Things great and small

(If you received this blog by email, you might want to visit the actual site. The pictures work much better there. 

Just click on the title “Things great and small.”

As you likely know, Resonance Women’s Chorus, home to my major volunteer gig these days, just finished up the season with its marvelous concert on climate change. After being immersed in this earth-ish topic for months, it’s been fun to find myself stretched through other layers of reality by a handful of articles I've encountered—outward to this incomprehensibly vast cosmos of ours and inward to microscopic realms that touch on our very identity. Not trivial matters, but definitely fun.

(Before I get all wonky, check out these gorgeous roses I spotted on a walk the other day. If nothing else, they're testimony to two happy facts: it's spring and I'm out walking again. Hooray!)

So, as a hint of this perspective stretching I mentioned, I offer these few tidbits for your consideration. 

First, the microscopic: 

The first set of articles I read had to do with the relatively recent development of a new technique in the field of genetics. Not long ago, two geneticists developed a technique called CRISPR-Cas9, which gives scientists the ability to remove and add genetic material at will, altering an organism's genome—sperm, eggs, embryos—in a way that will be passed on to future generations. Here’s a video explaining it, if you're curious. The technique has already been used in rats, monkeys, and a few other species. Folks are pretty certain that it would work in humans. Genetic manipulation that is limited to non-germ cells (e.g., in GMO foods, gene therapy) already raises some ethical concerns. But this is about changes that will be transmitted to subsequent generations. Still unknown are how precise such changes can be (might I clip too much, insert too little?), how specific (what if I alter surrounding genes in the process?), and what the side effects might be (will eliminating, say, a gene that predisposes allergies also damage part of the natural immune response?).  

Aside from these technical issues, CRISPR raises huge ethical concerns—even theological ones. It could have great benefits in curing diseases, preventing birth defects, and so on. But it could also be used in questionable ways, like to engineer offspring sex, physical characteristics, intelligence, etc. Recently, a number of people working in the field called for a moratorium on this research in humans until these issues can be addressed. In the words of one scientist, “It raises the most fundamental of issues about how we are going to view our humanity in the future and whether we are going to take the dramatic step of modifying our own germline and in a sense take control of our genetic destiny.” Another comments, “I personally think we are just not smart enough—and won’t be for a very long time—to feel comfortable about the consequences of changing heredity, even in a single individual.”

Yet, just the other day I saw an article about scientists who had attempted to perform this research in human embryos. The experiment failed in most cases—the embryos died or the DNA was not altered as planned. In other cases, the results were as feared: in some, the DNA interrupted the process, resulting in some changed and some unchanged DNA. In other cases, non-target segments of the DNA were altered, a phenomenon some have called “collateral damage.” So the experiment basically confirmed that the scientists who had issued the warning were right. Still, this research also highlighted the possibility—even the high likelihood—that others will try again.

The questions this raises are just mind-boggling. What is identity? What does “I” mean if my DNA, the “building block” of my distinctive genetic makeup can be altered? And what does it mean to be a human being if the core features of human existence might be subject to alteration? If these techniques get perfected, who decides what traits are worthy of continuing and which are not? It is impossible not to hear the echo of early 20th century programs of eugenics in these questions.

But in a different microscopic domain, another story seems to bring good news: I wrote here before about scientists’ conclusion that viruses make up over 8% of our DNA. These viruses are evolutionary hitchhikers, organisms that infected our long-ago ancestors and that gradually became incorporated into our very genes. Now, that’s mind stretching enough by itself—nearly 1/10 of our DNA consists of viruses! But even more astounding is what these viruses do for us. In that earlier post, I noted that they may be responsible for the evolution of the placenta (the placenta! We’re talking here about the very beginning of our individual selves). And now, last week, I also learned that some such viruses—endogenous retroviruses—may “come alive” during the earliest stages of embryonic development. Retroviruses are not usually our friends—think HIV—but in this case, these endogenous retroviruses may actually serve to immunize the embryo against other viruses. 

Now, this is good news, but it still challenges any simplistic notions we might hold about ourselves as individual, self-contained, unitary beings. Just think about it … microscopic viruses—viruses!—stow-aways from pre-human history may be responsible for the placenta that supported our individual prenatal life and for our immunity to viruses that might otherwise have done us in. So don't you wonder wonder, where does the “I” in this process end and the “they” begin?

To leap from the microscopic to the telescopic ...

Two other recent stories escorted me back into my recurrent fascination with the cosmic. This past week was the 25^th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble telescope, which, as you likely know, has rewritten our understanding of the universe—and illustrated the book. The Internet was full of Hubble photo gems this week. In case you missed them, I’ll paste in a few, and you can click here for more and here for even more.  

