What to say about playing yesterday's music party? Well, first up, is my profound gratitude for my band mates. They were/are sublime. And while we still don't have a band name - can't help but think of Question Mark and the Mysterions of "96 Tears" fame - we clearly have a groove: the marriage of blue-eyed soul and sweet folk-rock harmonies as if the Rascals partnered with the Wailin' Jennys. Yesterday we played a few eclectic sets that combined punk and blues, soaring piano driven ballads alongside acoustic high lonesome laments, kick-ass rockers with tongue-in-cheek country take-downs of Christian fundamentalism with a few pop tunes thrown in for good measure. As I listened late last night to a modest video of the gig, I was stunned by our harmonic precision as well as the wild instrumental abandon that periodically broke into the moment to pump-up an already energized sharing...
... that word sharing is vital: we're more of a call and response ensemble that evokes a lively give-and-take energy between artists and party-goers than a take it or leave it show band. For me, the word "performance" is inadequate and incomplete because we seek to engage those who gather with us in a reciprocal encounter with joy, playfulness, trust, and respect. That is to say, our music is NOT about passively receiving a product. These small gigs are NOT about consumerism in any way, shape, or form. Rather, they're about being fully in the moment by opening our hearts together to see where the Spirit might lead us. There's laughter and tears. Some story-telling, poetry, and musical improvisation, too. And while it ain't church - that would be way too small for this moment in time - it IS sacred. It's shared sacred safe space beyond the confines of labels and limits that simultaneously links joy with the grit of living into the 21st century. I think of our events as a meeting place born of music that offers those who gather both a bit of beauty alongside a few hours of encouragement. Yesterday's host said to me while we were packing up: You just gave this group a gift; being together to sing, dance, clap, weep, laugh and listen lifted us beyond our woes for a short time. But not as escapism. More like a reprieve or a retreat before heading back out on the journey life has set before us.
Another thought I have about what we shared together has to do with size: while we use technology to create as much beauty as possible, it's important for us to do this in a modest setting. We have to be able to see, hear, and interact with those who gather lest the event become yet one more commodity to be purchased and then discarded. E.F. Schumacher continues to be right: small IS beautiful. And essential for sharing beauty with real people who have been anxious, afraid, and isolated in various ways for nearly three years. Proximity matters. It prefigures as well as communicates why we do what we do: being a band is NOT just about having fun - although that's crucial - no, our band wants to reconnect people in our community with one another again. We're sadly out of practice. It's not an exaggeration to say that culturally, spiritually, politically, ecologically, and even economically we've been wounded of late. The Rev. Dr. Lauren Artress quotes Parker Palmer in her little book, The Path of the Holy Fool, when he said that, "the heart of the spiritual quest is to know the rapture of being alive." She goes on to add:
In all of its many forms, wounding takes away this rapture. It deadens our bodies, and ultimately robs us of the joy of being alive. It crushes the hope of a productive, active future and can set our imagination into endless repetition that prevents true healing... none of us escapes some form of wounding. We live in the human body; suffering, and injury happen. Rather than be victimized by it, however, our life task is to transform the wound so that it can serve as an initiatrory rite of passage into spiritual maturity. We have to be wounded just enough to bring us to our knees, so that the depts of our being can crack open, expanding our awarenss of who we long to be.
Through covid, the world at war, the ascent of white Christian nationalism, and the bitter brutalities of Western culture in general: many of us in 2022 feel wiped out. We rightfully mistrust most of our institutions. We yearn for a "balm in Gilead" - a salve that might help us heal our brokenness - because we're exhausted. Worn out and anxious. The old ways have outlived their usefulness. They bore us to tears and frustrate our souls. Dr. Artress observes that once again we're living into the metaphor of the Wasteland. She writes:
T.S. Eliot was captivated by the metaphor of the wasteland... amids the devastation of World War I... Eliot predicts that our current Wasteland will be a "heap of broken images" (where we must) wade through a heap of broken images, shattered and scattered (through our) fake news, conspiracy theories, memes, and manipulative and divisive boths tht ctontripute to this heap which no longer offers us a cohesive picture of reality. This apt metaphor is a way to articulate the stress we place on our imagination, how we overwhelm it with fear-filled, death-dealing images. Being pelted with fear-filled images forces us to diminish our essence, seek security over risk, and restort to literalism. We strain to develop a collective vision for planet earth, let alone understand what direction we should turn inorder to secure a vibrant vision for the future.
So, as holy fools committed to beauty in the midst of this wasteland, we sing: we harmonize carefully, we incarnate an alternative to the cacaphony that surrounds us, and we invite others to join the choir. Not forever, just right now. We listen to one another carefully. We encourage one another's gifts, we push our bandmates beyond their time-tested limits with creative challenges, and we practice being alive together with gratitude. There's NO other reason for our music parties than to BE together. Sharing live music becomes a tender spiritual practice where trust is rehearsed for a few hours despite an era saturation in alienation and suspiscion. The jazz master, Wynton Marsailis, has noted that on the bandstand musicians know that we're being together creatively in real time. If one stumbles, it is up to the rest of us to help our partner up in ways that redeem the experience and keep the music moving in ways that turn a mistake into a new creation.
We don't yet know where our culture and country is headed: there are options that could be blessing but they could just as easily be curses, too. What we do know is that in our current wasteland, isolation makes life worse not better. It diminishes our willingness to share and shrivels our capacity for trust. And so, like other holy fools before us, we sing. And play. And invite small groups to gather together to join in the songs. Right now, that's about all we can do. As the wise, prefigurative educator, Paulo Freire, told us: we make the road by walking.
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