There is craft and there is art. There is technique, and there is music. The Enlightenment, Western world view believes in progression-seeds become flowers, babies become adults, time is linear and attempt leads to attainment. By this truth formula, any child can be taught to play a note on the piano, and with time and practice, necessarily become a virtuoso. Strewn on the wayside to this perfection are the hordes of children who simply gave up. It was not lack of call, that kept them from becoming musicians, it was a lack of self-discipline and focus.
This is a worldview that creates music out of a machine. Speed and accuracy on a violin can often overawe the crowd into a belief that it has experienced something profound. A young person who can mimic Frank Sinatra's singing style becomes an overnight sensation, and people use math and electricity to reproduce a composer's intent, without even knowing how to read that composer's music. Technical proficiency gets the seal of approval. Efficiency, the machine-maker's panacaea, is awarded the highest honor.
Yet, music is feeling, and machines do not feel. Children, though full of feeling, do not yet own their feelings. The composer's mind can only be communicated through a sympathy of experience. To lift music from a state of organized sound to an expression of human importance requires more than technique. Speed, fluency and production must be released as milestones of achievement.
To sing, we have to let go of perfection. We have to let go of progression and allow for inspiration-the infusion of spirit, the life of breath. True singing is not owned-it goes past ownership to generosity. It goes to a place where the ability to play the notes is not the point, but the tool. True singing comes from a place of authentic human communication. While using our minds to control the flow of air, the accuracy of pitch and the brilliance of diction, we run the very real risk of binding the content in a casket buried six feet under our egos' fears of rejection.
Singing is not a controlled fall. Singing is not the end result of metronomic repetition. Singing is not reproducible results, or an even flame. On its way to perfection, singing comes in fits and starts. It erupts. It occurs. It is messy, visceral, raw, unrefined, and terrifying. Until the singer can let go her hold on feeling through the vehicle of sound, whether that be iPad or Stradivarius, there will only be technique. There will only be craft. There will only be skill. The singer will be brilliant in spirit, but only dimly lit with soul.
A SOUL FILLED SINGER
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
POWER
I had a new experience recently. Having been asked to lead singing for a Christmas party at an assisted living center, one of the party requested O Holy Night. I led out in singing the first verse, and many people joined me, but when I started the second verse, most people dropped out. That was not the surprising part of my evening. After I had sung that song, there was a break in the singing while Santa delivered gifts to the gathered people. At that time, the event organizer came to me and said "Go ahead and lead a few more songs, but try to stay away from the Christian stuff."
Though I am not any kind of advocate for proselytizing, I have to admit that this really threw me. Clearly, there are lots of Christmas songs that aren't Christian-Frosty the Snowman, Gramma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, and I'll Be Home for Christmas, to name a few, but I was unsure what he actually meant by "Christian stuff." Did he mean Silent Night, Holy Night, or Away in the Manger? What about The First Noel and Joy to the World? I have never been asked to lead singing for a Christmas Party where I wasn't supposed to lead Christmas songs.
After reflecting, I believe that something happened during the singing of O Holy Night that stirred in the organizer. I believe that something about that performance said something to the audience about belief. Perhaps the party-goers were suddenly being asked for something they weren't quite ready to give. Maybe they heard something that worried them at a deep level, and rather than look at that thing, they asked me to stop singing about it. What I mean is this: I sang with conviction. I sang from a place of belief. I sang words, that for me, have an important meaning, and that meaning, carried on breath imbued with conviction had power.
Power vibrates through systems-it thrums down the threads that connect us. We can feel the foundations of the world tottering and trembling when something with power shifts within a space. The singer has access to that power. The singer can resonate with that power. The singer can channel that power. Empowered, the singer becomes an agent of enlightenment, exposing the real world that lies below the surfaces of our conventions.
Though I am not any kind of advocate for proselytizing, I have to admit that this really threw me. Clearly, there are lots of Christmas songs that aren't Christian-Frosty the Snowman, Gramma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, and I'll Be Home for Christmas, to name a few, but I was unsure what he actually meant by "Christian stuff." Did he mean Silent Night, Holy Night, or Away in the Manger? What about The First Noel and Joy to the World? I have never been asked to lead singing for a Christmas Party where I wasn't supposed to lead Christmas songs.
After reflecting, I believe that something happened during the singing of O Holy Night that stirred in the organizer. I believe that something about that performance said something to the audience about belief. Perhaps the party-goers were suddenly being asked for something they weren't quite ready to give. Maybe they heard something that worried them at a deep level, and rather than look at that thing, they asked me to stop singing about it. What I mean is this: I sang with conviction. I sang from a place of belief. I sang words, that for me, have an important meaning, and that meaning, carried on breath imbued with conviction had power.
Power vibrates through systems-it thrums down the threads that connect us. We can feel the foundations of the world tottering and trembling when something with power shifts within a space. The singer has access to that power. The singer can resonate with that power. The singer can channel that power. Empowered, the singer becomes an agent of enlightenment, exposing the real world that lies below the surfaces of our conventions.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
PARTICIPATING
What is the difference between a group of people at the local movie theater, and a group of people at a local dinner theatre? Participation.
In the movie theatre, where it is dark and the eye is dominated by a huge display of flashing lights, I spend two hours in my own head-and when I laugh, scream, cringe or cry, it is in an anonymous space. No one moving around on screen cares whether I enjoy or dislike the offering. Their lines are never interrupted by a wash of hilarity from the crowd. After leaving, I don't recognize anyone beyond the folks I came with, and I never get to let that bigger than life character on the screen know how her performance changed me. The ideas and feelings created by the imagery have no outlet of exchange.
At a dinner theatre, I am seated at a table, often with strangers. I have to focus on eating and drinking as well as the lines and action taking place on the stage. Though the room may be dark, my eye is dominated by three-dimensional objects and breathing people. You can clap, whistle and laugh hard enough that the action on the stage changes. Sometimes, you can even break the concentration of those on stage. During intermission, you can talk about what you have seen with the people at your table. Always, after the show (and sometimes during the show), there is an opportunity to touch base with the actors. You can shake hands and share appreciation. In other words, the ideas and feelings created by the entertainment have an outlet of exchange.
Exchange of experience and thought is necessary for communication and a defining part of humanity. Though there are times and places for isolation and introspection, times in busy lives overburdened by responsibilities and opportunities when we need to simply sit and receive, there also need to be times and places for participation. Trained by televisions and teachers to watch and learn, I think it is imperative for our souls to push ourselves to actively participate when we have the chance.
Though we seem to be good at participating in sports, we Americans are seriously ignoring opportunities to participate in music, arts and conversation. We pay lots of money and pay lots of time to watch other people talk, sing, dance, and pray. We do this by the TV shows we watch, the comments we leave on newspaper websites, the hours spent listening to radio stations which echo our internal biases, and the refusal to make time for relational and communal activities.
A great singer is a participant in the music. She has learned in the fire of spotlights that not stepping up to the mic is always worse than stepping up but failing. She has learned that with every new opportunity, she has gotten better. She hears people whisper about her talent, but knows her craft is mostly simple persistence. She hears people yearning toward spirit, energy and joy, acknowledging that they have received those things from her voice, and, because she is a participant, she can respond; she can reach back through the fourth wall and share with them how it is done. She is not a person who sits and wishes. The great singer is the one who chooses to take part.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
POSTURE
When I work with a group of singers, one of the first things I note is posture. I can ask a group to stand, and right away, I know who is ready to sing, and who will need a lot of warm-up time. I can even discern the kind of warm-up necessary.
There is a kind of casual stance that says, "I am here, but I am thinking of other things." That stance has little tension, but very little intention. This singer needs a difficult technical warm up to distract the brain and focus the body.
There is a slow, encumbered movement to people who are tired and depressed. Their posture says, "The air is too heavy. Standing up is hard." The posture is collapsed and ready to fail. This singer needs simple exercises that feel good and waken a sleepy system.
Then there are the people who stand quickly and rigidly, with a straight back and lifted shoulders. Those are the people who are really stressed out, and whose lives are full of responsibilities. I always look to their knees, because they are the singers who are so firmly planted, they cannot respond to changes. These are the people that get a back rub and instructions to loosen their hips and throw their voices.
All three postures, if left uncorrected, lead to faint, tense, stilted, and unbeautiful singing.
