence is felt. And the entire song is filled with this absence, and with the longing for God that is, in itself, an experience of God.

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Brian is no stranger to sadness. He grew up, as I did, in an abusive home. In the words of his biographer and friend David Leaf, “Music became his escape. His comfort. His solace. The place where he sought and found refuge.” I had a similar relationship to music throughout my childhood. I was always listening to music. I studied instruments, primarily piano and flute. I became interested in composing and arranging. Even when I wasn’t actively playing or listening, music was ever present in every moment of my life. This continues to be true to this day.

Perhaps the most explicit example of this is a song like “In My Room.” A song about having a refuge, a sanctuary, a private place where one is safe. For me there has never been such a physical place. But music and literature, the twin passions of my life, have always given me some measure of safety. And since 2019, it has been Brian’s music that has given me the most security, a place where I can feel unguardedly myself.

The same music that drove David Leaf to write his first book on Brian saved me. One day in May 2019, I came very close to ending my life. The urge to listen to two last songs saved me. “‘Til I Die” — a song of resignation, that even though things are bleak, and may always be bleak, well, one can just go along with it. He sings that he’s “a cork on the ocean,” “a rock in a landslide,” “a leaf on a windy day,” and life will happen, but there is no need to take a desperate action to bring it to a premature end. Not remotely a song of hope, but one of acceptance.

The other song was “Surf’s Up,” a stunning song from the legendary SMiLE. Album. In Jules Siegel’s article on SMiLE, “Goodbye Surfing, Hello God! The Religious Conversion of Brian Wilson,” Brian dissects the lyrics of the song. He describes one line as follows: “I heard the word — of God; wonderful thing — the joy of enlightenment, of seeing God. And what is it? A children’s song. And then there is the song itself; the song of children; the song of the universe rising and falling in wave after wave, the song of God, hiding His love from us, but always letting us find Him again, like a mother singing to her children.”

Listening to this song, in all its beauty and its sadness, the waves of music and emotion, gave me a glimpse, if even for a moment, of that hidden God. A God who, despite my lifetime of religious adherence, and serious involvement, as well as a degree in Theology, I never really felt I knew, or experienced.

This is something that Brian’s music gives me, something I can’t find in anything else, though I have searched a lifetime for it. It gives me a sense of love, a sense of being understood. It has become my place of worship.

Brian’s music is the only space I’ve ever really been able to feel any sense of a good and loving God who might not actually send me straight to hell when I die. There’s a sense that for music that beautiful to exist, and for Brian to say that music comes from God, that music is God’s voice, well, maybe there’s much less to be afraid of than I’ve often been led to believe. The love that I experience in Brian’s music helps me to believe that even I could experience love. Maybe not in the people-sense. I’m too much myself for people and when I try to be what they can love, well, then it’s not me who is loved but whatever character I’m trying to play in that context. But my heart, at least, is filled when I experience the music. I can be most fully myself, and feel the love in the music.

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In 1966, Brian described SMiLE , the project he was creating after “Good Vibrations,” as “a teenage symphony to God.” Consider “Our Prayer,” which opens Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE, a musical experience that is deeply woven into the story of my own survival. The song originally appeared on the Beach Boys’ 20/20 album. The seemingly omnipresent Wilson scribe David Leaf, writing in the liner notes for the “twofer” CD reissues in 1990, describes it thus: “Originally recorded in October of 1966 for SMiLE, ‘Our Prayer’ is a wordless rhapsody. The Beach Boys, with just their voices, can create indescribable magic. Listening to ‘Our Prayer,’ you feel like you’ve been transported back to the Middle Ages to hear a Gregorian Chant in some medieval cathedral.”

Jules Siegel describes it even more vividly: “Like medieval choirboys, the voices of the Beach Boys pealed out in wordless prayer from the last acetate, thirty seconds of chorale that reached upward to the vaulted ceilings of an empty cathedral lit by thousands of tiny candles, melting at last into one small, pure pool that whispered a universal amen in a sigh without words.”

“Our Prayer” is a fleeting moment in the presence of God. A wordless gasp of awe in contemplation of the utterly transcendent. (And, ultimately, the perfect blessing for the beginning of Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE.)