                                                                                  

Hubble had some struggles from its earliest days (I’m tempted to say it was star crossed, but that seems too easy), with a microscopic flaw in the mirror that caused blurry views of even nearby objects. But with some clever fixes over the years by astronauts turned telescope experts, Hubble has taught us more about the cosmos than we ever knew there was to learn. As you may know from previous posts, I’m a totally amateur but enthusiastic observer of things astrophysical, so I’ve been paying attention to Hubble’s discoveries for years. This anniversary provided a delightful visual memoir of Hubble’s life so far, and I’m hoping for more.

And then, just today, I came across a short story about another recent Hubble-fueled finding: out there in the universe, there are “runaway galaxies,” and with Hubble's help, we’re starting to understand them. Scientists have known for some time about runaway “rogue” planets, which have either been ejected from their orbits around stars or somehow never belonged to a star system. They’ve also suggested the existence of runaway galaxies that are moving so fast they sail free from the “local cluster” of galaxies whose gravity generally holds galaxies together in a group. And now Hubble has spotted a runaway galaxy and tracked its trajectory as it veers away from its orbit and heads off into … somewhere. I love that the universe is so unruly.

So, I find this stuff fascinating in its own right. But this week, with my thoughts shifting from the issue of climate change—which is global, but local, in the planetary sense—to matters larger and smaller, I realized that both directions of my drift these recent days—the microscopic and cosmic—raise very similar questions: Who are we? What counts as human if much of our substance is actually other organisms? Who do we become  if we alter the genome that defines who we "naturally" are? Where is our place in a universe whose early beginnings over 13 billion years ago is just now coming into sight and whose extent, some would argue, is infinite? And that remains stubbornly errant.

If I drift back from the vast, cosmic question to this smallish, ordinary planet, I wonder at our arrogance to think we matter at all. If I move the other way, to the microscopic, I wonder if we realize how tentative and ephemeral our existence is. Either way, I'm struck by the astonishing improbability of it all. Which cycles me back to earlier musings on this very question, shared here many blogs ago.

I float in these dilemmas for a while, and then go about my business as if none of these questions mattered, as if they hadn't come to mind. Until they do again.

I wonder what that means. 

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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Sea Change

In a couple of weeks, Resonance Women’s Chorus, the chorus with which I volunteer and about which I’ve often written, will present their spring concert. It’s been fun to hear the music come together and come to life over the past several months, so I’m looking forward to hearing it as a package, all polished up for show. My enthusiasm about this particular concert is heightened by the topic and by conversations among chorus members about its meaning. The theme, to oversimplify for the moment, is climate change. But that term doesn’t begin to describe the intent of the programming or the scope of the music. It’s not, as you might expect, a lesson about how we’ve all failed to tend to the planet. And it’s not, as you might also imagine, a lesson in what we should all be doing to prevent or accommodate to it. It's actually something else entirely.

So I want to talk about this concert and how I understand it—knowing full well that other folks will find other meanings in it. I offer this as a teaser, hoping you’ll come experience it for yourself and see what meaning you craft from it.

First, let me share the publicity about the concert to give you an idea of what I’m talking about here.

         

The concert is called “Sea Change: Love Song for a Warming Planet.” The text on the poster describes it as “… an exploration in sound and song of the emotional experience of living with climate change. It's an attempt to simply be with the 'not knowing' that underlies all of our wonderings and fears about the Earth's future and our own. Sea Change is a concert about nature, beauty, love, loss, and the extraordinary experience of being here now.”

Far from what you might expect, this concert seems to me like an invitation to become aware, to be open to the almost unimaginable experience of being witness to changes that surely signal a change in—and might signal an end to—human experience as we know it. To be aware of the sheer delight of this earth and, at the very same time, of the trembling forecasts for its future. The feeling that comes with knowing that we are responsible, each of us, for this situation, even as we stubbornly, unmindfully fail to change our ways of being. The consciousness of being in denial, yet of being terrified for future generations. Of simultaneously taking warm delight in a melody, a caress, or a cloud and sensing its impermanence. It’s about experiencing deep, gut-level fear and also breath-stopping amazement at the profound peace that remains to be found in nature. It’s about all of those or none of them or something else. But it’s not a predictable climate change program.

The concert promises a rich collection of beautiful, evocative music—evocative of a range of emotions including those I’ve mentioned and others. Everyone there, performer and listener, will likely find something different in it. At minimum, it’s an hour and a half of wonderful music. I can’t imagine that anyone would leave without being touched in some way. I know I have been, and I’ve only heard the rehearsals. So far.