A singer has to be poised to move in any given direction. She never knows when the conductor may throw choreography her way. A singer has to be erect, so that air can move unimpeded through the throat and pharynx. A singer needs to balance tension and relaxation to support the breath without restricting its flow. Therefore, the singer's posture has to be both loose at joints, but lifted and upright across the upper back and chest. A singer needs no restriction through the throat and mouth, so his shoulders need to be down; his cheeks and jaw need to be loose, and his voice box must be low, as when a person yawns.
If this is true basically, then posture must also impact our breathing day-to-day. It must impact our spirit. If we are to live sustained lines in our lives, we have to learn how to adjust our posture to make our breathing confident, elastic, expressive and beautiful. We need to notice when our jaws are clenched. We need to notice when a friends' shoulders are rounded question marks. We need to ask ourselves if we approach problems with caved-in, apologetic chests, or with bodies stiff as two-by-fours, oriented solely on one particular outcome.
Then we need to adjust our posture. We need to realign ourselves to support the music. We need to practice warm-ups that help. Do we need something technical and difficult to focus our minds? Do we need something simple and pleasurable to lift our spirits? Do we need a back rub to let someone else feel the hardness growing in our souls?
Take a week and look around. What do you see in the bodies around you? How would you correct their postures?
There is a kind of casual stance that says, "I am here, but I am thinking of other things." That stance has little tension, but very little intention. This singer needs a difficult technical warm up to distract the brain and focus the body.
There is a slow, encumbered movement to people who are tired and depressed. Their posture says, "The air is too heavy. Standing up is hard." The posture is collapsed and ready to fail. This singer needs simple exercises that feel good and waken a sleepy system.
Then there are the people who stand quickly and rigidly, with a straight back and lifted shoulders. Those are the people who are really stressed out, and whose lives are full of responsibilities. I always look to their knees, because they are the singers who are so firmly planted, they cannot respond to changes. These are the people that get a back rub and instructions to loosen their hips and throw their voices.
All three postures, if left uncorrected, lead to faint, tense, stilted, and unbeautiful singing.
A singer has to be poised to move in any given direction. She never knows when the conductor may throw choreography her way. A singer has to be erect, so that air can move unimpeded through the throat and pharynx. A singer needs to balance tension and relaxation to support the breath without restricting its flow. Therefore, the singer's posture has to be both loose at joints, but lifted and upright across the upper back and chest. A singer needs no restriction through the throat and mouth, so his shoulders need to be down; his cheeks and jaw need to be loose, and his voice box must be low, as when a person yawns.
If this is true basically, then posture must also impact our breathing day-to-day. It must impact our spirit. If we are to live sustained lines in our lives, we have to learn how to adjust our posture to make our breathing confident, elastic, expressive and beautiful. We need to notice when our jaws are clenched. We need to notice when a friends' shoulders are rounded question marks. We need to ask ourselves if we approach problems with caved-in, apologetic chests, or with bodies stiff as two-by-fours, oriented solely on one particular outcome.
Then we need to adjust our posture. We need to realign ourselves to support the music. We need to practice warm-ups that help. Do we need something technical and difficult to focus our minds? Do we need something simple and pleasurable to lift our spirits? Do we need a back rub to let someone else feel the hardness growing in our souls?
Take a week and look around. What do you see in the bodies around you? How would you correct their postures?
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
DISSIDENCE
When you find yourself in the singing, you should remember that will make you a dissident. There is a funny myth that runs through the American life. It is the myth that allows us all to be the lone wolf hero of the story. There is a movie called District 9 which does a beautiful job confronting this myth. On the surface, this movie is straight sci-fi, and perhaps a poor sample in that the technology and action are a bit less exciting and futuristic than those in Avatar.
Beneath the surface, however, is the fact that the story of District 9 is not really fiction at all. The film creates a division between us and them that is very clear. The aliens are as disgusting as anything you will find in Ridley Scott's imagination. They are insectile and have social systems that defy human analysis. The humans, in contrast, are as human as your neighbors. They have bad teeth, cheap clothes and have fairly insignificant careers. The important characters don't end up being the CEO's and warriors of power myths. They are a lot more like me.
My point: the watcher should have no problem feeling disgust and terror at the aliens, and empathy and power while identifying with the protagonist. This doesn't happen. Instead, when I saw the living situation of the aliens, I saw the very real images from a Sudan refugee camp of 80,000 people I had seen the weekend before. I saw the mountainous pile of trash at a Honduran landfill where a church sits and children sift the refuse for recyclable and valuable salvage items which they sell to men in trucks at the end of a day. I was all to uncomfortably aware that the "over the top" oppression under which the aliens lived is an actual reality in the lives of many millions of human beings right now, and the discomfort I felt was amplified by the inescapable fact that we don't even need the pretense of "other" to perpetrate unspeakable violence against those that are not our family.
The other thing the movie does, is it makes you be the humans. The protagonist, like any great character, is complicated. He makes poor decisions from terrible prejudice and narrow greed. Then he turns around and does something incredibly loving and rather sweet. He is a small and unimportant person-a cog in the machine, and I can't escape the fact that he is me.
When faced with real choices that may cost, I very greatly fear I would make the kinds of decisions he made: selfish, small, and decidedly unheroic. What's more, as the decisions he makes to try and do "the right thing" start to cost him his family, his friends, his whole social network and support system, he wants to go back. He doesn't want to be heroic and lonely. He wants to be safe and unimportant. He never actually fully "joins the resistance." Right up to the last, if those that were persecuting him would have stopped, he would have turned against the aliens in a moment. He never actually cared for anyone other than himself, and integrity was more expensive than he could afford.
Unlike many of our stories, District 9 gives you a taste of what acting differently from the norm really feels like.
That is what I mean when I say that being in the singing will make you a dissident. You will find you no longer agree with the messages and purposes of things around you. You will become aware of injustice and oppression where you least expected to see it, and the moment you start to act in a different way, your crowd will let you know. They will put pressure on you not to change. They will not secretly cheer you on or hold your hand. You will find yourself separated and alone, and decisions will become complicated with dubious rewards. You will want to find confirmation that your choices are right, but you won't be able to.
Singing is a work of honesty. We cannot truly sing lies. They lack the appropriate power. I just feel like I should warn you. The spirit married to the soul is life, and life sustained on the breath is song, but
real songs scar us. They ask too much, push too hard, and require vulnerability that the world will exploit. Singing is not safe, but, to paraphrase my friend C.S. Lewis, it is good.
Beneath the surface, however, is the fact that the story of District 9 is not really fiction at all. The film creates a division between us and them that is very clear. The aliens are as disgusting as anything you will find in Ridley Scott's imagination. They are insectile and have social systems that defy human analysis. The humans, in contrast, are as human as your neighbors. They have bad teeth, cheap clothes and have fairly insignificant careers. The important characters don't end up being the CEO's and warriors of power myths. They are a lot more like me.
My point: the watcher should have no problem feeling disgust and terror at the aliens, and empathy and power while identifying with the protagonist. This doesn't happen. Instead, when I saw the living situation of the aliens, I saw the very real images from a Sudan refugee camp of 80,000 people I had seen the weekend before. I saw the mountainous pile of trash at a Honduran landfill where a church sits and children sift the refuse for recyclable and valuable salvage items which they sell to men in trucks at the end of a day. I was all to uncomfortably aware that the "over the top" oppression under which the aliens lived is an actual reality in the lives of many millions of human beings right now, and the discomfort I felt was amplified by the inescapable fact that we don't even need the pretense of "other" to perpetrate unspeakable violence against those that are not our family.
The other thing the movie does, is it makes you be the humans. The protagonist, like any great character, is complicated. He makes poor decisions from terrible prejudice and narrow greed. Then he turns around and does something incredibly loving and rather sweet. He is a small and unimportant person-a cog in the machine, and I can't escape the fact that he is me.
When faced with real choices that may cost, I very greatly fear I would make the kinds of decisions he made: selfish, small, and decidedly unheroic. What's more, as the decisions he makes to try and do "the right thing" start to cost him his family, his friends, his whole social network and support system, he wants to go back. He doesn't want to be heroic and lonely. He wants to be safe and unimportant. He never actually fully "joins the resistance." Right up to the last, if those that were persecuting him would have stopped, he would have turned against the aliens in a moment. He never actually cared for anyone other than himself, and integrity was more expensive than he could afford.
Unlike many of our stories, District 9 gives you a taste of what acting differently from the norm really feels like.