My whole life has been in pursuit of elusive beauty, and in the space of this prayer, I felt that I had found it, if only for a fleeting moment. It’s the same feeling, perhaps even stronger, than the feeling I get from the beautiful choral singing that, in part, drew me from Roman Catholicism to Orthodox Christianity. God speaks to me — fills my heart — in moments of such sublime beauty.

Perhaps now would be a good time to mention: A degree in theology taught me a great deal about the intellectual difference between the two traditions. What my studies really taught me, though, is how little we actually know about God. God is so much bigger than any one religious tradition, and nobody has a monopoly on God. There is much I treasure about my Catholic past and my Orthodox present. But, to once again quote David Leaf, “I don’t say this to be blasphemous, but music is my religion. The place where my faith has been most rewarded.”

I began this piece by quoting Frederick Buechner, an American writer and theologian who passed away last year. It hasn’t been easy for me to reconcile the idea that my faith is significantly less than doctrinal, despite my education. That the movement of my heart is not contained in definitions and explanations and movements of the intellect.

I wrote about this homesickness before, in an essay I wrote for an assignment in a college writing class. Our assignment was to write an essay of a certain length, and the title had to be “Where I’m From.” My classmates wrote about the cities and towns and neighborhoods they grew up in. I wrote about being created by God and how the goal in this life is to live so as to return to God when I die.

Please indulge me as I quote my “ancient” essay.

According to Plato, the soul originates in the world of the Forms, a place of perfection, and the journey of the soul through this earthly life is simply a journey to try to return to this world of Forms. This phenomenon is known as metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls. Christian belief is something similar. Christians believe that the soul is created by God, and our goal in this life is to live so as to return to God when we die.…

By virtue of the “otherworldly” nature of my roots, articulating any sense of “where I’m from” becomes rather awkward. On face value, my words probably seem downright nutty to one who does not share my faith. Plato certainly seems nutty to many of us now with his belief in metempsychosis and the world of the Forms. How can I explain that where I am from is from something, somewhere, that does not even fully exist at this time, and that isn’t even a place or a thing, anyway? Human language completely breaks at the prospect of such attempted articulation.

Yet, the truth remains: I am not at home in the world. I am not “from” here. Not only is this not my final destination, there is no point along my journey thus far that I can fully claim origination. Physically, I came from dust, from particles that have been circulating for time unknown, and, physically, to dust, I will, indeed, return. Spiritually, my soul was created by God, comes from God, and seeks to return to God. That is my home. That is “where I’m from.”

At the time I wrote this, I hadn’t yet heard Pet Sounds. I had not heard “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times.” I had not seen David Leaf’s beautiful documentary Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson & The Story of SMiLE nor heard the album itself. I had not read Leaf’s landmark book on Brian. I was still two years away from the musical encounter that would help me to find solace in my loneliness, a musical home for my soul.

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In the liner notes for the marvelous The Pet Sounds Sessions, Brian Wilson said, “When I was making Pet Sounds, I did have a dream about a halo over my head but people couldn’t see it. But now that I think of it, a halo is what I have over my head. God was with us the whole time we were doing the record. God was right there with me. I could see — I could feel that feeling in my head. In my brain.”

In these same liner notes, Brian notes, in regards to “God Only Knows”: “Carl {his youngest brother} and I were into prayer. We’d pray together, and we prayed for light and guidance through the album. We kind of made it a religious ceremony.”

It is no surprise, then, that an album like Pet Sounds would be a spiritual experience for one who listens with an open heart. An experience that can transform a life. My experience — and that of countless others around the world including Sir Paul McCartney — is the fruit of his spiritual labor, of his own faith, as it were. “Faith is the realization of things hoped for and evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

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To quote, once again, David Leaf: “[H]e wrote music to honor the source of music. As he once said about ‘God Only Knows,’ ‘It’s a love song, but not a love song to a person.’” In both his book on Brian and his essay on Brian’s spirituality, David writes, “Brian once told me, ‘Maybe love and spirituality are about the same. How can you really differentiate love and spirituality?’ For Brian, there isn’t a difference. Brian believes that ‘Music is God’s voice.’ And that may be all we need to know.”