I invite you to come if you can. Three opportunities: April 11, 12, and 18. For more information and to order tickets, visit the Resonance website at www.resonancechorus.org and click on “Performances.” 

We who believe

I don’t know about you, but after tracking the election results, I went to bed really bummed last night. Colorado’s Dem Senator lost to a standard-issue red-state candidate in this recently rather bluish-purple state. Nationwide, Senate seats, House seats, and governors’ palaces turned red by the score. Talk of a “Republican wave” was in the air before the night ended. Hardly the stuff of a celebratory evening—or a peaceful night’s slumber—in my very blue view. As we settled into a disappointed sleep, this thought crossed my mind “Was this partly a reaction against same-sex marriage?”

We woke up this morning still bummed, and my partner voiced the very same wonder I’d fallen asleep with: Did our success—i.e., the progress toward equal rights for LGBT people—contribute to this “wave”? Was this a backlash against that, as well as against folks’ total dismay with Washington’s intransigent inaction? As she talked about that possibility, I was reminded of a message about social change, one I’ve actually learned from her. It came to me when she reminded me of how awful 2004 was—Bush (aka “W”) won a second term and nine states passed anti-LGBT laws, all in one election. I said yeah, but now, just 10 years later, over 30 states have same-sex marriage. And my day brightened. This focus on the long-term process rather than the moment’s misery came from knowing something about her research on anti-LGBT politics. She calls this a “movement perspective”—the notion that social change needs to be seen as a long-term process, not a single event. We didn’t talk about this emerging thought right then, but sure enough, after her shower, she told me her mood had brightened as she considered—independently, before we had discussed this—the movement perspective. We’ve seen worse before, she said. We’ll get through this. The task is to not stop working.

Social change is like a movie—an epic movie. Any given event—one election, one victory or defeat—is just a single frame in that movie. The movement for social justice has its ebbs and flows, it sparkling wins and its dashing losses. That is how it works. But viewed in the context of the long progress of what Martin Luther King famously called “the arc of the moral universe,” yesterday’s miserable outcome isn’t so devastating. It was just a moment, not the movement. We’ll be back. And that’s the challenge: we must keep coming back.

Thinking along this line, I was unavoidably (and conveniently) reminded of Resonance Women’s Chorus’ upcoming concert: “We Who Believe in Freedom.” The title comes from the lyrics of Ella’s Song, a well-known call for social justice written by Bernice Johnson Reagon and sung by Sweet Honey in the Rock. It’s based on the words of Civil Rights activist Ella Baker. The line invoked in the concert title says, “We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.” The concert is framed as an invitation to consider how we need to show up for each other—a call to being allies, but also, I realize, a call to persistence and dedication. This election feels dreadful, but we who believe in social justice cannot rest just because we feel bruised.

This morning (finally!), I learned some good outcomes from the election: among them, Colorado’s “personhood” amendment went down to defeat (for, like, the third time), funding for a broad range of “safety net” programs was approved, and multiple school bond issues around here passed. To top it off, the incumbent governor, a Dem, won a very close race, defying the national redwash. A tough election cycle, for sure, but even here, as early as today, there are glimpses of that long arc. Believing in freedom requires that we keep our eye on that and not let the defeats get us down.

With that in mind, I believe I’ll think of this concert not only as a celebration of allies and of being present for one another but also as a rallying call for us all to not lose hope, to stay with the program.

So join us on November 15, 7:00, at First United Methodist Church of Boulder for a free concert celebrating social justice and our realization that we’re in it together and for the long haul. For more information, click here to visit the Resonance website

Because we who believe in freedom need to keep showing up.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2014. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post.

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How I spent my summer vacation ...

It's no doubt obvious to those of you who follow this blog at all that I’ve been scarce around these parts, having spent the summer in an assortment of (other) tasks and pleasures. Besides the usual tasks and summer activities, you already know about my trip to Ireland—although I’ll have more to say about that soon. That adventure took a lot of preparation, especially given that I'm definitely not a seasoned international traveler. I also spent some time in the DC area, part of it at a conference and part visiting family.

Still, you might wonder what's taken up the rest of my time. Well, here's the answer, the fruits of many hours of fun and labor (with a great deal of help from a friend): the new website for Resonance Women’s Chorus of Boulder. I invite you to take a spin … and then join us for a concert or two during the upcoming season.

Just click on the link below, and enjoy!

resonancechorus.org  

Time and things

I’ve been thinking about time lately. Especially about how it stretches and collapses depending on the context. For the past several weeks, for instance, I’ve been preoccupied with some (exciting) tasks related to my role as the novice “organizing maven” with Resonance Women’s Chorus. So preoccupied that I’ve seemed unable to muster any creative energy for anything else—like thinking up radio shows or writing a blog. Even when I've had time, it's seemed like I haven't had any energy. Like I’m out of neuron juice.