That is what I mean when I say that being in the singing will make you a dissident. You will find you no longer agree with the messages and purposes of things around you. You will become aware of injustice and oppression where you least expected to see it, and the moment you start to act in a different way, your crowd will let you know. They will put pressure on you not to change. They will not secretly cheer you on or hold your hand. You will find yourself separated and alone, and decisions will become complicated with dubious rewards. You will want to find confirmation that your choices are right, but you won't be able to.
Singing is a work of honesty. We cannot truly sing lies. They lack the appropriate power. I just feel like I should warn you. The spirit married to the soul is life, and life sustained on the breath is song, but
real songs scar us. They ask too much, push too hard, and require vulnerability that the world will exploit. Singing is not safe, but, to paraphrase my friend C.S. Lewis, it is good.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
SINGING IS BELIEVING
Singing requires faith. Anyone can make sounds and mouth words in a choir, but to sing, you have to practice faith. Faith is a word that means both trust and belief. Unlike plumbers, singers have to believe and trust in ineffables.
First, there is faith in the body. For the singer, the musical instrument is the body. Like other instruments, some sort of physical action leads to the production of pitch. Unlike a clarinet or piano, however, the mechanism of the singer is hidden. It becomes mysterious because we actuate the sound by thought rather than by hand or lip. We cannot see what we do to make middle C emerge, and that puts singing outside our comfortable zone of control.
Ask any student of voice how to sing, and you will hear a lot about visualization, and learn a lot about ways to train your body to do certain things, but no one will be able to show you something you can touch or a way in which you can blow to precisely duplicate a sound. Instead, singers intuit a body manipulation that somehow recreates sound. [see "mirror neurons" in my previous post, for further theories on how this happens]
That kind mysterious, non technical approach creates a kind of unease amongst new singers. We want to know how. We do not like to feel how. We don't like to try how. We do not like having to rely on something beyond our control, in order to discover what is there we can control. It is in just that way, singing requires faith. We have to trust and believe the body capable of producing sound from our thought. Then we get to try it out.
Second, singing requires faith in yourself. There is a mystery here, too. There is a trick. To sing a given note, I have to think the note and tell my body to reproduce a series of muscle contractions to breathe in a particular way so as to make a unique and particular sound. But that isn't how it works. No one thinks through all of the motions for an action. The body remembers and reacts on its own. The distinct trick for the singer is both thinking and releasing thought.
There is a sweet spot between intention and surrender that creates music. There is a place where you both have minute concentrative control over every nuance, and absolutely no control whatsoever of the sound as it leaves your body. That only works when you rely on yourself and believe yourself capable. As long you are a convinced that the composer wants something more from you, and as long as you imagine that every second of the music needs to be fully known to be fully sung, you will never find that sweet spot. Doubt will make you hold on to yourself and the sound won't come out. Doubt will make you lean on the music too much, and the sound won't transcend the page. Like a master falconer, there comes a time when the singer has to release the sound and trust that it will do what it was trained to do.
The last place to practice faith is believing and trusting in others. Singers rarely stand alone. Even an a cappella star heard the music somewhere else first. Even a composer has to rely on the audience to hear for music to happen. One of the places where the singing voice truly gets hung up, is in heroism. A singer imagines that his or her voice is all that holds a piece of music together.
Strong and weak singers alike get this complex. The one says, I cannot get laryngitis because they cannot hold the part together without me. The other says, Oh no, she got laryngitis, I cannot let the music be ruined because mine is the only voice they hear. Both singers are wrong. The strong singer amplifies a section. The weak singer fills up a section. There are followers and there are leaders, but if we believe that someone is leading, and if we believe that someone else is following, in the choir, we don't need to worry which one we are. Just by believing everyone around me is doing his or her part, I can trust the music is happening.
By believing in the body, I can trust the music is happening. By believing in myself, I can trust the music is happening. By believing in my neighbor, I can trust the music is happening. In practicing faith, I can trust I am doing what I am meant to do, and I can believe that song is being sung. Questions of quality and worth don't enter in.
At least, that is what I believe.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
MIRROR, MIRROR
I sit tonight in a surfeit of ideas. They flow rich and thick as Colorado honey. The inspiration comes from others. I listen to music that is absolutely stunning, and I think, "That is not so hard. I could pull folks together and we could sing that song." I watch a play that makes me laugh, and I think, "That would be a lot of fun. Maybe I could find some friends and we could run the lines with each other."
Apparently, monkey brains are wired with something unofficially called "mirror neurons." These neurons fire when one monkey watches another monkey peel and eat a piece of fruit. The cool thing about mirror neurons is that the monkey without the fruit gets to experience all that the monkey with the fruit experiences, up to and including the feelings the fruit may engender. Apparently, human brains can work this way, too. What this means is that we not only learn by watching, we experience by watching.
This is seriously important for music and performance art. When we share the real deal with our audience, they experience the real deal. When we share from our souls, our audience may find the chords we strike sounding within their own souls. Then, they may step out of the performance hall and share those sounds with the next fifteen people they meet.
Ideas will pass from person to person without the benefit of writing, education, intention or societal goal. One person's creativity may light up the creative parts of another's brain, and two artists will be born. Compassion, which is feeling with another, is born in sharing. Whether it is transmitted by "mirroring neurons" brain to brain, or whether it is simply the idea that I know how I feel and I want to protect others from that feeling, or pass that feeling along to the next person I meet, authentic singing is a way to begin the practice of compassion.
When I begin to see that power in music, it becomes apparent how dangerous the arts can be.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
YOU WILL, TOO
I learned fear and forgot that life is fun. For instance, the sick twitch in the stomach is excitement as much as it is terror. Before I learned fear, I knew how to ride deep inside that tube. Back then, insomnia was anticipation, and destruction was a phantom fogie made up by people who had forgotten how to be alive.
And life was this:
Signing up.
Dressing to state beliefs.
Owning people others' shunned.
Laughing at pain.
Taking time to listen.
Being Skeptical.
The Brutality of Honesty.
Then: fear; born of concern for place. Status became more important than self, and suddenly, I was vulnerable. Suddenly, destruction loomed, and it was real. Being authentic led to lost opportunities, and relationships withered as appearance of integrity overwhelmed actuality. One set of friends became liars and the other set threw me out of their club when it became apparent I did not live up to their vision of perfection. I could lose my place, and life was no longer fun.
I didn't sign up for fear of regrets.
I didn't dress to state my beliefs for fear I wouldn't pass inspection.
I used the people others' shunned for fear I couldn't make friends.
I avoided pain for fear it could actually harm me.
I stopped listening for fear I couldn't be heard
I looked to other people for advice for fear of failure if I tried things on my own.
And I became nice for fear of the cost of real relationship.
Life became the management of anxieties and a restless yearning for control.
I began to lose my voice: shallow breaths and technique without emotion; years spent perfecting the motions that win judge's marks but leave the audience cold; a thin, wispy whine in place of the rich, throaty growl that is the true voice.
Cultivating fear is a poor strategy. It never delivers on its promises. The worst you imagine isn't nearly as bad as it actually gets. Control doesn't stop the flood. Small gets squashed as readily as large. Assholes are assholes, no matter what you do to appease them.
So stop appeasing them. Stop wondering how it will turn out. Stop trying to be on top of it all. Ride deep in the tube. Let the wave curl over you. Scream, if you have to, but let yourself have the fun. See where that takes you. Decide to trade dread for anticipation. Laugh out loud, and thumb your nose at anyone that stares. Trust that a worthy friend always sees you without your make-up on.
I did, and I feel much more like singing. I suspect you will, too.
And life was this:
Signing up.
Dressing to state beliefs.
Owning people others' shunned.
Laughing at pain.
Taking time to listen.
Being Skeptical.
The Brutality of Honesty.
Then: fear; born of concern for place. Status became more important than self, and suddenly, I was vulnerable. Suddenly, destruction loomed, and it was real. Being authentic led to lost opportunities, and relationships withered as appearance of integrity overwhelmed actuality. One set of friends became liars and the other set threw me out of their club when it became apparent I did not live up to their vision of perfection. I could lose my place, and life was no longer fun.
I didn't sign up for fear of regrets.
I didn't dress to state my beliefs for fear I wouldn't pass inspection.
I used the people others' shunned for fear I couldn't make friends.
I avoided pain for fear it could actually harm me.
I stopped listening for fear I couldn't be heard
I looked to other people for advice for fear of failure if I tried things on my own.
And I became nice for fear of the cost of real relationship.
Life became the management of anxieties and a restless yearning for control.
I began to lose my voice: shallow breaths and technique without emotion; years spent perfecting the motions that win judge's marks but leave the audience cold; a thin, wispy whine in place of the rich, throaty growl that is the true voice.