So it may come as a surprise that Brian doesn’t consider “God Only Knows” to be his most spiritual song, but a song from his eponymous solo album from 1988 called “Love and Mercy.” In Brian’s words:

We accomplished what we set out to do, which is to bring some spiritual love to people. We wanted people to be covered with love because there’s no guarantee of somebody waking up in the morning with any love…. Mercy would be a deeper word than love. I would think love is a gentle thing and mercy would be a more desperately needed thing in life… a little break here and there for somebody who’s having trouble… “Love and Mercy” is probably the most spiritual song I’ve ever written.

Quoth David Leaf: “As the lyric says, ‘Love and Mercy is what you need tonight.’ And the last line, ‘Love and Mercy tonight.’ He sings to us. He sings to himself. He sings to the heavens.”

A prominent feature of Orthodox liturgies are the numerous Litanies, to which, for each invocation, we respond “Lord have mercy.” Everybody needs a break, a cessation of troubles, a relief from their pain. As David notes about Brian’s body of work, “There are so many songs filled with the longing for peace, for the surcease of pain.” In the words of the Litany: “For our deliverance from all affliction, wrath, danger and necessity, let us pray to the Lord.” “Lord, have mercy.” Brian, in his own way, is a truly deep theologian.

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In 1977, Brian was working on a new album for the Beach Boys. He said in an interview, “I have been utilizing the studio as my writing environment. It’s a good environment. There’s a circular stained glass window right behind the piano, which gives it a little spiritual effect in the studio and I feel secure there.” Brian wanted to call this album Brian Loves You. As he told a reporter, “Jesus loves you. Brian loves you. Same thing. No different. It’s the same concept. It’s a spiritual idea.”

To understand this spiritual idea, it is helpful to turn to Scripture. It is not my intention to be blasphemous, but a striking parallel suggests itself.

The Book of Isaiah has always been a great favorite of mine for its poetic beauty, even in moments of sadness. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Songs of the Suffering Servant, which Christians interpret to be a prophecy of the ministry and suffering of Christ. For this reason, the Book of Isaiah is often referred to as the Fifth Gospel, for no other prophet is quoted as often in the New Testament as Isaiah is. Brian Wilson, our “musical Messiah” has his own Prophet Isaiah, in the form of David Leaf. The parallels (not deliberate on his part) are unmistakably vivid. I will allow the texts to speak for themselves here:

Isaiah: “He will not cry out, nor shout, nor make his voice heard in the street. A bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench.” (42:2)

Isaiah: “I, the LORD, have called you for justice, I have grasped you by the hand; I formed you, handset you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.” (42:6–7)

David: “The thing about Brian Wilson that may be even more inspiring than his music is that as a person, he strives to heal. Brian Wilson is a healer. He wants the feeling expressed in his music to make people feel better, to take away the pain from their suffering. And Brian Wilson is really a soul artist in that respect.”

Isaiah: “I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who tore out my beard; My face I did not hide from insults and spitting.” (50:6)

Isaiah: “Yet it was our pain that he bore, our sufferings he endured. We thought of him as stricken, struck down God and afflicted, but he was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes us whole, by his wounds we were healed.

We had all gone astray like sheep, all following our own way; but the LORD laid upon him the guilt of us all.

Though harshly treated, he submitted and did not open his mouth; like a lamb led to slaughter or a sheep silent before shearers, he did not open his mouth.

Seized and condemned, he was taken away. Who would have thought any more of his destiny? For he was cut off from the land of the living, struck for the sins of his people. He was given a grave among the wicked, a burial place with evildoers, though he had done no wrong, nor was deceit found in his mouth.” (Isaiah 53:4–9)

David: “He really believes the Testament, do unto others, turn the other cheek. In fact, Brian has turned the other cheek so many times I think he’s got whiplash. He would rather hurt himself than hurt another person.”

Brian certainly has had more than his share of suffering, often at the hands of others. The abuse he suffered from his father, from what he calls his “nine years in prison” at the mercy of an unethical (to put it mildly) psychologist who manipulated Brian’s mental state to serve his own purposes, and from a myriad of others who put their greed ahead of his need, all took their toll on him. All too often, he sacrificed what was best for himself in order to suit the needs of others. Tragically, this self-sacrifice would often send him spiraling into self-destructive behaviors that considerably heightened his suffering. But, from time to time, even in the midst of his suffering, his “soul would come out to play,” as he described moments of creativity in the marvelous Don Was documentary, I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times.

