Song and Spirit

I drafted this piece last fall, the day after an on-site rehearsal for a concert at Cornell's Africana Center.

It’s hard to sing with conviction when you’re struggling to learn the music. At any moment, the body of sound around you could drop away, and leave your voice standing alone against a sudden background of silence. That happened to me several times last night, on one particular piece. It’s called, “I’ll Stand,” and it’s breathlessly fast: no time to think, so you just have to run with it. In the song the title phrase is repeated in a rapid-fire call and response, and just as we settle into that rhythm it shifts, dropping back a beat and exposing anyone who misses the change.

There’s another new piece, “No Coward Soldier,” that until now I’ve been thinking I just can’t stand. The lyrics are dreadful: exactly the kind of offensive, shaming, guilt-inducing crap that Christians leave the faith to escape.

But Oh My God the music! Last night it just grabbed me and swept me away. We’ve practiced that piece a couple times before, but this is the first time we’ve performed it, and I just couldn’t hold my body still when all those complex rhythms finally came together. If only we could just do the music, the back-and-forth and interplay of voices, and dispense with those awful words.

Much as I love to sing, the music is only one of several reasons I joined this chorus. The group’s focus on “the Negro spiritual” is an opportunity to stretch my musical boundaries, but I also wanted to diversify my social network: the other circles I interact with are almost entirely white. And I have several friends in the group – including a pagan, a Jew, and a couple of Unitarians – so I know I’m not alone in carrying a different faith than the music expresses.

One of the most important reasons, though, is my desire to understand the relationship between music and resilience. The call for auditions emphasized the importance of gospel music in the civil rights movement: the group is named after a local activist, Dorothy Cotton, who worked closely with Dr. King. But how did this musical expression of faith enable the movement to persevere against adversity? To make “a way out of no way,” to borrow a line from Sweet Honey in the Rock? I don’t think it's possible to comprehend something like that intellectually: you have to experience it. So there I was, singing my heart out, in search of a deeper understanding of the connection between Song and Spirit.

 I’ve been imagining myself as an actor when I sing, immersed in playing a role. But at some point last night the reality blurred. My internal observer dropped away -- that part of me that stands apart, observing and evaluating – and I sank into the music, and started to experience it the way a believer might.

It happened on the song, “Anticipation,” a sweet little fairy tale in which we all go to heaven to hob-nob with the saints, and with our loved ones “who’ve gone on before.” I no more believe in that future than I believe in Santa Claus, and I actually appreciate the fact that the song is sung with a sweetness and innocence that resonates with my perception of the lyrics as a child’s fantasy. So it jolted me when I realized I was envisioning Heaven as if it was a real place, where I might someday actually find myself.

I suppose it’s not really that different from suspending my disbelief when I read a novel, and imagining that the people and situations it describes – however fantastic they seem – are real and present around me as I read. But it’s unsettling to know, in a situation like that, that so many of the people around me are absolutely serious about that fantasy. We’re conjuring a world for believers, not just for concert goers in search of an evening’s entertainment. And if our director is right, our ability to conjure that world changes our capabilities in this one.

One of our pieces, "No Ways Tired," is based on a quote from a civil rights activist: "I don't feel no ways tired. Come too far from where I started from. Nobody told me that the road would be easy. I don't believe He brought me this far to leave me." After singing that song, I can easily see how the music might carry them through.

I've got a song in my head

Woke up this morning with kind of a rappy drumbeat going in my head, (da-da-da-dum bum, da-da-da-dum bum) which turned into the following spoken word poetry piece:

Used to be an apple, now it's a seed.
Used to be a seed, now it's a sapling.
Used to be a sapling, now it's a tree.
Used to be a tree, now it's firewood.

Used to be firewood, now it's a fire.
Used to be a fire, now it's ash.
Used to be ash, now it's fertilizer.
Used to be fertilizer, now it's corn.

The cycle is turning,
The cycle is turning,
Life is returning, 'cause
The cycle is turning,

The cycle is turning,
The cycle is turning,
We gotta let the wheels go round.

Used to be corn, now it's food scraps.
Used to be food scraps, now it's a chicken.
Used to be a chicken, now it's soup.
Used to be soup, and now it's poop.

Used to be poop, now it's sewage.
Used to be sewage, now it's sludge.
Used to be sludge, and now it's . . . landfill waste.

Used to be sludge, and now it's. . .landfill waste.

Something is broken,
The cycle is broken,
Something is broken,
The cycle is broken,

The cycle is broken,
We gotta repair it,
We gotta make the wheels go round.

Used to be an acorn, now it's an oak.
Used to be an oak, now it's lumber.
Used to be lumber, now it's a floor.
Used to be a floor, now it's. . .landfill waste.

Used to be a sofa, now it's. . .landfill waste.

Used to be diapers, now it's. . .landfill waste.

Used to be a high rise, now it's. . .landfill waste.

Used to be a skyscraper, now it's. . .landfill waste.