Cultivating fear is a poor strategy. It never delivers on its promises. The worst you imagine isn't nearly as bad as it actually gets. Control doesn't stop the flood. Small gets squashed as readily as large. Assholes are assholes, no matter what you do to appease them.
So stop appeasing them. Stop wondering how it will turn out. Stop trying to be on top of it all. Ride deep in the tube. Let the wave curl over you. Scream, if you have to, but let yourself have the fun. See where that takes you. Decide to trade dread for anticipation. Laugh out loud, and thumb your nose at anyone that stares. Trust that a worthy friend always sees you without your make-up on.
I did, and I feel much more like singing. I suspect you will, too.
Friday, October 15, 2010
SYNTHESIS
Synthesis is the opposite of analysis. In the first, you take different things and put them together to make one new thing. In the second, you take one thing and separate it into the different things that make it up. A song is a synthesis. It is one new thing created by combining many different things. An analysis of the song will reveal any number of things; paper, ink, symbols, words, notes, sounds, and an instrument to name a few.
Is it any wonder that in a world so focussed on analysis, the taking apart of things, music struggles? Is it any wonder that musicians find themselves somehow out of the loop in everyday function? After all, the coin of our realm is putting unrelated things together into a new existence. While colleagues dither over how much money hiring an engineer will cost, we can already see the bridge. We live in a world of possible combinations-but jobs, recreation and politics spin around an axis of this thing or another. The everyday world walks around in aisles that say "yes or no," "right or left," "black or white." Yet, a musician knows that "right and left" together might reveal a totally different way to go.
While colleagues and friends rush around in rational, we have already put together all the little bits and pieces and formed a whole raft of possible shapes for the future. The problem is that the rational, analytic forces don't see how it all came together. They cry out that they need to see the "steps." They refuse just to relax into the process and trust the outcome. They believe that mastery comes from control of the pieces.
But the singer knows mastery comes from trusting the song. Beethoven themes are two note themes. Beethoven chord progressions are I-V chord progressions. It is not mastery of two notes and two chords that gives us Symphony no. 5. It is the unique synthesis of those elements that makes the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata take hold.
Scientists in laboratories tell us that breaking reality into its smallest parts will teach us its nature. Musicians know that reality is the way those parts are together. I believe the world could use a few more musicians at the wheel,in control, as it were; not so much because we are masters of the ways that things work, but because we are masters at the possibility that things can work, even if we don't know how.
Is it any wonder that in a world so focussed on analysis, the taking apart of things, music struggles? Is it any wonder that musicians find themselves somehow out of the loop in everyday function? After all, the coin of our realm is putting unrelated things together into a new existence. While colleagues dither over how much money hiring an engineer will cost, we can already see the bridge. We live in a world of possible combinations-but jobs, recreation and politics spin around an axis of this thing or another. The everyday world walks around in aisles that say "yes or no," "right or left," "black or white." Yet, a musician knows that "right and left" together might reveal a totally different way to go.
While colleagues and friends rush around in rational, we have already put together all the little bits and pieces and formed a whole raft of possible shapes for the future. The problem is that the rational, analytic forces don't see how it all came together. They cry out that they need to see the "steps." They refuse just to relax into the process and trust the outcome. They believe that mastery comes from control of the pieces.
But the singer knows mastery comes from trusting the song. Beethoven themes are two note themes. Beethoven chord progressions are I-V chord progressions. It is not mastery of two notes and two chords that gives us Symphony no. 5. It is the unique synthesis of those elements that makes the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata take hold.
Scientists in laboratories tell us that breaking reality into its smallest parts will teach us its nature. Musicians know that reality is the way those parts are together. I believe the world could use a few more musicians at the wheel,in control, as it were; not so much because we are masters of the ways that things work, but because we are masters at the possibility that things can work, even if we don't know how.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
THE HUMANITY OF INSANITY
Crazy. It is an easy word to throw around. It is a word that sticks to artists of all kinds: poets, musicians, painters and dancers. It is hard to come up with a famous example of a crazy accountant. One possibility is that artistic endeavors lead to mental instability. Another idea is that mentally unstable people are drawn to the arts. Perhaps, though, it is that the insanity of accountants has not had the human impact that the craziness of artists has had.
There has to be something to the fact that a poem written by a certified resident at Bedlam has inspired a musical genius of the 20th-century to set it to song. There has to be something to the fact that a picture swirled in oil by a man who mutilated himself for love inspired a soft rock hit. There has to be something to the fact that we can still understand the piano music of a man who suffered from multiple personality disorder and died incarcerated in a mental institution.
Art speaks to us beyond the place where rational conversation happens. Art reaches inside and touches something we may not even be able to name. Art moves us to feeling, and when we feel, we respond. Maybe we laugh, or yell. Maybe we rear back in pain, or lean in with care. Art, which shares another person's inner life, proves we are not alone, and confronts us with the idea that rational discourse is not the only way in which human beings speak to one another.
Great art, even when conceived in a person who is out of touch with reality, lives. It connects others with deep feelings and creates new ideas. It makes sense, and it challenges sense. Perhaps the most frightening part of the experience is knowing that someone who could not function in the day-to-day, still says more about what it means to be human than a host of sane bankers.
There has to be something to the fact that a poem written by a certified resident at Bedlam has inspired a musical genius of the 20th-century to set it to song. There has to be something to the fact that a picture swirled in oil by a man who mutilated himself for love inspired a soft rock hit. There has to be something to the fact that we can still understand the piano music of a man who suffered from multiple personality disorder and died incarcerated in a mental institution.
Art speaks to us beyond the place where rational conversation happens. Art reaches inside and touches something we may not even be able to name. Art moves us to feeling, and when we feel, we respond. Maybe we laugh, or yell. Maybe we rear back in pain, or lean in with care. Art, which shares another person's inner life, proves we are not alone, and confronts us with the idea that rational discourse is not the only way in which human beings speak to one another.
Great art, even when conceived in a person who is out of touch with reality, lives. It connects others with deep feelings and creates new ideas. It makes sense, and it challenges sense. Perhaps the most frightening part of the experience is knowing that someone who could not function in the day-to-day, still says more about what it means to be human than a host of sane bankers.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
SINGING IS FEELING
Singing is, more than anything else, about communicating feeling. Feeling is often too overwhelming for words. Thoughts can fail us when we are in places of extreme feeling. Ideas alone can rouse tumults of conflicting feelings. What do we do with all that information? Maybe we scream or shout.
Great excitement finds itself expressed in shouts. Great pain finds itself expressed in yells. Great sorrow finds itself expressed in screams. Feeling is expressed in sound. But shouts are lonely and inchoate. They flourish in spirit, but lack in soul. They do not communicate a meaning. They do not share.
Singing-music-is formed. The feeling is pushed "through a horn, until it is worn into a new note." The feeling can be sung "with a cry in your voice, and before you know it, start to feelin' good. You simply got no choice." Willed and intended to say something to someone, feelings are transformed through song into relationship. The singer uses words from people who have been in a similar place, and then is no longer alone. The singer writes new words to an old tune, and validates the human-ness of feeling in the sound.
The words may say "Walking on broken glass," but when accompanied by a light, peppy dance groove, a message of deep irony is expressed. The feeling of the music does not match the meaning of the words, and something powerful happens. We stop to listen.
Great excitement finds itself expressed in shouts. Great pain finds itself expressed in yells. Great sorrow finds itself expressed in screams. Feeling is expressed in sound. But shouts are lonely and inchoate. They flourish in spirit, but lack in soul. They do not communicate a meaning. They do not share.
Singing-music-is formed. The feeling is pushed "through a horn, until it is worn into a new note." The feeling can be sung "with a cry in your voice, and before you know it, start to feelin' good. You simply got no choice." Willed and intended to say something to someone, feelings are transformed through song into relationship. The singer uses words from people who have been in a similar place, and then is no longer alone. The singer writes new words to an old tune, and validates the human-ness of feeling in the sound.
The words may say "Walking on broken glass," but when accompanied by a light, peppy dance groove, a message of deep irony is expressed. The feeling of the music does not match the meaning of the words, and something powerful happens. We stop to listen.