In a conversation I recorded with David last year, he offered a further insight:

Who knows better than Brian where this music comes from? As the years and the decades went by, as I watched this person go through unbelievable trials and tribulations that would have made Job’s life look easy, he continued to suffer, and accepted that suffering, and it made his art greater. It’s a cliche to say, “All artists suffer,” but I think in the case of Brian Wilson, the pain that he experienced through the abuse that he experienced in his life, the only answer for him was creating joyous music that would give him relief from pain, that would give him momentary peace. And because of the depth of his pain, the music he created ended up doing that for us, as well.

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On Sunday, July 24, 2022, I had, perhaps, the most meaningful experience of my life — a “pilgrimage” of sorts to see Brian Wilson in concert. It brought me full circle from that moment in May 2019, when I was saved by listening to Brian’s music as well as by reflecting on his story as I understood it then, how he survived his personal hell for so long, and how he ultimately triumphed, even to the point of finishing and performing SMiLE, a project that haunted him across the decades.

The day after the concert, I wrote about my experience, how deeply moved I was to hear this beloved music performed live, to look upon the man I credit with saving my life.

Watching Brian slowly make his way off stage sparked a particular memory for me, a connection that had subconsciously implanted itself in my mind when I read about Brian’s 2005 visit to the Vatican, which included a moment before the tomb of Pope John Paul II. As a devout Catholic girl, Pope John Paul II had loomed large in my heart, and I remember how closely I followed the reports of his decline, his final illness, and, ultimately, his death. I remember that well before he was in any grave condition, years, really, how great an example he set as he struggled with Parkinson’s, how he showed us that suffering does not render one’s value any less. Rather, it should serve to increase your reverence for the gift of life, and for the courage that it takes to endure suffering.

As I watched Brian slowly retreat out of sight, I said a prayer thanking God for Brian’s courage, for giving him the strength to endure all those years, for giving him the right people in his life who were finally able to help him and give him the care and love he so desperately needed all those years, and, finally, for this moment that I had experienced, “for a beauty so rare.”

Brian has never hidden his suffering from us, even when he, himself, has hidden. He has endured so much, with his famous “will power,” and he has given of himself so many times, in so many ways. David Leaf once said of Brian, “I don’t think he thinks he was put on earth to be happy.” For how little happiness he has known in his life, he sure has given so much happiness to others, myself included. My presence here is a testament to that. My life has been profoundly changed through my joyous encounters with his music.

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Of course, Brian “isn’t just a musical genius, or a musical Jesus,” as his prophet (that would be the aforementioned Mr. Leaf) once reminded me. Brian has his shortcomings. He is, after all, human. But I don’t need my heroes to be perfect. Perfect love does not require perfection from the one who is loved. I know that I love imperfectly. I strive to grow in purity of heart every day.

But I also know that, in writing this, I have found something akin to faith, a faith that had been so severely shaken. It may not be the kind of faith that others may expect me to have, or that they will understand, but it is the kind of faith I can feel in my heart, that “homesickness,” that “lump in the throat,” that “movement toward,” of which Frederick Buechner wrote.

Thank you, Brian, for your indescribably wonderful gift.

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POSTSCRIPT: THE PROPHET

In an interview with David Leaf, I asked him about his doctrinal faith. “I was born and raised Jewish, went to Hebrew school, was Bar Mitzvah’ed at 13. But, for the most part, I am not observant. For over a half century, I have worshipped at the Church of Brian Wilson. We begin as fans, short for fanatics. I’m proud to be part of that cult. There are those who don’t like the form my worship has taken. For the most part I don’t care, because I did, and have always done, what I thought was the right thing. Brian and I have been friends for a long time, and it has been the greatest joy of my life that I have been able to present his story to those who are also, like me, fans.

“More importantly,” Leaf continued, “the experiences I have had in doing this have restored my faith, because the journey I’ve been on can only be described as a spiritual one, a calling born from hearing two songs, ‘‘Til I Die’ and ‘Surf’s Up.’ I have been on a mission since I first heard those songs in 1971.”

