Imagining a hum in b-flat

A few days ago, I mentioned worrying about a coyote—not coyotes in general, but individual coyotes and the huge risk we represent to them. Actually, this was both a thought (coyotes in general thrive in spite of us) and a feeling (oof! I hope this coyote doesn’t become so familiar with people that it ends up shot, “sacrificed” to human safety and comfort).

That moment was brought to mind last evening as I listened to Sound Circle’s concert, “Requiem for Roadkill: A concert about being human.” If you don’t know about Sound Circle and live anywhere near Boulder, you might want to check them out. An a cappella women’s vocal ensemble, this group is wonderful to hear and even to watch. They incorporate sometimes-surprising soundscapes that range from bells, chimes, and gongs through a musical saw and beats tapped on animal bones to running water and body percussion. Anyway, back to last night’s concert.

This was Sound Circle’s annual Solstice concert, a celebration of the natural rhythms of the seasons and, by extension, of nature. In any other venue, the title “Requiem for Roadkill” would be sort of a joke, maybe a tongue-in-cheek commentary on local folks’ sensitivity to animal rights. But as I settled into the music and the deeper meaning of the title (the intent of the title piece was genuinely to serve as a requiem for animals killed and left on the road), I was reminded of my coyote. And of a dog that once jumped in front of my car. And of a dead squirrel I dodged on the street yesterday. And, not at all paradoxically, of Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist teacher with whom I once did a weeklong retreat. 

I recall sitting on my meditation mat, listening to Thich Nhat Hanh talk about a thought he'd had while eating breakfast one morning. Gazing out his window, he had thought to himself, roughly, “This grain I’m eating came from that field, and soon, it will become a Dharma lesson.” Hearing his story, I really got the concept—and, on a gut level, the feeling—of how everything is connected. Trees come from earth comes from decaying matter … like us. Songs come from voices that are made of the same stuff as the echoes of a spinning black hole at the center of a constellation cluster (b-flat, it seems).  

So how do we wrap our minds around this idea? We who were mostly raised in a Western mode of thinking that draws lines off separation: she is not he; we are not they; I am not you; your country is not my country; song is not cosmic echoes; grain is not prayer. Now I'm thinking of John Lennon singing, “Imagine there’s no country/ It isn’t hard to do …” What if the problem in our “getting it” about connection is that we can’t imagine it? Literally. We cannot imagine anything other than separation.

Enter Sound Circle. “The only war that matters is the war on the imagination. All other wars are subsumed in it.” So says “Rant,” another piece on the program.* This poem/song/performance had me totally engrossed. Imagine this: what if the only impediment to our “getting it” about being connected is the failure of imagination, the war we fight against our own imagination. What if this failure to imagine is what allows us to engage in wars, see coyotes as pests, destroy the environment in the name of profit, deny teen girls access to emergency contraception. I don’t mean only that we fail to imagine solutions. I mean we fail to imagine anything other than separation. We fail to imagine that we somehow are  the coyote, the squirrel, the other nation, the pregnant teen, the hum of the universe. The problem is that we’re not heeding John Lennon. We’re not even imagining there’s no country, easy though it may be.

The moon was nearly full in a very dark sky as we drove home from the concert. Six months from now, it won’t even be dusk at this hour. We had left on a sad note, saying goodbye to a dear friend who has sung in, played piano with, choreographed for, and generally inspired Sound Circle since its origins 18 years ago and is leaving for a dream job. But the moon was beautiful and the music was with us, layers of comfort around the sadness. Or maybe I shouldn’t say that our friend, the moon, and the music, the sadness accompanied us, but that they were us. Imagine that. It’s not easy, but we can try.

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*“Rant” was written by Diane di Prima and set to music by local musician Gary Grundei.