True singing, singing that shares something significant with others, singing that communicates, will come from a place of deep feeling. A simple proverb that hangs on my wall says: "For heights and depths no words can reach, music is the soul's own speech." Speech only shares our ideas and thoughts. Music shares the chaotic, unformed movements of joy and sadness that color our experience of the world.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
DIE TO LIVE
I confess I am a bit of a phony. I often write about being fearless and living life unfettered by social convention, but I am quite sociable. I actually really enjoy being around people, and the thrill of making normal people stare at my "out there" hair or make-up has paled in the years since high school.
I don't live on any fringe of society and gave up nonconformity when it became the rage. No tattoos. Only one piercing per ear, and I am beginning to seriously believe that dying my hair outrageous colors is an unrighteous use of money. In short, I am a very normal, middle of the road, past Republican who fears change and instability with the best of you.
What I have to bring to the idea of fearlessness is that it can take other, more subtle forms than those we imagine. In place of the image of firefighter or soldier, place the image of people sharing their honest opinions. Instead of skateboarding, base-jumping and driving fast on the interstate, place commitment to a choice.
Fearlessness is only true when we dare loss. Defying death is thrilling in the extreme: committing the body to a course that may destroy it. When I jumped out of an airplane, I absolutely accepted the fact that I might die or be horribly wounded. I simply decided I would more regret not celebrating possibility than I would regret whatever bad consequences ensued. Yet, no one needs to skydive or play high stakes poker to encounter the thrill of daring loss.
Every moment is next to death, no matter how mundane our surroundings. No future is assured. No plan is without failure. No contact is without pain. All that we are and have will end at some time. All that we touch, share and savor shall also pass away. Any number of accidents, diseases and relationship losses will assail us. Death and paralysis, possibilities in jumping from an airplane, are also possibilities in every moment of the day. Intending to dare the loss is what makes the difference in the experience. Ultimately, life is more about possibility than it is about control.
In that way, waking in the morning is a fearless act. In that way, loving another human being is a fearless act. In that way, cooking a meal, touching the dirt, smiling at a stranger, dropping an extra dollar on the sidewalk are all acts of fearlessness. Safety is an illusion we cling to at the expense of our souls. We stop daring each other. We stop daring failure, trust, hope and acts of integrity in terror that we may lose something we are destined to lose anyway. Life is not holding on. Life is letting go.
I don't live on any fringe of society and gave up nonconformity when it became the rage. No tattoos. Only one piercing per ear, and I am beginning to seriously believe that dying my hair outrageous colors is an unrighteous use of money. In short, I am a very normal, middle of the road, past Republican who fears change and instability with the best of you.
What I have to bring to the idea of fearlessness is that it can take other, more subtle forms than those we imagine. In place of the image of firefighter or soldier, place the image of people sharing their honest opinions. Instead of skateboarding, base-jumping and driving fast on the interstate, place commitment to a choice.
Fearlessness is only true when we dare loss. Defying death is thrilling in the extreme: committing the body to a course that may destroy it. When I jumped out of an airplane, I absolutely accepted the fact that I might die or be horribly wounded. I simply decided I would more regret not celebrating possibility than I would regret whatever bad consequences ensued. Yet, no one needs to skydive or play high stakes poker to encounter the thrill of daring loss.
Every moment is next to death, no matter how mundane our surroundings. No future is assured. No plan is without failure. No contact is without pain. All that we are and have will end at some time. All that we touch, share and savor shall also pass away. Any number of accidents, diseases and relationship losses will assail us. Death and paralysis, possibilities in jumping from an airplane, are also possibilities in every moment of the day. Intending to dare the loss is what makes the difference in the experience. Ultimately, life is more about possibility than it is about control.
In that way, waking in the morning is a fearless act. In that way, loving another human being is a fearless act. In that way, cooking a meal, touching the dirt, smiling at a stranger, dropping an extra dollar on the sidewalk are all acts of fearlessness. Safety is an illusion we cling to at the expense of our souls. We stop daring each other. We stop daring failure, trust, hope and acts of integrity in terror that we may lose something we are destined to lose anyway. Life is not holding on. Life is letting go.
Friday, September 24, 2010
HOLY SOUND
Do you think the universe sings? I do, and I don't mean metaphorically. It is a strange quality of extended silence, that it engenders tunes in me. When I have been sitting still for a long while, meditating, or walking a path through the woods, I want to sing something. Lacking the skills to create new songs out of the sounds that call me, I usually sing a camp song, a favorite from my iTunes, or a hymn.
The quality I want to stress, however, is that the songs from me are a response to the sound I hear from the world around me-not noise from the will, or an attempt to confront the quiet. I have to actively suppress the urge sometimes, and sometimes, I only discover that I am singing because of the funny looks I get from the people passing me on the sidewalk. It is as if there is a soundtrack running underneath the action of my life which sometimes erupts into a song.
I only realized recently that some people don't hear music all of the time. Music for them, is something that comes from others, or something created solely in the processes of the brain. They do not hear the sky ringing sound before a storm; they do not hear an expectant string section humming within a crowd of people; they do not experience a great bronze cymbal clash when the sun pierces through a shadowed stand of trees.
I do. I contend others do as well. I contend that some of us are oriented to hearing, and that the universe really does have a beat. It is a noisy, boisterous place, whose cacophony is pounding out the meter of dying and living from the deep core of our planet to the vast, dark matter of space. That song vibrates through our blood and bones, even if our ears are not equipped to pick it up. It sounds in us. After all, sound is only that-vibrations communicated from one instrument to another.
I believe that sound calls forth response from those that hear it, the way wolves will pass their calls from one throat to the next. I believe that the soul and singing are bound into that sound. When I stand amongst people too afraid to clap their hands to the rhythm of a song, or with people so walled in behind their societal roles, they cannot bear to sing unless another starts the tune, I am convinced that there is some illness of the soul at work in the world.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
SEEKING PERMISSION
I was recently asked, "How long have you known you can sing?" It was a great question. For me, singing has never been: I am a good singer, so I will sing. As I remember, mostly I have had to learn how not to sing; learning when to hold back my noise so it does not disrupt others; learning to understand that some situations need silence; giving others room to sing.
As I understand singing, it has very little to do with talent. I am convinced that I would still need to sing if I had a broken down and rusty voice, or no sense whatsoever of pitch.
As I think about that question, it makes me feel sad for us. We seem to have lost the idea that what we are called to be comes from within us. We have replaced it with the idea that we should try on outside purposes until one fits. Outside purposes include such things as:
1. Get a college degree in something useful so you will always have a job.
2. You are pretty. You should become a model.
3. Women are emotionally unstable, physically weak, practically incapable and universally good mothers.
4. Everyone wants success and admiration.
5. Dads can fix everything.
6. There is nothing we can do to stop this.
7. Only the strong survive.
I do not mean to suggest that healthy souls are always the ones that break rules. I mean to suggest that when we stifle an inner truth because of rules, we risk soul sickness. There are no ordinary people. There are no unimportant people. There are no worthless people. There are no unlovable people. There are no ugly people. When we live believing we are any of these things, we are not living an inner truth. We are wearing the lies given to us by our community and our need to fit into it.
I am fortunate. When I acted freely from myself and sang that first time, people must have liked it. I could have been born in a family that hates music. I could have been born deaf. I could have had a nasty, angry music teacher whose love for abstract perfection spited my learning spirit. Instead, I have always had support in pursuing the thing that has always filled me with joy.
Nevertheless, the songs came to me unbidden. They would have been there without the good fortune. When I was young, I was wise enough to know that. It is only as I get old that I think my purpose is the same as "what I am good at," or "what others think is good for me."
To sing, you must free your soul. You must open the doors and windows and listen. You must tune out all the words and structures built between you, your life and your death. Then, it may be that you find yourself singing because you can't stop singing, rather than singing because someone gave you permission.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
CREATED
I often ponder the nature of God. I won't bore you with a litany of ideas, but I would like to share one that really resonates in me, an idea about the nature of God that sings for me. It is the idea of God expressed in the blog title Created Creative . It is the idea that God is creative. God makes things. God imagines things. God puts commonplace things together in unique and amazing ways. God plays with the qualities of things so that new things can be born.
I love this idea. It is anchored in my faith tradition, but it should be rich for even an atheist seeking change for humanity. Creativity is branded into the human soul. People make things. People imagine things. People put commonplace things together in unique and amazing ways. People mix up stuff until something new is born.
In an interview on the Palladium Boots documentary Detroit Lives, Wayne Kramer, MC5 guitarist said, "[S]omething can come out of nothing; I mean, this is what artists have always done, is create something out of nothing." I remember an early experience of awe looking up at Morrow Point Dam on the Gunnison River. At some point, humans walked naked through this world eating raw food for lack of the idea of fire, and here I stood at the foot of a concrete wall harnessing the rage of a river to produce electricity for three states. Something created out of nothing. Material forged from an infinity of ideas.
