The Foreign Service Journal, April 2023

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2023 65 He described in detail his encounters with sea mammals from his tiny motor- boat off the north coast of Greenland, from recent times and years before. He told me how these creatures had lan- guage, and sought to understand his, or appeared to. Though immense and easily able to capsize his tiny boat, instead they befriended him and seemed to share fragments of knowledge and wisdom with him. We rounded the corner at West Seventh Street and came upon a street musician playing a divine interpretation of J.S. Bach. The performance was mes- merizing. I remember a stretch limousine stopping so the passenger could listen for a while. I asked the musician for his name, and I remember it to this day: James Grasseck. Grasseck appeared in The New Yorker some years later, after renting Carnegie Hall with his own funds for a public performance. A string player at times, I was excited to hear this playing. I said to Ingmar, “It’s Bach—you know, the German composer.” “I know,” he said. “The Chaconne in D minor. I played it in high school.” So, it was everywhere. Months later, he said, “Next time you come to Nuuk, bring your viola. We can do some chamber music.” I did, and we did. b Cultural heroes are ones who toggle easily between multiple cultures and possess the vocabulary to explain and interpret the one to the other. They are villagers and anthropologists, both. You may meet a few, not many. Maybe Trevor Noah is one such. These abilities came out gradually as Ingmar and I stayed in touch over the years, and on three continents. Before his death in 2002, in one of his last letters to me, he wrote: “My boat has been taken up to be overhauled under the water line. I have replaced a number of ice protection plates, have had the propel- ler and rudder shafts checked, and now I am in the process of caulking the grooves above the deck.” And after I mentioned I’d found a better bow for my viola, he wrote: “To get a good bow is nearly to have a good lover, you find new dimensions in your perfor- mance. Congratulations.” Ingmar, it seems to me, was a true cultural hero. n The way to get to Nuuk in 1987 was on U.S. military-reserved seats on SAS commercial flights. The impossibly cheerful Scandinavian security instructions in the seat back pocket said in pictograms: “Flight went down north of the Arctic Circle? Very sorry for any possible inconvenience. Put on your jammies, pull out the failsafe radio transmitter, and wait for imminent rescue. Enjoy the aurora borealis.” COURTESYOFDANWHITMAN