So, it was against this background—thinking about how time is such a fluid, non-concrete thing—that I came across this Smithsonian article about technologies and how they shape our lives. The article is actually about "wearables"—that class of gadgets that put up-scale, cutting edge technology in our clothing and wrist wear and eyeglasses. Like google glasses, a wearable that takes the form of a small computer on your face. Or smart watches, smaller versions of your smartphone that you wear on your wrist, so you can check email or text your pals without that awkwardly rude habit of pulling out your phone. And those discrete wristbands that track all manner of physiological and exercise data as folks go about their daily lives.

Not surprisingly, these wearable gadgets have their detractors. Do we really need to check our email, texts, or tweets so often that we wear the screen on our wrists? Can't it wait?! Or what does this do to face-to-face social interaction? What about the people you're with? And just how far will we go in letting technology rule our lives and consume our attention?

The Smithsonian article points out that this is actually an old debate. The first "wearable" technology to elicit this sort of backlash was, it turns out, that lowly personal adornment, the watch. Clocks of the larger sort had been around for centuries, announcing time via church bells and town criers, before watches arrived. But time—that is, clock time—didn't actually become so central to our lives until we could carry it with us. Then, starting in the mid-19^th century, the astonishing convenience offered by watches—the ability to coordinate business transactions, deliveries, or social activities—made them first handy, then important, then essential. It’s not that time itself changed, but how we understood and used it did. Because of this thing, this technology.

Changing how we understand and use time matters. So, not surprisingly, watches stirred a serious debate. Some folks argued that we had become beholden to our technology, more concerned about being on time than about spending our time well. Humanists suggested that, although watches may have made us more efficient, to quote the Smithsonian article, "perhaps total efficiency is a creepy goal for everyday life"—a fairly common assessment among certain sub-cultures in our own society.

So, as I was reading this article and thinking about time, into this mix came two conversations with friends. One was with a friend who's working with me on building the new Resonance website (one of the aforementioned tasks). We were waiting for something to download, bemoaning how long it took. And then she reminded us both (or maybe just me) how we used to wait for minutes for a dial-up internet connection and then wait for minutes more before we could actually do anything online. And now, if it takes seconds to download a complex file, we feel like we're wasting time.

In the second conversation, another friend and I were talking about the pleasure of being in the wilderness (difficult as that is to find these days), away from the usual markers of time, other than the cycles of the days and the rhythms of our bodies. Our discussion brought to mind a story I once heard about how differently time is understood by the Inupiat in northern Alaska, who spend months without real darkness and months without notable sunlight. Time, for them, isn't measured by day and night, as it is for those of us who distinguish between daytime and nighttime activities. For the Inupiat, "time" resides in the needs of the moment and of the season, not in a clock face, which is indifferent to the sunlight and darkness, the frozen tundra and thawing rivers that shape their lives.

So, I thought, maybe there's a lesson here in watches and google glasses and the relativity of time. Maybe the problem is that I’m thinking of time “spent” or “lost” too much in terms of the technology of clocks and calendars and too little in terms of the flow of my life. Maybe I’ve become so attached to the things that inform me of time’s passing and have lost touch with the experience of time flowing, as it does for the Inupiat. Wristwatches and smart phones are just things. They may display time or social connection, but “time” doesn't live on a watch face, and "social connection" doesn't live on a smartphone screen.

So maybe, I thought, this carries a lesson about my recent problem with time—i.e., the trouble I’ve had finding time and energy to do things that I really love doing—like blogging and conjuring up radio shows. Because maybe it's not really about time but about framing and relativity and multiple, shifting realities.

In truth, the time available to me hasn't changed a lot. Yes, I have taken on a new set of tasks. But I've taken on new and demanding roles before and not dropped out of the blogosphere. Maybe the change isn’t in time but in the context of time, its framing. Now, it's true that no newly minted hours have dropped from the sky marked "Blog now!" But neither have I sought out the time, created it, carved it from other things because I wanted to do this more than that. Maybe I've been confusing finding time to blog with making time to blog. Which is simply the difference between asking whether I have time and asking how I want to use my time.

Seen in this light, the fact that I've been so busy on another task—which I'm loving—isn't an obstacle to blogging. Instead, it's another expression of the reasons that I blog—to stay engaged, to stay relevant, to keep my mind and my voice alive. A temporary decline in blogging doesn't mean my space in the blogosphere has spun off into a different universe. It'll still be around whenever I create time to visit. And apparently, if this particular blog is any indication, I can visit at will. This is actually a huge relief, because I love doing this and was starting to worry about my extended absence.