When my soul is stuffed up and sniffly from worries and pessimism, I like to engage the idea of God as creative; God by nature using detritus and chaos to make something from the nothing. That idea helps me sing. That idea supports imagination and possibility. That idea is how new worlds come to be born.
Monday, September 13, 2010
SING HOPE
True fatalism requires silence. True nihilism seeks oblivion. I have to take that to mean, then, that the pessimistic news columns and prophecies of destruction are voices raised in fear against the forces of life. After all, if there is no turning back from ecocide-why waste time talking? Why not just sit in the sand and enjoy these last sunsets? If there is no hope for a better system, why feel angry at corruption, greed and power-mongering? Why not just bow beneath your shackles and submit to reality?
Ulysses wanted to hear the voices of sirens, but he respected their power over his imagination, so he had himself tied to his mast-a way to hear without being carried away; because voices are powerful. They enter our brains with feeling, personality and ideas. Without restraints, without tying ourselves to some inner mast, they can call us to our own demise. If we begin to believe that panic and anger are the truth, rather than hearing voices of fearful souls seeking to deny destruction or vulnerability, we risk falling under the spell of the powers of vandalism and degradation.
If we hear souls speaking, and if we realize the apocalypse suggests itself only against some idea of supposed to be, neither fate nor emptiness can be the truth. Fear only exists because of hope. That being the case, I can sing against fear. I can close my eyes, tied to the mast, and commit to hope instead. I can raise my voice so the sirens know I am out there, waiting for their worst and unafraid. I can join my own ululations, and in the same frenzy of speaking say: transformation and creation; change and possibility; something new; something good.
Sing hope, even if it comes out as a scream. You may hear fear, but do not mistake it for the truth. Do not give it power. It is a small and shivering thing that holds itself tight against the dark. Find a friend. Bang a drum and raise a ruckus. Blaze out the truth that tomorrow comes, and that whatever else it brings, it contains hope and possibility. After all, if all the lights do go out tomorrow, we'll only be proven wrong, but no one will be around to know it.
Ulysses wanted to hear the voices of sirens, but he respected their power over his imagination, so he had himself tied to his mast-a way to hear without being carried away; because voices are powerful. They enter our brains with feeling, personality and ideas. Without restraints, without tying ourselves to some inner mast, they can call us to our own demise. If we begin to believe that panic and anger are the truth, rather than hearing voices of fearful souls seeking to deny destruction or vulnerability, we risk falling under the spell of the powers of vandalism and degradation.
If we hear souls speaking, and if we realize the apocalypse suggests itself only against some idea of supposed to be, neither fate nor emptiness can be the truth. Fear only exists because of hope. That being the case, I can sing against fear. I can close my eyes, tied to the mast, and commit to hope instead. I can raise my voice so the sirens know I am out there, waiting for their worst and unafraid. I can join my own ululations, and in the same frenzy of speaking say: transformation and creation; change and possibility; something new; something good.
Sing hope, even if it comes out as a scream. You may hear fear, but do not mistake it for the truth. Do not give it power. It is a small and shivering thing that holds itself tight against the dark. Find a friend. Bang a drum and raise a ruckus. Blaze out the truth that tomorrow comes, and that whatever else it brings, it contains hope and possibility. After all, if all the lights do go out tomorrow, we'll only be proven wrong, but no one will be around to know it.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
CREATION
Fearless living is going your own way across the river. It is believing in the ford no one else can see. Fearless living is walking the tightrope without a net. It is balancing on a thin line with destruction at either side. Fearless living is embodied in the prophet, whose voice can only be known as truth after the prediction has come true.
Fearless living is belief.
If you are like me, you may look for supporters before voicing an opinion. If you are like me, you may imagine the judge's opinion is the truth. If you are like me, you may think "people like this" is the same as "this is good; or "people agree with me" is the same as "this is right."
Yet, the truly inspired and revolutionary expressions are rarely the result of considered opinions and carefully crafted agreement. Instead, they are often the result of someone's blind trust. People revere the music of J.S. Bach and Mozart, but neither composer achieved much acclaim while he lived. Their music was largely ignored and and rejected. Nevertheless, both composers believed in the validity of their creative impulses, and it is their notes that somehow transformed and communicated themselves into all European-derived music since.
Rather than supported, arbitrated, and popular, their music was brave. That raw bravery (or, perhaps, megalomaniacal assurance) is integral to true creation. There really is no way to know in advance whether a creative expression will be a success. Creation requires wild guesses, and an acceptance of failure and loss.
So how do I decide that I must speak up and out? I must create? I must express? That requires a belief in my inherent worth that society tells me is unhealthy. Yet, an artist cannot be constrained by society. I have to decide to see through and past society to speak truth. That is the fact about revelation-there really is destruction on either side. The water may actually be as deep as it seems. There is no way to know the outcome before it happens. I simply have to choose whether or not I believe more in myself than I do in the expectations of others.
Fearless living is belief.
If you are like me, you may look for supporters before voicing an opinion. If you are like me, you may imagine the judge's opinion is the truth. If you are like me, you may think "people like this" is the same as "this is good; or "people agree with me" is the same as "this is right."
Yet, the truly inspired and revolutionary expressions are rarely the result of considered opinions and carefully crafted agreement. Instead, they are often the result of someone's blind trust. People revere the music of J.S. Bach and Mozart, but neither composer achieved much acclaim while he lived. Their music was largely ignored and and rejected. Nevertheless, both composers believed in the validity of their creative impulses, and it is their notes that somehow transformed and communicated themselves into all European-derived music since.
Rather than supported, arbitrated, and popular, their music was brave. That raw bravery (or, perhaps, megalomaniacal assurance) is integral to true creation. There really is no way to know in advance whether a creative expression will be a success. Creation requires wild guesses, and an acceptance of failure and loss.
So how do I decide that I must speak up and out? I must create? I must express? That requires a belief in my inherent worth that society tells me is unhealthy. Yet, an artist cannot be constrained by society. I have to decide to see through and past society to speak truth. That is the fact about revelation-there really is destruction on either side. The water may actually be as deep as it seems. There is no way to know the outcome before it happens. I simply have to choose whether or not I believe more in myself than I do in the expectations of others.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
CHORALE
This week, the idea that captured my imagination came about by listening to a wind ensemble. I was reminded by their music that people who have experienced near death report that the music on the other side is light, flutey music which is simple and free from dissonance. Some philosophies suggest that perfect sound can be achieved through a universal vowel at a particular pitch-a tone without dissonance or difference that somehow expresses all that is. I imagined an eternity of such perfection and found myself dismayed.
Truth is, I like dissonance. I like the beat and thunder. I like Romantic chords and timpani. I like the lack of resolution and the ways in which various sounds can come into conflict with one another and merely by moving slightly farther away or closer together, find themselves in accord. I like the sound when Charles Ives' America the Beautiful bends in the middle and loses all coherence for a moment. It says something about life when it appears to fall apart; when it chooses to go in an unforeseen direction; when it ends in the familiar strains and you wonder which part of what you heard was an illusion.
Barber's Adagio for Strings spends its entire length sustaining dissonance, maintaining an exquisite tension that never actually breaks. Masterfully, the listener is left hanging in a question without an answer-having felt some sort of unsettling movement that was never fully released into action. You will know if you have heard this played well, when you leave the performance hall still feeling a tremor deep inside, and unsure exactly what it portends.
I turn away from an idea of Heaven mostly because it seems to be an idea about the end of tension, collision, individuality and change. It purports to be a perfection that allows for no difference. All the discussions are done there, no questions left. All limits are finished. I think about those ideas and I am afraid. What if Heaven lacks dissonance and tension because it is dead. What if a yearning toward Heaven is nothing more than a yearning toward nihilism?
But then again, maybe Heaven is not about the single tone. Perhaps perfection is more like the chorale.
The chorale requires individual voices submitting their own inclinations to the composer's idea in some configuration of altos, tenors, basses or sopranos. Vibratos and straight tones blend. Maturity and craft are lifted by the brash energy of youth and individual daring. The music of a chorale relates sounds and silences, dissonance and resolution, lyric and rhythm. Though notes may come into serious conflict with each other, the singers are safe to lean into this dangerous sound knowing it means something significant that cannot be said without clash. And the important thing for the singer is not the final statement of the chorale, but in the exact moments of each voice being what and where it is intended to be. The glory of the final chord only exists because of the intricate patterns that preceed it.
