Such a world!

Lately, I’ve noticed a lot of little reminders that time is streaming, rushing past. Things like the announcement I got in the mail recently inviting me to my 50^th (!) high school reunion. My first thought was, “OMG, has it really been that long?” My second was, “OMG², this means I was born in the middle of the last century!” That sounds so like something you’d read about in a history book.

Not long after, we got a message reminding us that the car should be brought in for service. It hadn’t been serviced since August, said the message. “Nonsense!” said I. “I remember sitting in the waiting area, and that sure wasn’t six months ago.” So I looked it up. August. Six months ago. Half a year had passed.

Then a friend was telling me about someone who periodically says to her partner, “We have 20 good years left.” (You can fill in your own numbers.) “We wasted last year, didn’t do the things we wanted to do. Now we have 19 good years left. We’re letting this year slip away. Now we’ll have 18 good years left.”

Thinking of these things calls to mind an icicle we saw last week, hanging from a cornice at the roof's edge, draining the moisture from the snow above. Life is like that. The days just drip, falling away. If you don’t pay attention, they’re gone, and you didn’t get to see them.

All of these moments merge today with my reflections on the Resonance concert I heard last weekend. I've written about Resonance before, and this concert was, as always, wonderful: the rich sound of 130 women’s voices and the singers’ (and the director’s) obvious connection with the music creating the perfect setting for the concert's message. Or messages. I can only speak to the message I took from it, framed by what’s on my mind at the moment. And you know what that is from the paragraphs above.

The concert spoke—whether it was meant to or not—to my current ruminations on the meaning and experience of aging. It pondered with me, it seemed, this realization that time is growing shorter, and that the wealth of it all could slip away while I’m not paying attention. This concert was a celebration of the chorus' tenth anniversary, and former singers were invited to join for a few songs. So I suspect thoughts of aging, change, and the passage of time weren't far from many minds.

The concert was called “Imagine Such a World,” the title taken from one of the pieces. I loved this song. The words are a poem written by a member of the chorus, and the piece was commissioned for Resonance by a member of the chorus in honor of her late partner. The song reminded me, in spirit, of “Praises for the World,” which, as you probably know by now (since I've written about it over and over and over again), may be my favorite piece of music in the world. “Imagine Such a World,” has some of the same feel: This is such an astonishing world. Look! Are we not blessed to have time with it? Listen:

Imagine Such a World (excerpts from the concert program)

by Linda Millemann

Imagine a world where water falls,

just falls,

out of the sky.

A world that offers the soft arm of sleep

to follow every bursting day. . .

A world so longing to be heard

it blooms a meadow full of birds,

so longing for the dance

it sends a pulse of river over rock

of wind  between the  trees

and sways to its own joy

in rippled grassy fields…

Oh, world, almost too much to be imagined

only asking to be met

with our most keenly joyous vow

of yes.
No more.

No less.

Imagine such a world.

This wasn’t the only piece in the concert that evoked this sense of both the depth and the impermanence of life. “Somehow” (from the anti-war piece “Brave Souls and Dreamers”), “Under the Harvest Moon,” “Kinder,” “Love After Love”—all invited reflection on impermanence, joy, nature, sadness, finding yourself, the paradoxical connection between great love (of people, of nature, of life) and great loss. And in the midst of all this, the great grand privilege of being alive, of embracing it all, wrapping our arms around such a world.

I’m framing this all as a reflection on aging—and it is that, for me. But that’s not all it is. This awareness of the simultaneous transience and richness of life may become more poignant, more distilled with age, but the message is no less true in youth. Life is wondrous and short. Don’t wait to notice, because it all passes. Imagine such a world!

Hear for yourself. Resonance will perform this concert again twice next weekend, on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. Check out the “Performances” page on their website for more information.

Then get out there and see those icicles before they drip away!

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.

