Good committee meetings are famously hard to pull off.
After all, what in our schooling, family, or work life has prepared us to work together in harmony?
Much as I despise how he responded to me, I don't think Big Boss is a bad person for leading a bad meeting, or even for using God talk to try to pressure me into staying on the committee.
Why should we expect we will able to work together in meetings cold--with no training?
People singing together, however, people with perfectly average voices, prove there IS a way we, together, can be greater than the sum of our parts.
I don't understand the physics of this (do you?), but singing voices blend to be more beautiful than any individual one.
Pete Seeger with his broken old-man voice leads "Amazing Grace" on his ninetieth birthday celebration.
"Let every thing that has breath sing praise."
I've been thinking about culture changes in the face of climate and political changes (even possible collapse? godforbid).
Of course if we all go up in a puff of nuclear smoke, we won't have to worry about it, but say we survive but have to adapt to massive shocks, or even "just" the gradual slow boil---what helps?
People in the past have gone through culture shocks, disasters, even collapses.
The forced Jewish, African, and Tibetan diasporas, for instance.
What helps/-ed them?
A shared book, stories, music.
I've been listening to the filmed concert "Pete Seeger in Sweden" (1968) on youtube.
I want to go back to the folk songs of my childhood and sing them till I know them again. Many of them come from the African disapora during the period of slavery, as well as European folk traditions.
I mostly know them from Pete Seeger records, who says, "The music, like everything else, is all mixed up."
After all, what in our schooling, family, or work life has prepared us to work together in harmony?
Much as I despise how he responded to me, I don't think Big Boss is a bad person for leading a bad meeting, or even for using God talk to try to pressure me into staying on the committee.
Why should we expect we will able to work together in meetings cold--with no training?
People singing together, however, people with perfectly average voices, prove there IS a way we, together, can be greater than the sum of our parts.
I don't understand the physics of this (do you?), but singing voices blend to be more beautiful than any individual one.
Pete Seeger with his broken old-man voice leads "Amazing Grace" on his ninetieth birthday celebration.
"Let every thing that has breath sing praise."
I've been thinking about culture changes in the face of climate and political changes (even possible collapse? godforbid).
Of course if we all go up in a puff of nuclear smoke, we won't have to worry about it, but say we survive but have to adapt to massive shocks, or even "just" the gradual slow boil---what helps?
People in the past have gone through culture shocks, disasters, even collapses.
The forced Jewish, African, and Tibetan diasporas, for instance.
What helps/-ed them?
A shared book, stories, music.
I've been listening to the filmed concert "Pete Seeger in Sweden" (1968) on youtube.
"See, the slave master brought the Bible to the slave and pointed and said, 'See where it says Obey thy master? Learn that.'I don't know much music history, but if you, a person or a people, have lost everything but breath, you can still sing.
Then he went away and left the Bible.
They turned the page, and it says, 'Moses freed the slaves!'"
I want to go back to the folk songs of my childhood and sing them till I know them again. Many of them come from the African disapora during the period of slavery, as well as European folk traditions.
I mostly know them from Pete Seeger records, who says, "The music, like everything else, is all mixed up."
Totally agree about singing voices blend to be more beautiful. Plus it has the capability to make anyone feel that they too are appreciated and can also join in singing.
ReplyDeleteToday's talent shows focus on that individual singer. To me, quite a few don't have any depth or an unique voice.
Pete is great and I wish I had seen him in person having seen many from his time period-Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, The Bryds, ......
Kirsten