It’s a good reminder for me, this business about time and choice. Time is flexible, relative, contextual—and very much a matter of perspective. A mind trip to northern Alaska is a useful reminder of that.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2014. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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Speechless

I stole the title of this entry. It’s the name of the upcoming concert by Resonance Women’s Chorus of Boulder, the chorus I’ve been volunteering with this year. (I’ve written often about Resonance, both before and since my time with them. Try the “search” function to the right to see just how often.) This title was just too perfect to pass up. “Wordless” might have worked, but it’s not just words but speech, with all its structure and artifice, whose absence I want to talk about. I’ve learned something about this “speechless” thing listening to Resonance rehearse all year. I’ve learned that music—even, paradoxically, choral music—is about so much more than words. In fact, in an odd sense, it doesn’t have to be about words at all.

Now, I say this as someone who has always loved lyrics. Well, “loved” may not be the precise word. I’ve always been deeply attentive to lyrics, whether I love them or hate them. When I find a piece moving, I can’t help but cry as I think about the lyrics (which, by the way, makes it virtually impossible for me to sing such a piece—as my singing teacher can tell you). And I can’t seem to avoid thinking about the lyrics, so I’ve shed a lot of tears over songs. In short, I don’t take lyrics lightly.

But during this year, sitting in the room once a week and listening to Resonance practice, I have slowly embraced a different way of hearing music—of actually hearing the music. Which is to say the notes and the harmonies and the cadence and the complex interweaving of it all. And then something more, something behind or beneath all of that. When I first began to get a feeling for the songs Resonance will be performing in this concert, I was frankly a bit distressed. Would there be enough, I wondered, of the moving, lyrics-rich songs I’ve loved in earlier Resonance concerts? Would I be able to (mentally) sing along with these pieces, if some of them have no words and others have non-English words? But as I listened and became familiar with these pieces, I began, slowly, to hear the music behind the music I was hearing.

Actually, several of the pieces do have lyrics, and marvelous ones. Every time I hear “Morning Poem” by Mary Oliver, my blood pressure drops about 20 points, and I drift into a dawn-lit meadow of sound, an image of watching sunrise from a chilly mountain campsite. I love the scenes and the feelings that these lyrics evoke. And still, even in this piece, I hear something that’s new to me. Something behind the lyrics, behind even the notes. I really got this when I heard the chorus practicing it the other night, with the director, Sue Coffee, leading them in modulating the speed and the volume of different passages. The words didn’t change, the notes were the same, but the feeling of it was entirely different, moving in a new way. There is something here, I thought, that transcends the words, even the music in the structural sense.

It’s fitting that I learned this precisely as Resonance prepared this particular concert, “Speechless.” The poster reads, “125 women singing beyond words, in sonic explorations of realms perhaps not reached by language.” This description reminded me of the concept of “soundscapes,” which I’ve talked about before—and indeed, Sue has incorporated some soundscape elements into the concert (birdsong and “ambient sounds,” anyone?) It also brings to mind the multi-sensory images and complex feelings of several of the songs, which, though wrapped in words, evoke experiences that are wordless. Like the miracle of sunrise in “Morning Poem,” which I just mentioned:

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. 

and the unending presence of people who have passed in “Breaths” by Ysaye Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock:

Those who have died have never, never left

The dead are not under the earth

They are in the rustling trees, they are in the groaning woods

They are in the crying grass, they are in the moaning rocks

Words, I know, and notes, rhythm, harmonies. And more.

And then there are the pieces that have no words at all—or no words that are understandable to most of us (imagine learning a few of those for a concert). But they still have this newly discovered (for me) something that transcends language. They have no words, but they nonetheless carry meanings—meanings as individual as the minds that hear them, as universal as the language of notes on a scale.

I’ve mentioned before the remarkable community that these women are, how much they share—stuff and caring and thoughts—with one another. As we’ve approached this concert, they’ve shared a lot of reflections about the music. One chorus member passed on a poem, fittingly called “Words,” by Dana Gaoia, which conveys something of the superfluous nature of words in the face of profound meaning. A glimpse:

The world does not need words. It articulates itself

in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path
are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.

I’d never have imagined this speechless quality of choral music before I spent this time with Resonance, immersed in precisely this sort of music. Maybe you need to hear this concert to understand what I mean. Or maybe you don’t. Likely many people have long known this. But to me, a novice to the more profound reaches of music, the surprising ability of speechless music to speak to my soul is new.

What a gift that is.