It has always been significant to me that the two songs that saved and transformed my life were the same two songs that inspired David all those years before and profoundly changed the course of his life. For him, those songs were the beginning of his prophetic calling.

In his own essay on the spiritual nature of Brian’s music, David writes, “There is now an almost inexplicable aspect to my story too. How did I become his friend, trusted to be the primary chronicler of this great artist? Well, looking back at the way events unfolded, one could say it was something of a miracle. Or that I was just following a divinely inspired path.”

Many years ago, his great friend Kevin Gershan, weary of hearing David’s predictions come true — and in tribute to his prominent proboscis — nicknamed David “NOSEstradamus.” The joke aside, I am obviously not the only one who perceived this underappreciated aspect of David’s work: the prophetic tone in which he writes and speaks of Brian. As I noted above, at least on a subconscious level, it would almost appear that David was channeling the prophet Isaiah in some of his pronouncements about Brian.

This led me back into one of my favorite texts that I read in the course of my theological studies: The Prophets, by Abraham Heschel. Heschel, himself, was something of a prophet. A renowned rabbi and scholar, he made it out of Hitler’s Europe just in time. His sisters, still living in their native Poland, most tragically did not make it. But Heschel did not sit comfortably in his new life in America. Instead, he dedicated his life to service. As a professor, he inspired his students to action, and he took action himself, advocating especially for Civil Rights and, later, for peace in Southeast Asia. So when he published The Prophets in 1962, he wasn’t merely writing as a scholar. He was writing as someone looking at the world around him and reflecting on a role that was much needed in that world he inhabited.

The first chapter of his book is titled, “What Manner of Man Is the Prophet?” He outlines certain qualities common to the biblical prophets. Several of them struck me as apt descriptions of David Leaf, himself. I asked David to comment on certain points, but much of what follows is pure reflection, as I draw Heschel into the conversation.

Heschel writes, first and foremost, that the prophet has a “sensitivity to evil.” In our conversation, David said: “I was always a sensitive person, perhaps too sensitive. I never understood nor do I understand to this day the casual cruelty that is part of humankind. In this particular story, what I think is relevant is that I was at college at a time when I discovered Brian’s story at 19, and we were angry about everything: the war in Vietnam, the lack of attention to environmental issues, the Nixon administration from top to bottom. I grew up in a world where I saw inequality and I didn’t understand it.”

He went on to describe to me the world in which he grew up: inviting one of his best friends home to play in sixth grade, and a neighbor complaining that he brought a black kid into the neighborhood; hearing songs like Spanky and Our Gang’s “Give a Damn,” and taking the train past those same slums and not being able to comprehend the inequality; forming moral judgements, which he describes as “My self-righteous indignation, without understanding the complications, but saying, ‘This is right; this is wrong.’”

As he told me, “I had all this right and wrong in my head when I read about Brian Wilson for the first time. It was clear to me anyway, reading the story that this man needed help. He didn’t need to be used to get publicity. That’s where I was coming from. So when I heard ‘‘Til I Die,’ it was like, ‘Oh my God, not only can he still do it, but this is one of the saddest songs ever written.’”

Heschel writes about the emotional and poetic language that the biblical prophets used as a means of expressing their mission. Here, David applies the role of prophet, not only to himself, but also to Brian: “I guess I was very consistent in my gospel, just always looking for new ways to express the same idea… that Brian was communicating prayers to us. With great melodies and harmonies and otherworldly lead vocals from him.”

In a conversation we recorded last year about the spirituality of Brian’s music, he spoke further of Brian’s own prophetic nature, saying, “As an artist, he could listen to Dylan and the Beatles and know that if the Beach Boys albums didn’t progress, they would become an anachronism. He was just ahead of his time. I guess most prophets are. I guess maybe that’s the definition of a prophet, to be ahead of your time, to see what’s coming and try to prevent it in a sense.” David just as easily could have been speaking of himself in that statement. After all, the first two iterations of the book certainly warned of impending doom if the course of events in Brian’s life went unaltered and no one intervened to save him.

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Heschel: “The prophet seldom tells a story, but casts events. He rarely sings, but castigates. He does more than translate reality into a poetic key: he is a preacher whose purpose is not self-expression or ‘the purgation of emotions,’ but communication. His images must not shine, they must burn… Reading the words of the prophets is a strain on the emotions, wrenching one’s conscience from the state of suspended animation.”

