Trying to get back to hope
Before I move on to one thing I rely on, both for comfort and for hope, I need to address what I said at the end of my last post. Returning to the themes of loneliness, alienation, meanness, anger, despair, disinformation, and economic inequality seems counterproductive at this point. No doubt the time will come for us to address those issues again (and again and again), but for now you have heard and read (perhaps ad nauseam) theories of what happened and why. There has been finger pointing and blame (a favorite tactic of Trump’s, by the way), and there has been nonproductive hand-wringing alongside calls to get it together and organize. (I would never belittle the tears that flowed. They are warranted and probably salutary.)
In my view, there is much more to be done, and it cannot be reduced to a few Substack posts or social media rants. I’ve endured too many long-range strategic planning meetings that did not amount to much two or three years later for me to embrace very many proposed solutions. Yes, I do read and rely on Heather Cox Richardson and Robert Reich, and I’ve mentioned the books by David Lay Williams (Economic Inequality) and by Nancy MacLean (Democracy in Chains), but reading is not enough. Not even this post, except for the musical suggestion at the end. The music is not enough either, but it may be helpful.
Since my youthful days in the antiwar movement, I haven’t demonstrated or written very much because I became so disillusioned and skeptical it would do much good. Writing on Substack has been the beginning of my penance.* Our society has become so insular (one of the things contributing to the election results) that we only read and hear the people who support what we already think. In A Great Reckoning, one of Louise Penny’s Three Pines mystery series, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is teaching in the police academy for the Sûreté du Québec. He often wrote items on the board for students to consider, then erased them, but one sentence he left on the board was: “Don’t believe everything you think.” That may seem nonsensical or, perhaps, oxymoronic, but in today’s world we find ourselves thinking a great many nonsensical things that we believe too easily. I’m going to let that sit with you for now and turn to the musical performance I promised.
There is a poem by Emily Dickinson that has been with me for many years. It is one you have probably already guessed. At some point in the 1980s, a friend and colleague, who was also a gifted organist and talented calligrapher, gave me a copy of “Hope” is the thing with feathers in calligraphy. It hangs by the steps up to my loft office now. I pass it every time I go up and down those steps. There must be several musical settings of this poem, but the one I listen to is a recent version by Christopher Tin. He is a contemporary composer whose work I had not heard before VOCES8** sang for the recording of Tin’s The Lost Birds: An Extinction Elegy. The Program Notes describe the extinction and loss of birds and other species as the inspiration. The 12-part composition is described this way:
“The Lost Birds is a memorial for their loss, and the loss of other species due to human activity. It's a celebration of their beauty—as symbols of hope, peace, and renewal. But it also mourns their absence—through the lonely branches of a tree, or the fading echoes of distant bird cries. And like the metaphor of the canary in the coal mine, it's also a warning: that unless we reverse our course, the fate that befell these once soaring flocks will be a foreshadowing of our own extinction.”The texts used for 10 of the movements are adapted from poems by Emily Dickinson, Cristina Rossetti, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Sara Teasdale. The other two movements are for orchestra only. Some of you may find both the music and the poets chosen too “Romantic” in the technical sense, but Tin hoped to provide something different. The program notes describe his intention further:
“This album is a gentler production than Christopher's previous works. The language is pastoral and romantic, by turns soaring and delicate, but with the slightest whisper of melancholy. It is a response to the noise of our times; a return to simplicity, clean lines, and the timelessness of hymns and folk melodies. It is a triumph of loveliness; a soundtrack for appreciating nature, and a reminder that we must preserve its ephemeral beauty while it still exists.”These poets were a deliberate choice for the 19th century perspective on the transition from the wide natural world to an industrial environment. The poems were chosen because they depict, at least in part, “an increasingly fraught world.” The last piece in the work is a setting of “Hope” is the thing with feathers. (The text may be well known to you, but I have included a link to the Poetry Foundation version in the notes below.) I hope you listen and enjoy it as much as I have.
*I mentioned integrity versus duplicity a couple of posts back. I will come back to that, but I also need to write a few legislators that a good example of duplicity is taking credit for benefits flowing to their constituents from legislation they opposed and voted against.
**VOCES8 is, as the name suggests, an 8-member vocal group based in the UK. They do tour widely and often, including the US. They are my favorite vocal group because of the beauty and precision of their singing and the wide range of repertoire, from William Bird, who died in 1623, to Paul Simon, who is still very much alive, and Christopher Tin. Much of their performance repertoire is a cappella, but they do also perform with orchestra, as the Christopher Tin album shows, but also in performance of Bach and other major composers of choral music. They do have a free YouTube channel. Full disclosure: I am a fan.
Notes:
Louise Penny, A Great Reckoning. Minotaur Books, 2016. I have often used a handout in mentoring workshops that included “Real advice from fictional characters”. Louise Penny’s books are among the sources for those bits of wisdom. At some point I will write about more of that advice.
VOCES8 singing a cappella Christopher Tin’s setting of Emily Dickinson’s “Hope” Is the Thing with Feathers:
VOCES8 singing with orchestra conducted by Christopher Tin in his setting of Emily Dickinson’s “Hope” Is the Thing with Feathers, with animations: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=5q_rRKC4pZk&list=OLAK5uy_leSARxC3uyrVgnMpChswILJ0neTeSqGS4
This is the link for the website devoted to The Lost Birds album. https://christophertin.com/albums/thelostbirds.html
For the complete 12-line poem, see https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314
My used paperback copy is The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. By Thomas H. Johnson. New York: Back Bay Books, 1961, no. 254, p. 116.