If you want to hear for yourself (which you definitely do), Resonance will be performing on two Saturdays, April 12 and April 19, at 7:00 and on Sunday, April 13, at 2:00 at First United Methodist Church in Boulder. For more information (including information on how to get tickets), click right here. I’ll see you, perhaps speechless, there! 

To comment on this post, click on "No comments" (or "2 comments," etc.) below. Comments from "anonymous" welcome.

Resonance "retreats"

I spent a chunk of the weekend hanging out with Resonance, the women’s chorus I’m volunteering with, at their annual retreat near Estes Park. It was a complicated mix: driving through some of the areas most damaged by the floods, soaking up the pleasure of working with this chorus, and delighting in the beauty of the mountains, where I’ve spent virtually no serious winter time for years.

Estes Park and the roads to it witnessed some of last summer’s most severe flooding. The main road to Estes follows one of the canyons most dramatically affected, and traffic there is still slowed by construction, so I took a more roundabout route. This canyon, too, saw serious flooding, and signs of it were everywhere. I could have taken uncounted pictures of damaged structures, missing bridges, debris caught 10 feet high in trees, and piles of boulders where none belonged. Instead, I caught this one view of an old church sitting high on a solid rock—a fortunate location during those days in September. The flood left the church perched higher than before, and the open valley below is still littered with trees and stumps and tangles of branches, despite now months of clean-up work. To the west and above the church is the mountain drainage that funneled the exceptionally heavy rains down the slopes and toward the church. Variations on these scenes linger all around this part of Colorado.

Scenes from the flood receded and the beauty of this area took over as I arrived Friday afternoon at the YMCA camp where the retreat was held. Here's the late-afternoon scenery that greeted me and views of the hills as the sun set. Home, for a couple of days, to me and about 125 other women. Not to mention hundreds of other folks who came here for retreats, for meetings, or just to hang out and enjoy the mountains in the middle of winter. I was officially "on retreat." 

     

     

     

Now, in truth, as the “Assistant Maven,” I had virtually no responsibilities at this retreat, but it was a great chance to get to know the group better and to watch another large piece of their process. I spent the weekend sharing a cabin with three singers I knew before I assumed my new role, which gave me a wonderful base for my exploration into this new side of Resonance. Friday night, we had fine conversation and dinner together, then talked some more and laughed ourselves silly over a card game before crashing (too late) in anticipation of a daylong rehearsal (for them) on Saturday.

Saturday was a remarkable day for me. It started with an early-morning walk with one of my cabin mates. But the serious wake-up call came with the wave of energy that struck me as I entered the rehearsal venue. There was this marvelous buzz made up of about equal parts chatter, laughter, and a sort of amorphous hum of movement and, well, energy. This in the community I craved. Then the singers settled into their places, and I sank into a chair in the back to listen. The day officially began with the requisite warm-up exercises. I had kind of tuned out, thinking there wasn’t much to listen to (it was warm-ups, for Pete’s sake!). Then suddenly, as I was starting to send an email to my partner, their voices just stopped me mid-word. I was stunned by the size and the beauty of their sound. I sat there, smiling, and just listened. Later in the day, before the director knew about my moment of awe, I heard her call such experiences “aesthetic arrest.” Good description. I didn't get back to that email for some time. 

I hung out in the back listening to the chorus rehearse for the rest of the morning, hearing them fine-tune a song from lovely to exceptionally lovely (to my untrained but very appreciative ear) and then work on a couple more before taking a lunch break. At some point, I’ll probably stop commenting on how wonderful I find their process to be—but not yet. It’s so impressive to me to see them moving with such precise attention to each piece of each song. It made me wonder all over again at how much work it takes to put together an entire concert, especially of the quality I heard that morning. Although I know that "retreat" has a particular meaning here, nothing I saw from Resonance looked like anything but joyful reaching forward. 

Then, in the afternoon, while they worked some more, I took advantage of the locale and headed farther up the mountain to a trailhead reported to offer great snowshoeing (well, it is a retreat, after all). I used to snowshoe quite a lot, and I grew accustomed to trails that were fairly remote and lightly used. I sometimes walked for hours without seeing anyone. But this was different. It was in Rocky Mountain National Park, close to Estes, and the area draws a lot of visitors, even in January. It was quickly apparent that this was the case with the particular trailhead I found, a hub for several trails. The scene in the parking hardly foretold a wilderness adventure. 

But the day was beautiful, the snow was really nice, and I was eager for a winter walk in the woods. So I set off up the trail to Nymph Lake. Despite the late-ish hour, there were still a lot of people on the trail—including, to my amazement, people negotiating this narrow, sometimes steep hiking trail on regular downhill skis. Apparently that sport passed me by at some point. The walk was invigoratingly uphill, and I loved both the scenery, with the the low light peeking through the trees, and the exercise.

