Wanting Memories
“I am sitting here wanting memories to teach me,
To see the beauty in the world through my own eyes.
I am sitting here wanting memories to teach me,
To see the beauty in the world through my own eyes.
You used to rock me in the cradle of your arms,
You said you’d hold me till the pains of life were gone.
You said you’d comfort me in times like these and now I need you,
Now I need you, and you are gone.”
In times like these.
In times like these, we say, there are no words. The grief, the rage, the despair, they’re all too much. Our nervous systems resort to the coping mechanisms most familiar, deeply hardwired into our bodies after years of dealing with stress and trauma. Fight. Flight. Freeze. Fawn.
In times like these. We grasp for something, anything to help us make sense of the utterly insensible. For me, it’s been music. Specifically, choral music. The act of raising voice together in song is an act of resistance, a bold repudiation of the violence and hopelessness of these times. To breathe together with others and sing is to refuse to give up. To create harmony with others is to declare that new truths are possible, that we can create the future we desire. Singing demands that we remain awake to the present moment, as painful as it may be. Singing collectively offers a kind of healing solace that cannot be found anywhere else.
As Barnwell writes,
I am sitting here wanting memories to teach me,
To see the beauty in the world through my own eyes.
Since you've gone and left me, there's been so little beauty,
But I know I saw it clearly through your eyes.
Now the world outside is such a cold and bitter place,
Here inside I have few things that will console.
And when I try to hear your voice above the storms of life,
Then I remember all the things that I was told.
***
In times like these, singing together reminds us that we have been told, that beauty remains despite the bigotry and hatred, despite the sheer historical scale of trauma that would make us believe otherwise. In these times, we need to be reminded of this beauty again and again.
I was a first-year student at Mount Holyoke College in my first week of class when the Twin Towers fell on 9/11. A few evenings later, I piled onto a bus with a bunch of other students, many with families in NYC, and rode over to Amherst College, where I participated in a community singing of Fauré’s Requiem. Most of us were not professionally trained singers. But it didn’t matter. We came together in our grief, our confusion, our utter disorientation, and we breathed together and sang out an unanswerable prayer. It offered a kind of release I didn’t know I needed.
And so, in times like these, I find myself reaching back for all the choral pieces that have moved me over the years:
Gorecki’s Symphony Number 3, The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Turn this one up as loud as you can on a good stereo, lay on the floor, and let the reverberations of the strings and Dawn Upshaw’s soaring soprano voice melt the numbness. I discovered this particular recording in 6th grade soon after reading Anne Frank’s Diary and it has stayed with me all these years. When I can’t cry, I turn to this piece to release the tears.
Brahm’s Requiem. Or Fauré’s. Or Mozart’s.
Pretty much anything by Cantus. Especially Bobby McFerrin’s 23rd Psalm, or the traditional How Can I Keep From Singing.
This glorious collaboration of both Chanticleer and Cantus singing Franz Biebel’s Ave Maria earlier this spring at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis.
“I am sitting here wanting memories to teach me,
To see the beauty in the world through my own eyes.
I thought that you were gone, but now I know you’re with me,
You are the voice that whispers all I need to hear.”
In these times. How can we keep from singing? It is the very thing that keeps us alive, keeps us breathing, keeps us connected in our quest for a better world.