Something is broken,
The cycle is broken,
Something is broken,
The cycle is broken,

The cycle is broken,
We gotta repair it,
We gotta make the wheels go round.

Used to be an ocean, now it's a cloud.
Used to be a cloud, now it's rain.
Used to be rain, now it's a stream.
Used to be a stream, and now it's a lake.

Used to be a lake, now it's a river.
Used to be a river, now it's. . .fracking fluid.
Used to be fracking fluid, now it's. . .toxic waste.

Used to be a river, now it's. . .toxic waste.

Something is broken,
The cycle is broken,
Something is broken,
The cycle is broken,
The cycle is broken,
We gotta repair it,
We gotta make the wheels go round.

Used to be an ocean, now it's a cloud.

Used to be a cloud, now it's rain.

Used to be rain, now it's sap.

Used to be sap, now it's a fruit.

Used to be a fruit, now it's a salad.

Used to be a salad, now it's you.

Used to be a salad, now it's you.

Now it's you.

Now it's you.

You're part of the cycle,

You're part of the cycle,

You gotta repair it,

You're part of the cycle,

You're part of the cycle,

You gotta repair it,

You gotta make the wheels go round.

You gotta make the wheels go round.

(copyright me, 2015)

Being a Non-Conformist

Some time ago, when Facebook came out with its "Custom" gender category, some friends of mine were rallying us all to change our genders from Male or Female to one of the custom types, as a way of showing solidarity with people who can't easily assign themselves to a binary gender category. For example, the custom genders which apply to people who fit well into the traditional categories are "Cis Male" and "Cis Female."

So I went into the list to look for an appropriate gender. And found myself stymied. When the choice is binary, it's obvious which side of the boundary I fall on. I have never questioned the gender I was assigned at birth. But when gender is portrayed as a spectrum, I simply can't bring myself to identify as "Cis Female." There are far too many aspects of that gender role that just don't fit.

In the past I've simply copped an attitude about it: This is what a woman looks like. Get used to it. But now I've been presented with an actual choice. Eventually I changed my gender from "Female" to "Gender Non-Conforming," and called it done.

This morning I was editing my profile, and noticed it had reverted back to "Female" again, so I went back in and reinstated the new designation. And that got me thinking about it again.

What does it mean to be "Gender Non-Conforming"? To quote a smattering of online sources, gender non-conformity is "behaving or appearing in ways that are considered atypical for one's gender." A gender non-conformist's "behavior or gender expression. . .does not match cultural expectations about the gender roles typically associated with their sex assignment," and they "do not adhere to society's rules about dress and activities for people that are based on their sex."

That would be me, all right. I was a tomboy as a child. I hated playing with dolls. I am a scientist and an engineer. I have always been fiercely independent, and I desire an egalitarian relationship with my partner. I detest housework; I love to build things. And as for heels and makeup? wtf? It's true that I'm primarily attracted to men, but the men I'm attracted to are similarly outside the traditional norm. Big hunky guys are anathema to me: I prefer a mate who is thin, with delicate features and artistic sensibilities. And when I dance, I enjoy flirting with women as much as with men.

As a young adult I attended a pro-choice rally in NYC, and while I was there I bought a T-shirt. It was different from most of the pro-choice merchandise: rather than a specific reference to a woman's right to choose an abortion, it was emblazoned with the single word CHOICE.

Yep, I thought. That about sums it up.

Joshua Fit De Battle

The chorus I'm in recently started learning an arrangement of Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho, a song that my daughter also performed in her chorus last year. She was surprised by the differences between the two arrangements, so we looked up some other performances on youtube (would you believe Elvis Presley, of all people, did a recording of it?) In the process we got to talking about the story behind the song, which I didn't remember well enough to share with her, so we looked that up too.
Reviewing the story of Jericho reminded me of just why it is that Christianity has such a hard time championing the "good" side of "good vs. evil."
Joshua came out of the wilderness with the Israelites, taking over leadership of the tribe after Moses' death. Their ancestors had been slaves in Egypt, and they were still living as nomads two generations after their escape. But when Joshua succeeded Moses, they went to the city of Jericho, invaded and conquered that city, and murdered every man, woman, and child who lived there before moving in themselves. The one exception was the family of a woman who had given them aid in spying on the city before the attack. She did this not because she thought their cause was right, but because she was afraid of them.
So when we celebrate Joshua, we're celebrating unprovoked violence. We're celebrating genocide. We're celebrating the oppressed rising up, not against the oppressor, but against innocent bystanders. We're celebrating a moral standard that justifies murder and theft, done purely for selfish ends. And we are celebrating the might of a God who not only condones such behavior, but commands it and helps his people succeed at it.
The song is still exciting and engaging to sing, but I'm having serious reservations about its moral content. At a guess, I'd say that most people who read this story gloss over its barbarism, and either invent rationalizations for it or avoid the subject entirely. But it's a bit like keeping a land mine in the back yard, don't you think? Its presence in the center of the accepted canon of God's Word leaves open the eternal possibility that some day, Christians will return en masse to a morality that condones expansionist genocide.