Maybe perfection is easier imagined as singing in the choir: dissonance, resolution, relation, surrender, power and participation placed carefully into a complex and passionate composition.
Truth is, I like dissonance. I like the beat and thunder. I like Romantic chords and timpani. I like the lack of resolution and the ways in which various sounds can come into conflict with one another and merely by moving slightly farther away or closer together, find themselves in accord. I like the sound when Charles Ives' America the Beautiful bends in the middle and loses all coherence for a moment. It says something about life when it appears to fall apart; when it chooses to go in an unforeseen direction; when it ends in the familiar strains and you wonder which part of what you heard was an illusion.
Barber's Adagio for Strings spends its entire length sustaining dissonance, maintaining an exquisite tension that never actually breaks. Masterfully, the listener is left hanging in a question without an answer-having felt some sort of unsettling movement that was never fully released into action. You will know if you have heard this played well, when you leave the performance hall still feeling a tremor deep inside, and unsure exactly what it portends.
I turn away from an idea of Heaven mostly because it seems to be an idea about the end of tension, collision, individuality and change. It purports to be a perfection that allows for no difference. All the discussions are done there, no questions left. All limits are finished. I think about those ideas and I am afraid. What if Heaven lacks dissonance and tension because it is dead. What if a yearning toward Heaven is nothing more than a yearning toward nihilism?
But then again, maybe Heaven is not about the single tone. Perhaps perfection is more like the chorale.
The chorale requires individual voices submitting their own inclinations to the composer's idea in some configuration of altos, tenors, basses or sopranos. Vibratos and straight tones blend. Maturity and craft are lifted by the brash energy of youth and individual daring. The music of a chorale relates sounds and silences, dissonance and resolution, lyric and rhythm. Though notes may come into serious conflict with each other, the singers are safe to lean into this dangerous sound knowing it means something significant that cannot be said without clash. And the important thing for the singer is not the final statement of the chorale, but in the exact moments of each voice being what and where it is intended to be. The glory of the final chord only exists because of the intricate patterns that preceed it.
Maybe perfection is easier imagined as singing in the choir: dissonance, resolution, relation, surrender, power and participation placed carefully into a complex and passionate composition.
Monday, August 30, 2010
BODY
I know people who like drumming because it is music made from the body. The body is the instrument that plays. The body touches space and beats time; but I like singing better. Singing is music made from the body. The body is the instrument that is played. The body breathing formulates song.
What's more, singing calls us. Singing entreats us. Singing invites us. Singing allures us, by the magnetic power of connection. A soloist singing expresses the loneness of the human condition, but when another singer joins, the two singers together express the possibility of community.
Dry bones beaten together can sound a heartbeat, but only with the animation of Breath do those bones Live. Rhythm shapes the song, but singing gives human language to the music. Singing relates us by words. Singing takes us a step past being and into particular meaning. The body touches space and beats time, but it also communicates itself with other.
Don't get me wrong. I love drumming, too. It is just that I think it must be a kind of singing. It must participate in Voice to matter. It must translate into something human to become other than a repetitive percussion; and it misses that vital component to human existence-the profound singularity of a body as it knows itself separate from each and every other.
Singing is a work of the Body, that inexplicable place in which we find ourselves breathing and whose boundaries we constantly seek to define.
What's more, singing calls us. Singing entreats us. Singing invites us. Singing allures us, by the magnetic power of connection. A soloist singing expresses the loneness of the human condition, but when another singer joins, the two singers together express the possibility of community.
Dry bones beaten together can sound a heartbeat, but only with the animation of Breath do those bones Live. Rhythm shapes the song, but singing gives human language to the music. Singing relates us by words. Singing takes us a step past being and into particular meaning. The body touches space and beats time, but it also communicates itself with other.
Don't get me wrong. I love drumming, too. It is just that I think it must be a kind of singing. It must participate in Voice to matter. It must translate into something human to become other than a repetitive percussion; and it misses that vital component to human existence-the profound singularity of a body as it knows itself separate from each and every other.
Singing is a work of the Body, that inexplicable place in which we find ourselves breathing and whose boundaries we constantly seek to define.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
The Dangers of Crossing the Border
We are made by the boundaries we keep. Often, satisfaction arises not so much in knowing what definitions others expect us to have, but in discovering which fences we ourselves are willing to cross. Reminded by Bolt's Thomas More, life and death are symbiotically bound. More's humanity-More's soul-is defined by a set of principles. To stay alive, he is asked to renounce those principles. Yet, without those principles, More has no definition. He cannot live without them. To live or not to live. That is his question.
I recently spent months worrying about how to keep a balance between Thing 1 and Thing 2 in a foolish desire to keep all possibilities open. That may be a trait to how human brains function, but it is not the purpose for which human brains are made. Humanity means shaping the raw materials of thought, feeling and physicality into an existence-a being distinctly, and, simultaneously, indistinguishably human. That happens by defining the set of principles which will bind or release.
What I mean is that choosing matters more than the choice. Choosing has to do with testing my own principles. I like to say "drawing a line in the sand." It is how I know how far I will go, and from what I am willing to turn aside. If we are honest, the fate of humanity rarely rests on any one set of shoulders. A "wrong" choice is as informative as a "right" choice. It brings me face to face with a principle or characteristic of my humanity which I have failed to uphold or respect. It brings me face to face with the principle or characteristic of humanity which I must, at some level, revere and value. The next choice will be closer to that ideal or farther away from it.
Like More, it may take me to a place where my very life is in the choice, but it is much more likely death will find me on its own. That being the case, I would rather it find me crawling through fences and checking the gate latches, than sitting on the verge of the roadway waiting for some local to come along and give me a lift.
Thing 1 and Thing 2? They are pretty much the same. I am is the only difference.
I recently spent months worrying about how to keep a balance between Thing 1 and Thing 2 in a foolish desire to keep all possibilities open. That may be a trait to how human brains function, but it is not the purpose for which human brains are made. Humanity means shaping the raw materials of thought, feeling and physicality into an existence-a being distinctly, and, simultaneously, indistinguishably human. That happens by defining the set of principles which will bind or release.
What I mean is that choosing matters more than the choice. Choosing has to do with testing my own principles. I like to say "drawing a line in the sand." It is how I know how far I will go, and from what I am willing to turn aside. If we are honest, the fate of humanity rarely rests on any one set of shoulders. A "wrong" choice is as informative as a "right" choice. It brings me face to face with a principle or characteristic of my humanity which I have failed to uphold or respect. It brings me face to face with the principle or characteristic of humanity which I must, at some level, revere and value. The next choice will be closer to that ideal or farther away from it.
Like More, it may take me to a place where my very life is in the choice, but it is much more likely death will find me on its own. That being the case, I would rather it find me crawling through fences and checking the gate latches, than sitting on the verge of the roadway waiting for some local to come along and give me a lift.
Thing 1 and Thing 2? They are pretty much the same. I am is the only difference.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
FEAR
This is what stands in our way: fear.
To avoid loss, I accumulate things.
To avoid falling, I attain height.
To avoid failure, I strive for achievement.
I fear loss, falling, failing, because I believe I am weighed and judged by forces outside myself; others' eyes, ears, and concepts of taste. I am the things they see, the respect they afford me, the results I can give them. My life becomes fear, arbitrated by forces outside myself. I forget what I look like without accessories. I forget what I am naked and alone.
Yet, deep inside, I know I cannot trust a mirror. The mirror is only ever a reflection and not the real thing. I can never know myself by looking at a reflection. I can only ever get an outline, and a sense of color-something distorted and partially true. The weight and judgement from others never actually satisfies the question-is this what I look like? Is this what I am?
If I do not know what I look like, and if I do not know what I am, what can I lose? From where can I fall? What depends upon me that can fail? Until I decide to know myself in truth, I will be living in fear.
I will have no faith in my relationships-as no one will be relating to me, only to an image I cast. I will have no assurance-as I will never allow myself to face the world without money and a place. I will not sing-as someone else has told me that my songs aren't selling this year.
So, a paradox: I fear a life without faithfulness, trust and community if I try to express my self; yet a life without faithfulness, trust and community is what I have if I do not express my self.