The lake itself is a classic small mountain lake, set in a depression formed by a glacier, and surrounded by forest. It lies beneath some of Rocky Mountain NP’s craggy peaks, and the wind plays across the thick, opaque ice in snowy gusts. 

As I headed back down the trail, getting chillier by the minute, I found myself wondering how cold it might be at the top of those high peaks as they lost the bare warmth of the sinking sun. 

Back at the Y camp, I visited the end of rehearsal, enjoyed a quick dinner with my friends back at our cabin, and then joined them for the walk back to the talent show, an annual ritual of funny, gorgeous, and thought-provoking offerings by members of the chorus. And just in case the performance art wasn’t enough, there was an art show in the lobby, also displaying the work of chorus members. This is indeed a multi-talented group I’ve hitched a ride with.

I started Sunday with another early-morning walk with my cabin mate, talking about the retreat, about life and aging, and about the scenery. How could we not comment on the sight we were treated to as when we turned around to return to the cabin. 

I left early Sunday morning to pick up my partner at the Denver airport. As I started down the mountain, I spotted this scene—the winds whipping clouds and snow across the high peaks. 

   

What a fine finish to my weekend sojourn into the glorious mountains. No wonder they "retreat" here every year.   

Making a friend

I’ve written here before about assorted cultural conscious raising experiences, but last weekend’s was unique—three “cultural” activities, each with a different purpose and a different tone. All three were time well spent, each in its own way, but the bigger story (for me) is the amazing bit of self-realization I encountered along the way.

The day started with a meeting of the local chapter of Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC), a national group whose local chapters vary greatly in how they live out their name, “organizing for change.” The post-potluck program (the potluck is, of course, required for all lesbian events) was a video about an old lesbian couple—a growing new genre of films, documentary and fiction. It’s an interesting marker of the progress we’ve made toward visibility and the hesitant acceptance of both LGBTQ people and LGBTQ aging. More about that another time. (Soon, since I have a radio show on the topic coming up in January.)

From OLOC, we went to Sound Circle’s solstice concert. Many of you know about Sound Circle and their marvelous music, and anyone who reads this blog knows how much I love them. I’ll have more to say about them in a minute.

And from there, we rushed off to a roller derby match. Yup, you read right: roller derby. I’d never seen a roller derby match before, never even considered it as something I particularly wanted to do. But a colleague of my partner does roller derby in her spare time, so there we were, squeezing into the crowd in a chilly warehouse. Scores of folks come to watch women in colorful (and sometimes weird) costumes swirling around the oval track, doing their best to bump and block and generally disrupt one another en route. I don’t especially need to go back, but as a cross-cultural experience, it was really interesting—and it does indeed seem to have a whole culture wrapped around it. There’s currently a picture/sign in the Walnut Café that asks, “When was the last time you did something for the first time?” Good question. This was my answer. Here’s a picture to prove I was there. I’m not in the picture, to be sure, but I did take it.

So, in the middle of that cultural sandwich was Sound Circle. Their solstice concert is always an excellent way to welcome the return of the light, and this one, with a theme sketched of sleeping and waking, dark and light, rising and falling, seemed perfect for the season. I especially loved a few songs: “Something Inside So Strong,” an anti-apartheid song, and “Woke Up This Morning (with My Mind Set on Freedom),” a song from the Civil Rights movement, reminded me of last weekend’s experiences and of OLOC’s mission, “organizing for change.” Their inclusion in this concert also seemed brilliant, a twist that translated the theme of rising and waking, shifting it from the seasons to the realm of human striving. And then there was this marvelous piece called “Snowforms” by Murray Schafer. Shafer introduced the term “soundscape” and popularized the field of “acoustic ecology,” which sees sound as part of the environment. So naturally, his music depicts the environment through sound. "Snowforms" uses Inuit terms for various kinds of snow to punctuate this wonderful drifting, flowing, sometimes crunchy musical soundscape. The music is so non-standard that the “score” doesn’t have staffs and notes. Instead, it takes the form of swooping waves, white on blue, intended to depict sounds, not neatly structured music. It takes a group like Sound Circle to pull this off, I imagine. It was delightful. And a nice nod to winter.  

As always, I loved this concert. But it was different for me from earlier ones with Sound Circle. And that’s the real point of this blog.

