Glorious GALA … and “Praises,” this time

Over the past several days, I’ve spent many hours listening to and hanging out among LGBTQ choruses. The quadrennial GALA Festival (GALA: Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses) was in Denver this year. It basically … no, it totally … took over the Denver Performing Arts Center for several days. The 6,000+ LGBTQ singers and their supporters, fans, and groupies were there from all around the US, from Canada and Europe, even from New Zealand and Australia. It was a marvelous experience of immersion in queer culture.

I don’t sing in a chorus myself (mercifully, for all involved), but having this huge event right in my backyard was too good to pass up. Still, since I’m not deeply into choral music, I planned to see a few of my very favorite choruses and a couple I’d heard a lot about, and then call it good. But I ended up moving with my partner from one concert to another for days. Many of these events were multiple-chorus happenings, inspiring for the range of music the different groups performed, the variation in their membership, size, style, the themes of their programs … and on and on. Others featured individual choruses, giving each one an extended block of time to share their music.

Out of the many, here are some I saw, a few personal highlights to give you a hint of what this experience was like.

·        As most unexpected, I’d have to count the choruses from Juneau (whom I heard) and from New Zealand/Australia (whom I did not). These folks must have seriously wanted to be at GALA to have mustered the energy and the capital to get themselves here. I also loved one of the songs by the Juneau Pride Chorus, which went something like this:

“I will believe the truth about myself … no matter how beautiful it may be.”

·        As most mouth-dropping amazing, I’d count two performances. One was a commissioned work performed by Sound Circle (what a surprise!). It was a sort of high-energy, high-speed body percussion piece called, improbably but appropriately, “Clangor, Clammer, Clapperclaw.” The crisp precision of the performers’ movements and their voices was just stunning. I was holding my breath, incredulous that none of them ever missed a beat, even by a hair, ever. The other amazing piece was a spoken-word performance called “Bully to the Brink” performed by Dreams of Hope, a Pittsburgh youth group. The frankness and strength of their declaration that they also—we, also—have participated in bullying was really powerful.

·        As most richly, enwrappingly beautiful, I’d name Resonance’s multi-piece concert and Sound Circle’s paean to desert canyons, “Path of Beauty: Singing the Grand Canyon.” I realize I seem seriously biased here, singling out two Boulder women’s choruses, but it’s hard not to be in awe of the wonderful music being created right here in our own town. And to prove I wasn’t alone in my appreciation, Resonance got a spontaneous, enthusiastic ovation in the lobby of the performance hall as they came out from backstage. MUSE, a long-standing (29 years!) women’s chorus from Cincinnati, was also really impressive. This chorus includes a range of ages and identities, and their music covers the gamut from serious social justice pieces to a playful ode to the wonders of caffeine. A joy to watch and to hear.

And then, on the level of profoundly, personally moving, I sank into a familiar (though always unique), deep, warm, round peace listening to Sound Circle perform “Praises for the World.” I’ve written about this piece before—and probably will again. Its foundation is a chant, with other vocal and instrumental music and some spoken word layered over it at intervals through the piece. For me, it’s a meditation. It speaks to a part of me that I rarely encounter. In fact, listening to “Praises” this time persuaded me to resume my long-neglected meditation practice. I don’t expect to reach the place that “Praises” leads me very often, but moving in that direction can only be healing.

(At the end of this GALA blog, I’ll say something more about this particular experience. But first, I’ll bid GALA farewell.)

There were lots of other, equally wonderful performances that I missed because overlapping events—and downright fatigue—kept me from going to them all. Still, I got to enjoy a lot of music and a few workshops, and came away with a new appreciation for choral music as an embodiment of queer culture at its most lively. My partner is really interested in queer culture as one of the ways we build resilience in the face of a sometimes insensitive (or worse) world—and also celebrate queer identity in all its magnificent forms. Submerged in GALA, I really “got” what she means.

For one brief moment of insanity, I even considered singing with a chorus so I could be more in the middle of it all instead of on the fringes. I quickly got over that particular idea, but I sure loved soaking up the community that was carried on the buzz that filled DPAC.

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Epilogue

Thoughts on “Praises for the World,” this time

As often happens when we experience something really moving and complex several times, this time, I heard parts of “Praises” at a level I hadn’t before. Two of the poems read over the underlying chant felt especially meaningful to me this time. Of course, these are very different when read in print than when heard spoken aloud by someone whose voice is a musical instrument. Given that caveat, here they are, with a few reflections. 

Morning Poem
Every morning the world is created. Under the orange sticks of the sun the heaped ashes of the night turn into leaves again and fasten themselves to the high branches and the ponds appear like black cloth on which are painted islands of summer lilies. If it is your nature to be happy you will swim away along the soft trails for hours, your imagination alighting everywhere. And if your spirit carries within it		the thorn that is heavier than lead --- if it's all you can do to keep on trudging --- there is still somewhere deep within you a beast shouting that the earth is exactly what it wanted --- each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered lavishly, every morning, whether or not you have ever dared to be happy, whether or not you have ever dared to pray. -- in Dream Work by Mary Oliver (1986)
Five A.M. in the Pinewoods
I'd seen their hoofprints in the deep needles and knew they ended the long night under the pines, walking like two mute and beautiful women toward the deeper woods, so I got up in the dark and went there. They came slowly down the hill and looked at me sitting under the blue trees, shyly they stepped closer and stared from under their thick lashes and even nibbled some damp tassels of weeds. This is not a poem about a dream, though it could be.	This is a poem about the world that is ours, or could be. Finally one of them — I swear it! — would have come to my arms. But the other stamped sharp hoof in the pine needles like the tap of sanity, and they went off together through the trees. When I woke I was alone, I was thinking: so this is how you swim inward, so this is how you flow outward, so this is how you pray. --- in House of Light by Mary Oliver (1992)

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And here is what I (especially) heard, or rather, what I felt, listening to these poems, this time:

“ … each pond with its blazing lilies

is a prayer heard and answered

lavishly, 

every morning, 

whether or not …

you have ever dared to pray.”

 … and …

“ … shyly
they stepped
closer and stared
from under their thick lashes …

one of them — I swear it! —

would have come to my arms.
But the other
stamped sharp hoof in the
pine needles like

the tap of sanity…

I was thinking …
so this is how you pray.

It’s at this level, this sunk root-deep in nature level, where I can understand prayer. As a simple, visceral, cellular, joyful, wonder-laced experience of the cosmic marvel of existence. 

Another spoken-word part of “Praises” is a short quotation from the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, who wrote, “The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.” I once attended a retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh, and I remember hearing him say something like this: “I was looking out my window this morning as I ate my cereal, thinking, ‘those men in the field are harvesting grain like that I’m eating. Soon, that grain will become a lesson.’” 

This is how I can understand prayer … a deer’s curiosity, the “golden sticks of the sun,” wheat becoming a lesson. That’s what I brought away from “Praises for the World.” This time.