Escape from the whimpering funk

As expected, I have made my way out of my whimpering episode of a few days ago. That particular bummed-out mood was the result of too strong a hit of the world’s troubles without much to balance it out. So, I attribute the rise in my hope-and-joy quotient to two forces of balance:

First, I went to hear Sound Circle perform “Praises for the World” again. Even though I just heard "Praises" a few weeks ago, I knew that relaxing into that calm space that’s somehow both very present and totally somewhere else would help. It did.

And second, I went to hear Obama speak. Why, I ask myself, is this so cool? For one thing, think about how often I’ll get to see a President, live and in real time. Probably once—this time. Add to that the fact that this isn't just any president. It’s Obama, the most enlightened, exhilarating president since JFK. The welcome remedy for too much “W.” The embodiment of the hope that progressive issues would at least be on the table again. And the only person who will ever be the first African-American president. Ever.

Obama at CU - he's the speck behind the podium. Trust me. 
For better pictures, click here.

Sure, it’s not all sweetness and light. I’m disappointed in Obama in a lot of ways. Virtually every progressive social-change advocate I know is. Still, several things make me deeply appreciative of him—and eager to share that enthusiasm with about 10,000 other noisy folks. Items on my list:

1.      I take responsibility for a large chunk of my disappointment. The man I voted for, the man for whom I shed tears at the inauguration, was at least partly a figment of my grandiose hopes. I saw him as everything W was not. I saw him as the personification of everything I thought should happen. I saw him a super-human. The contrast between fantasy and reality is often disappointing. It’s always disheartening when idols turn out to be mere mortals operating in a world of mortals. It's tough when the image we have of someone (full of nonsense though it may be) turns out not to be who s/he actually is as a human being. We’ve all had that experience. This time, it was just so huge—the hopes, and therefore the loss. In truth, much of what I’m disappointed about was never on Obama's agenda. It was on mine.

2.      I am aware that lots of what he “failed” to do was the result of working against incredible odds. He had very little experience in Washington, a Cuisinart of a place that can turn anything into mush in a minute. He started with a massive deficit, an economy on the fast track to heck, and a totally obstructionist congress. Sure, it’s all his responsibility now, and lots of us wish he had done more. But he did start out at a bit of a disadvantage, which my idealistic image hadn’t accounted for very well.

3.      Despite all this, he has actually accomplished many things, lots of it below the radar. Many of these initiatives have felt like far too little and often too late. He has completely failed in some domains—“evolving” on same-sex marriage now puts him squarely with most prominent Republicans, and immigration reform remains largely an empty promise. But he has led the way on some significant changes, even in the face of a process that is clearly broken. And, equally (or more) importantly, he has changed the conversation. Before this presidency, we weren’t even discussing health care reform; hate crimes legislation dragged on largely unnoticed; banking reform, credit card reform, and mortgage reform weren’t even in the lingo; and the idea of actually working together with other nations, considering diplomacy as a useful and honorable strategy, was a long-forgotten dream. At least I hear my concerns discussed, even though they are not always fruitfully resolved.

4.      Finally, there’s the practical bottom line. This argument is less noble but equally compelling: Who else would I vote for? When I consider the alternatives, I realize that Obama’s losing in the fall would mean a 180° retreat from a whole host of issues that matter to me.

I'm not campaigning here. Just clarifying why I was willing to go through the hassles it took to see this man from across a packed event center, disheartened though I sometimes am by his administration.  

So, I went. In fact, I went way out of my way to do it. One day, my partner and I stood in line waiting for her ticket because she was in a different ticket category from me. The next day, I stood (actually, I sat) in line for almost 3 hours waiting to get my ticket. Then, on the big day, we started waiting in line at 3:15 for a 7:00 event. We actually got in about 4:30, I think, which means that we waited for another 2½ hours after we got through the door (and the security screening). Once inside, we were able, thanks to a friend who went with us, to strategize and rush through the crowds of students (aptly nicknamed the “thundering herd”) to get seats directly across from the stage. (The truth is that our friend actually did both the strategizing and the rushing; we just followed her to the seats she staked out).