The first time I read God Only Knows: The Story of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys & the California Myth, I read it in two days. I couldn’t put it down, because it had a wrenching emotional power to it. On the first day, I stopped after having read through to the end of the 1985 update. I wanted to sit, for just one night, with the book as it had been in the world since then. With precisely that sense of “suspended animation.”

For when I had read, that first day, I did, indeed, try to suspend all outside knowledge about everything that would come after, and enter purely into the text as it was written in 1978 and then in 1985. I wanted to experience, as best I could, what it was like to perceive everything as the author did.

And yet, I did not anticipate the emotions I would experience from such an exercise. Three years of near-constant obsession with Brian’s music and his story had, I thought, perhaps taken the emotional edge off a bit. Many tears had been shed for Brian’s suffering as I first learned about him, and it wasn’t that it no longer touched my heart, because of course it did, but I was maybe better able to face those sad realities without going all to pieces.

Until I got to the end of the 1985 edition.

As I lay in bed that night, waves of grief washed over me. How very hopeless everything looked. Certainly, David tried to summon a glimmer of hope at the very end, but it was a very faint flicker. Indeed, it would still be some time before Brian would be free to pursue his own life, and to find the “emotional security” that he had previously lacked. That night, for the very first time in a long time, I cried myself to sleep thinking about all that Brian Wilson has suffered. This was, indeed, the work of a prophet.

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According to Heschel, the voice of the prophet is “one octave too high.” He speaks in a tone that grates on the ears of the complacent. As such, he meets with much resistance from those who are being challenged. But he does not listen to the naysayers. “The prophet’s ear perceives the silent sigh.” He is attuned to the unspoken suffering that most others overlook. Was this what David experienced when he was sitting in his college dorm room, discussing Tom Nolan’s article with his roommate, when he arrived at his stunning and prophetic declaration that he was going to move to California, write a book about Brian Wilson, become his friend, and help him finish SMiLE? One can only marvel in wonder and gratitude.

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Heschel: “He is neither ‘a singing saint’ nor ‘a moralizing poet,’ but an assaulter of the mind. Often his words begin to burn where conscience ends.” In the 1985 update of his book, David writes, “To those who know the secret truths, my book may have seemed to be a tremendous invasion of privacy. Those readers were projecting their own experiences into my between-the-lines commentary. I guess when you have a lot of skeletons in your closet, it makes you nervous if somebody starts rummaging around in there, even if they’re only looking for a broom.”

For certain readers of the book to respond so defensively to perceived “assaults” does indeed indicate a troubled conscience. An awareness that one has been caught out in their improprieties, if not entirely exposed. David told those difficult truths in 1978 with a sensitivity that would become a trademark of his work, both in terms of his projects on Brian Wilson, and in every story he has told across a long and staggeringly productive career. And yet, even that sensitivity left guilty parties feeling that their misdeeds had been exposed. Brian’s suffering had not been romanticized in any way, but neither were the actions and reactions of those around him papered over. And, as events would later reveal, almost all of David’s assertions about Brian’s plight would prove quite accurate.

Towards the end of the 1985 update of his book, as he looked back at what he’d originally written and wondered about Brian’s uncertain future, David wrote, “Events will someday make me a fool or a prophet.” Clearly, I’m inclined towards the latter. I could dedicate an entire essay to evaluating the prophetic analysis in his first two editions and their fulfillment in the 2022 update.

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Heschel writes, “To a person endowed with prophetic sight, everyone else appears blind; to a person whose ear perceives God’s voice, everyone else appears deaf.” In our conversation where I asked him to comment on this, David again applied these words to Brian: “To Brian, music is God’s voice, and he’s the channel for Him, so it’s got to be frustrating for him when other people don’t hear it. To say the least.”

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“The prophet’s word is a scream in the night. While the world is at ease and asleep, the prophet feels the blast from heaven.” This “scream in the night,” this “blast from heaven,” translates into a “call to action” to those for whom this prophetic message is intended.

