To rise up singing
Tonight was my first rehearsal with this new choir. I think it's going to be good. First of all, I felt reassured to find that the women were pretty much as I expected: middle-aged or older, kind faces, comfortable shoes, left-leaning politics and a socially-conscious sense of spirituality. They made me feel welcome without making me the center of attention, which was perfect. I loved the house we met in, too – humble and beautiful, with big windows looking out on a cozy garden of lush plants and giant oaks dripping with rain and moss. There was a sweet black cat that kept walking back and forth in front of my legs, and a woman in a reclining chair in the middle of the circle to receive the music; the group had been singing at the bedside of her husband, who had just died a few days ago.
The singing was the best. Almost all of the songs were super short – two or four lines, sung as rounds in two or four parts. There are several hundred songs in the repertoire so of course I only got to learn a small fraction of them tonight, but singing in rounds is a great way to quickly memorize a simple song, and even the simplest songs can become deep and beautiful when you layer them this way. My one disappointment was that I wished we could have spent more time on a couple of the songs; I felt like I was just relaxing into the rhythm and really beginning to absorb the music when the director would signal the last round.
This is something I like to do with a song I like sometimes – I listen to it over and over and over again until it saturates all my cells and I feel myself floating in it. It becomes the song in my head the moment I realize I'm awake in the morning, the song that repeats and repeats itself throughout the day. I sing it on my bike, sing it to trees and birds and passing animals. When something happens to piss me off or freak me out, I reach for the song to steady myself. When I want to bless someone silently without making a public fuss about it, I sing them the song in my mind.
My most recent song is really more of a fragment – the text starts like this: "May the long time sun shine upon you ...." According to the counter on my iPod, I have listened to this song almost 300 times in a row and sung it out loud (according to my own calculations) at least 150 times. Now I don't have to listen to it anymore; it's right there whenever I want it.
I'm looking forward to meeting some new songs that I will want to know like that.
The singing was the best. Almost all of the songs were super short – two or four lines, sung as rounds in two or four parts. There are several hundred songs in the repertoire so of course I only got to learn a small fraction of them tonight, but singing in rounds is a great way to quickly memorize a simple song, and even the simplest songs can become deep and beautiful when you layer them this way. My one disappointment was that I wished we could have spent more time on a couple of the songs; I felt like I was just relaxing into the rhythm and really beginning to absorb the music when the director would signal the last round.
This is something I like to do with a song I like sometimes – I listen to it over and over and over again until it saturates all my cells and I feel myself floating in it. It becomes the song in my head the moment I realize I'm awake in the morning, the song that repeats and repeats itself throughout the day. I sing it on my bike, sing it to trees and birds and passing animals. When something happens to piss me off or freak me out, I reach for the song to steady myself. When I want to bless someone silently without making a public fuss about it, I sing them the song in my mind.
My most recent song is really more of a fragment – the text starts like this: "May the long time sun shine upon you ...." According to the counter on my iPod, I have listened to this song almost 300 times in a row and sung it out loud (according to my own calculations) at least 150 times. Now I don't have to listen to it anymore; it's right there whenever I want it.
I'm looking forward to meeting some new songs that I will want to know like that.
Labels: singing
1 Comments:
beautiful description of that woman's house. what are some more songs that you like to sing. for awhile I was really loving to sing "angel from montgomery"--don't know if Bonnie Riatt wrote it, but she sings the version I know.
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