Nothing in Obama’s talk was surprising. But it was Obama, after all, and he is such a remarkable orator.  A recipe for vegetable soup would sound lofty spoken by him. Besides, he was talking about college and students and student loans, topics close to my heart. I expected his speech to revitalize my hopefulness, and it did.

So, there you have the antidote for bummed-out thumb sucking. A hit of inspiring music, a dose of soaring oratory—neither of them surprising but both uplifting—hoisted me out of my whimpering funk and back to the land of everyday joy and distress. 

I knew it would happen. But when my thumb is in my mouth, I sometimes have trouble seeing past my fist. 

The last words

A while ago, I wrote about a Solstice concert by Sound Circle, a small (16-20 voices), Boulder-area women’s a cappella ensemble. I’m not generally a choral music fan, but this group is special. Their small size makes for a more intimate experience, and their varied and always beautifully crafted performances keep me coming back—always grateful that I did. This weekend, I attended a Sound Circle performance that included one of my favorite choral pieces ever, Praises for the World, composed by Jennifer Berezan.  

I've heard Sound Circle perform this piece before, and I keep going back every opportunity I get. Each performance has been slightly different; each one has had the same effect on me: calm, enwrapped meditation. I love just sitting with my eyes closed and being absorbed in it. This weekend, as on other occasions, I found tears slipping from my closed eyelids as I listened … if listening is even the right word. I feel transported every time I hear Praises.

This time, being in this music had an added dimension for me. I’m thinking a lot these days about the meaning of life and living (which is not the same as thinking about death). I’m thinking about the need to be engaged with the world, even as I’m aware of and striving to find peace with the approaching reality of leaving it.

Praises touched both of these places in my soul. I sat, immersed in flowing, meditative rhythms that took me someplace else—and at the same time, invited me to be completely present, right here.

Lines in the opening vocal solo convey this better than I can:

If I die tomorrow, may the last words that I know

Be praises, praises for the world

I suppose that all of us, as we age, wrestle with how to do it well. This changes with time, of course. Personally, I’m very aware of the rapidly decreasing time ahead, although I realize that compared with lots of folks, I’m very early in this process. But still, that awareness of entering this final stage of life changes just about everything. And finding peace in the middle of that seems to me to be the developmental task of this period in life.

We’re told that this will mean “coming to terms” with aging, “accepting” our limitations, aging “gracefully,” “acknowledging” the inevitability of the end of life. Alternatively, we’re told to stay lively, be “young at heart,” enjoy these “golden years.” I’m not certain what those things mean, but I’m pretty sure there’s no set formula for how to do this process, or for how to do it well. And for now, for me, I am very drawn to the image of doing it to the strains of Praises. Completely appreciative of the world, completely engaged with it, even as I anticipate leaving. Praises for the world. May those be my last words, indeed.

I realize that Praises carries different meanings for different folks—folks of different ages, and even other folks in my generation. This is how it touched me. This time. Next time I hear it, I may come away with another layer of meaning.

In any case, it’s an extraordinary experience, and I’d hate for anyone to miss it. So I’ll risk the charge of shilling for Sound Circle to let you know that they’ll be performing this concert two more times this spring. The first half of the program includes several other wonderful pieces, and the second half is devoted to Praises. If you’re wondering whether to make the time, ask anyone who has heard this piece. They’ll tell you to go if you possibly can. I know that’s what I’ll do.

Sound Circle will also be doing another concert this summer (details TBA) that touches me in a similar way: Path of Beauty: Singing the Grand Canyon. I saw this concert two years ago (and “saw” is the operative word here: the music is accompanied by a wonderful slide show of scenes from the Grand Canyon. It’s enough to warm the heart of any desert rat). I’ll be going again this year. For this one, I can’t close my eyes, but I know it will be wonderfully meditative in its own way.