As David told me, “The book was most definitely a call to action to those who had the power to act. I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know what form that action could take. I didn’t understand how difficult it would be for anybody to act. I didn’t understand how intimidating and powerful Brian always has been to everybody. I didn’t understand any of that. I was just trying to shine a light on this so the world would act, whatever that meant. I had no idea what that meant in practicality. In that sense it was — in the tradition of Edward R. Murrow — advocacy journalism. We’re going to shine a light on something, and by shining that light, hope to change it.”

Eventually, happily, this call to action would be heeded, and, not least of all through the actions of David himself, in his unwavering friendship and support of Brian as he embarked on his solo career. After his 1967 crucifixion, Brian would ultimately experience a resurrection such that no other artist before him had ever experienced. This was realized through many wondrous events, not least of all 2001’s All Star Tribute to Brian Wilson and, of course, Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE — a truly formidable feat — and one that one day would save my own life.

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I was thinking about a concept that I learned in my theological studies, one that comes from David’s religious tradition: the concept of tikkun olam, the responsibility we all bear for participating in the healing of the world. We all must do what we can to act for the good and, not only to not do harm, but to find ways to heal the harms that have been done. Sometimes this seems like a daunting mission. But we each have our own ways that we are meant to do this.

I believe that David has lived out this responsibility in the role he has played in bringing healing to Brian Wilson. Brian’s musical healing has also brought healing to countless others. Myself included. I who almost certainly would not be here if Brian hadn’t survived, hadn’t finished SMiLE, hadn’t shown me that life can be endured, no matter what, no matter how great my own pain was. Who can say how many other lives have been similarly saved? I’m very fortunate to be able to be here to write about that now.

I expressed this to David, who responded, “By participating in the healing of Brian, Mr. Wilson was able to bring more heavenly sounds to the world. So none of us take credit for what he did. We just rejoice in the reality that he did it.”

As he wrote so beautifully in his own essay about the spirituality of Brian’s music, “My faith in Brian Wilson, first ignited in 1971, remains as strong as ever, the special place where I can show pure devotion because what he has given me…and millions of my fellow devotees…is a musical world where we can worship whenever we need to. In harmony. That is quite a gift.”

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In closing, I asked David about the challenges of being a prophet. This was his reply:

“First of all, I don’t think of myself as a prophet. I think of myself as a storyteller. It’s more like I’m telling the story of Job over and over again. The challenges were and remain endless. I made the determination early on that I was going to tell the story of a great artist and the challenges he endured in bringing his art to the world. And that was a pretty straightforward thing to do because Brian’s the one who has faced the challenges. He’s the one who has persevered. He could have given up at any number of junctures, and he didn’t. And he gave us as much of himself as he could, given that, I think it’s fair to say that along the way he became a damaged soul.

“But the depth of his soul is so boundless that even with all the trials and tribulations that he had to overcome, he still gave us everything he could. And I believe that he’s given us enough. I think he deserves a good long rest. To enjoy how he brought so much joy to the world. At having created the Church of Brian Wilson. Because what he created is timeless. What he accomplished will outlive all of us.”

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The following books, essays, interviews, and videos were quoted in this piece:

• God Only Knows: The Story of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys & the California Myth, by David Leaf. Available for purchase in the U.S. at https://amzn.to/3zNkbbp and in the U.K. at https://amzn.to/37YYBXf.
• The Prophets, by Abraham J. Heschel.
• David Leaf’s essay on the spirituality of Brian’s music: https://medium.com/@davidleaf/god-only-knows-6efa93790549
• This is the link to a conversation I recorded with David Leaf on this topic: https://soundcloud.com/aimee-perhach-80059338/brian-wilsons-prayer
• Pet Sounds Sessions liner notes.
• Friends/2020 twofer liner notes.
• “Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!: The Religious Conversion of Brian Wilson” by Jules Siegel
• Cover Story episode — Brian Wilson 1988 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYMEOk1ffbs
• Brian Wilson: A Beach Boy’s Tale https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGei5ObvADM
• Sunday With Brian and Joni: https://medium.com/@atperhach/sunday-with-brian-and-joni-517c5b862a85

I made this playlist of Brian Wilson songs that give me a spiritual feeling. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5B6f3HnbKv9YLyBIQQstAA

Brian Wilson

David Leaf

God Only Knows

Music

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