First, I should mention that I never used to consider myself much of a fan of choral music. I appreciate the fact that many voices can create sounds that a single voice (or a few voices) cannot. And I know, in principle, that a chorus represents something important in itself: a synergy among people that says something meaningful about human existence, speaks to our desire for community. Still, until recently, all of that was just theory to me. But over the past few years, as I’ve started hanging out around folks, my partner among them, who sing in choruses—Sound Circle and Resonance Women’s Chorus, in particular—my feeling about all this has shifted. It was gradual, I suppose. Hearing more choral music in general, hearing choral music that’s this good, hearing people who sing in (and direct) choruses talking about the experience. It all had an impact, I’m sure, although I wasn’t especially thinking about it.

Until Saturday. And then I got it. I realized that I was experiencing this concert in a whole new way, and it surprised me. I took more pleasure in noticing the different voices, whereas before, I just heard the overall sound. I found new delight in the variations in mood created by different songs—I heard it more in the music and I felt it more in the audience. I was more delighted than usual by the energetic songs, and I got more absorbed in the reflective songs than I usually have (although “Praises for the World” has always moved me to the core and remains in a class of its own). And I was more aware of the musical skill of the singers, individually and collectively. Simply said, the music touched me more. I was genuinely sorry to have it end. Despite the fact that I had a roller derby match to attend.

Now, it’s possible that I was just more “present,” more mindful, more attentive than I’ve been before. But I think it’s something more. “So what was it?” you’re probably asking. I wondered this myself, even during the concert.

Why, I asked myself, is this so much more engaging for me today? My answer: I think it’s because I’ve grown such a different relationship with music lately. I’m hanging around with music a lot these days, spending time with it, sometimes alone and sometimes in company. I’m playing with it, listening to it, watching how it relates to other people and they to it, asking it questions, wondering what it wants. We’re becoming friends. And this process of getting acquainted has changed how I understand music and, quite apparently last Saturday, how I relate to it.

I didn’t come to this new friendship easily. Never having been a singer, my relationship with music was always as an outsider, an observer, not a participant—not the best way to form a friendship, I realize. So, from this less-than-intimate perspective, I think I always thought that music was something that other people did, not me. And that people who could sing just did. They’d stand up, open their mouths, and lovely music would pour out. Well phrased, perfectly on key, precisely modulated. It’s nice, I thought to myself, but it’s no big deal. It’s just what they do, because they can. And then Sue Coffee, the director of Sound Circle and Resonance, asked whether I’d like to be involved in some way with Resonance. That led to my unexpected journey into a new friendship with music.

I’ve written here before about my recently assumed role as “Assistant Maven” for Resonance, one result of Sue’s inquiry. In this role, I get to share space with the chorus as they practice every week. I halfway expected it to be boring. But it turns out to be fascinating. It first challenged and now seems to have changed how I understand singing and choruses. Listening to these women prepare for a concert, sound by sound, line by line, song by song, I’ve rather quickly come to a whole new appreciation for how much work it takes to make music sound good. From them, I’ve learned that the synergistic power of choral music, wonderful as a whole, also reflects all the countless pieces it encompasses. Individual notes, individual voices, individual parts magically stirred together—all in the context of relationships, carefully tended.

Another part of this path has been my unexpected and tentative personal foray into singing. Never (ever!) having thought myself a singer, the invitation to become involved in Resonance made me wonder, vaguely, whether I might be able sing in the chorus. Before daring such an outrageous step, I decided to take a voice lesson or two. Now, I still don’t think of myself as a singer, except in the broadest sense as someone who sometimes sings out loud, and I'm not singing in the chorus. But I have discovered that learning to sing is actually fun. It’s made me more comfortable with my voice (“more” not equating to “very”) and more comfortable with singing out loud in a group—like, during the sing-along part of a Holly Near concert. What’s more, I actually enjoy these activities. A lot.

And taking voice lessons (those words seem so improbable to me!) has also given me the opportunity to hang out on a regular basis with someone who is a singer (in Sound Circle), as well as a musician in ways I can’t even imagine (how do you even begin to “do an arrangement” of a whole song?). One of the most important lessons for me has been her talking, casually, about her own singing. “When I’m working on a song …,” she says. And I’m thinking “You? Working on a song?” Hmmm. Maybe good singers don’t just stand up and open their mouths to let the music escape. Or she says, “When I’m performing, I have to remind myself to …” So then I wonder, “You mean to tell me that you’re actually thinking about what you’re doing? You’re working on doing it right? It doesn’t just flow from you like water from a faucet?” It almost seems like making good music is like any relationship: it takes work. Really?

This is a bonus I never expected from these activities—in fact, I never would have known I’d be interested in a “friendship with music.” But sought out or not, this combination of experiences appears to have changed music for me.

Heck, I even hear the 5 a.m. clock radio differently. Truly.