The singer has to decide, simply, one day, to overcome her fear. Sometimes, the notes land just right. Sometime, she gets laughed off the stage. Sometimes she loses, falls and fails, but not always, and never for long. She learns that she lives through a loss, a failure and a fall. It is hard to know. The only true thing is she can never be a singer at all unless she joins the choir.
To avoid loss, I accumulate things.
To avoid falling, I attain height.
To avoid failure, I strive for achievement.
I have things. I fear loss.
I have status. I fear falling.
I have success. I fear failing.
I fear loss, falling, failing, because I believe I am weighed and judged by forces outside myself; others' eyes, ears, and concepts of taste. I am the things they see, the respect they afford me, the results I can give them. My life becomes fear, arbitrated by forces outside myself. I forget what I look like without accessories. I forget what I am naked and alone.
Yet, deep inside, I know I cannot trust a mirror. The mirror is only ever a reflection and not the real thing. I can never know myself by looking at a reflection. I can only ever get an outline, and a sense of color-something distorted and partially true. The weight and judgement from others never actually satisfies the question-is this what I look like? Is this what I am?
If I do not know what I look like, and if I do not know what I am, what can I lose? From where can I fall? What depends upon me that can fail? Until I decide to know myself in truth, I will be living in fear.
I will have no faith in my relationships-as no one will be relating to me, only to an image I cast. I will have no assurance-as I will never allow myself to face the world without money and a place. I will not sing-as someone else has told me that my songs aren't selling this year.
So, a paradox: I fear a life without faithfulness, trust and community if I try to express my self; yet a life without faithfulness, trust and community is what I have if I do not express my self.
The singer has to decide, simply, one day, to overcome her fear. Sometimes, the notes land just right. Sometime, she gets laughed off the stage. Sometimes she loses, falls and fails, but not always, and never for long. She learns that she lives through a loss, a failure and a fall. It is hard to know. The only true thing is she can never be a singer at all unless she joins the choir.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Sing Life
So-Song is a metaphor for life. So-life needs both Spirit and Soul. So-singing needs Spirit and Soul; breath and communication of the human condition. Most people I meet tell me, "I can't sing." Since most people I meet are breathing at the time, I can only hear that to mean that there is something asleep in their souls. Something silences their need to communicate their human condition to others.
After all, what more is a song? I need to share loss in disaster. I need to share ecstasy in love. I need to share terror amidst cultural disintegration. I need to share my doubts-Dave Matthews' Band: Mother Father. I need to share assurance-Matisyahu: One Day. Neil Diamond sang I Am . . . I Said because sometimes we fear we "are not." We test our existence by singing. Singing is a work of the Soul.
Here is where I take issue with fame and celebrity. Here is where I take issue with the Arts. Somehow, we Americans have convinced ourselves that singing is a work that solely belongs to the artist. We have decided that we sing primarily to be noticed, revered, or expressing some Kantian ideal of perfected Will. We have decided there is not room for a wobbly vibrato, a pitch that hasn't been rendered inhuman through a sound mixer, and that singing belongs only to the individual with talent; as though what the rest of us need to say is not worthy of hearing.
If this is where you find yourself, you have been deceived. Your voice is yours. It is perfect when it wobbles. It is beautiful when it grinds and gravels. Maybe it doesn't fit in a choir. Maybe it requires a different instrument to be set free, but it does not belong to arbiters of taste. It does not belong to Simon, BMI or me. It is something you inherited with your humanity, and it is there to express what exists beyond words in the human experience.
You may think I am wrong, but singers without Soul, though they breathe into a microphone and move us to dance, wither. You can see it in many celebrities. People who "can sing," but cannot seem to connect with another human being without a veil of drugs and exploitative relationships. They can breathe with the Spirit of life but they are not singing with Soul.
If you have been listening, you have started to hear the song. May you have the courage to try and give it voice.
After all, what more is a song? I need to share loss in disaster. I need to share ecstasy in love. I need to share terror amidst cultural disintegration. I need to share my doubts-Dave Matthews' Band: Mother Father. I need to share assurance-Matisyahu: One Day. Neil Diamond sang I Am . . . I Said because sometimes we fear we "are not." We test our existence by singing. Singing is a work of the Soul.
Here is where I take issue with fame and celebrity. Here is where I take issue with the Arts. Somehow, we Americans have convinced ourselves that singing is a work that solely belongs to the artist. We have decided that we sing primarily to be noticed, revered, or expressing some Kantian ideal of perfected Will. We have decided there is not room for a wobbly vibrato, a pitch that hasn't been rendered inhuman through a sound mixer, and that singing belongs only to the individual with talent; as though what the rest of us need to say is not worthy of hearing.
If this is where you find yourself, you have been deceived. Your voice is yours. It is perfect when it wobbles. It is beautiful when it grinds and gravels. Maybe it doesn't fit in a choir. Maybe it requires a different instrument to be set free, but it does not belong to arbiters of taste. It does not belong to Simon, BMI or me. It is something you inherited with your humanity, and it is there to express what exists beyond words in the human experience.
You may think I am wrong, but singers without Soul, though they breathe into a microphone and move us to dance, wither. You can see it in many celebrities. People who "can sing," but cannot seem to connect with another human being without a veil of drugs and exploitative relationships. They can breathe with the Spirit of life but they are not singing with Soul.
If you have been listening, you have started to hear the song. May you have the courage to try and give it voice.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
SPIRIT and SOUL
Living human beings breathe. That's what they do. When they stop breathing, they die. There is really no way around this that I know about. Yet, there are a few mysteries in this breathing thing. For instance: what kick starts the first breath? Why can't we just pump air into a set of lungs to get a human being going again, when the breath has stopped for too long? Why can't I simply choose not to breathe when I want to? How do I know the difference between a living human being and a dead one when there is a life support machine involved?
In these mysteries is something else. Like the breath- like the spirit in respiration, inspiration, aspiration, and expiration-living human beings share another form of animating principle. Something beyond breathing, yet much like it in form, invigorates us. It is something that needs to be present for a human being to be alive. It is the difference between a sleeper on a breathing machine and a genius with ALS in a mechanized chair. It is somehow tied to the way in which a human being is capable of communication, the ability to have relationship with another.
We have then, two words: Spirit and Soul. One we define as breath, life and energy. The other we define as the essence of breathing, living energized humanity. Both start mysteriously. Both end the same way. Both exist beyond our mechanical means to duplicate. Both somehow define what it is to be a living being. The absence of either is death, though the death of Soul may not mean the end of breathing, and the death of Spirit may not mean the end of relating one to another.
We live in an unsettled time, with many experts at cynicism and war. We live into undreamt possibilities of change for the whole of humanity-changes in human biology, society, and person to person communication unforeseen and unknowable to any but our ancestors yet to come. It is a scary time in which to be, with creation and destruction so close at hand. It is a scary time in which to be, having to create new rules for a set of circumstances well beyond our control.
Spirit and Soul are important here. What it is to be alive is important here. We seem to be pretty good at the Spirit thing. We seem to be pretty good at finding ways to breathe, but I am convinced that the Soul thing matters, too, and I will tell you why: breath belongs to the biological, but relationship belongs to the personal. Without the ability to reach, touch, hear, see, know, converse, share, or relate, we become the living dead-breathing biologicals that somehow miss the mark at being human.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Song
What is a song? A song is a statement in sound that runs underneath the currents of the everyday. It is sustained and connected in time, and to be heard, it relies on the breath. A song, unlike a symphony or a sonata, is an intimate and individual theme. Symphonies and sonatas are made up of many songs. Even in the animal world, songs are individual and unique, small things expressive of the daily chores-sunrise, attracting mate, waking, finding food, greeting friend, or bearing child.
Like the soundtrack for our weekly TV shows, there is a rhythm and idea that plays constantly to highlight the tensions and suspensions of our activities, relationships, and patterns day to day. It beats a pattern to which we can walk. It sounds a sorrow with which we can cry. It's there. I guarantee it. When you stop yourself and focus in, you can hear it. It may be faint, or it may thunder like the calls of cicadas tree to tree. Each one will sound different. Each one will have its own message to share, but each one will connect to another, as well.
Sometimes, you find your song is in harmony with other songs. Sometimes, whatever it is that is running behind your actions is out of sync, and out of time. You hear a song on the radio and it says just what you've always known, in exactly the way you need to hear it sung. It's the song your soul is singing, and someone else has heard it, too.
Maybe what I mean is that a song is a metaphor, but then again, maybe I don't. Maybe I mean that life really does have music behind it-small, individual themes, sustained and connected in time, relying on the breath to move outward and be heard.
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