The name tag is on my thigh and I’m in a huge church in Brooklyn. I’m sitting on an empty pew, squished into the edge closest to the main aisle. It’s like I want to leap up and leave. Between phrases, I take out my pencil, sharpened extra sharp to mark my score, and scribble on the name tag on my thigh. You can see it here.
write about automatic behaviors and chorus rehearsal
the feeling, training, acceptance
word
sequentia
always want singing
I really didn’t want to go, I wanted to quit. I didn’t want to leave the studio. But I sped my bike down Fulton dodging cars parked in the bus lane, cursing the ones that passed me too close, swerving around all those crazy potholes. Do not be late to rehearsal.
This is ingrained in my history, my consciousness, my body, whatever constitutes my soul. It’s the soul that matters here, to be frank. This is the total dread at being part of something group in direct confrontation with anticipating the soul-release that comes from doing exactly that dreaded group thing. It’s the only group activity I ever did that made me feel good. So I’m doing it again. It’s very cheesy. I’m embarrassed. But it’s happening.
A couple months ago my mom forwarded me an email from Lincoln Center about a new composition to premiere in May in public on that huge plaza in front of Lincoln Center. You know, the one in front of the opera, the symphony, the ballet. The 66th Street Lincoln Center stop on the 1 train. With the mosaic by Nancy Spero.
The composition is called Search for Spring, a “sweeping choral work exploring the emotional toll of climate change and our hope for a better future ahead.” I cringed when I read the description. The composer is Jonathan Dove and the librettist is Alasdair Middleton. I had no idea who they are and only just looked them up now. Because that part doesn’t matter to me.
Search for Spring is composed for five choruses of amateur volunteer choral singers from each borough. Plus the legendary Young People’s Chorus of New York City. About 700 singers in total.
I looked at the schedule, tempted despite my disdain, and saw I could get to almost all the rehearsals. So I signed up. I thought, Well, that’s something I want to say I have done. It’s a real New York thing to do. What the hell. And because I have been traveling so much and dreaming of floating off in a balloon, I imagined this participation in a true New York experience to be a kind of anchor, a tether of sorts. I also wanted to sign up to show the kids that Mom signs up for things and sticks with them, group things, not just solitary, disappearing things.
The last time I sang in a chorus was twenty years ago, before I started commuting to my adjunct academic jobs all over the East Coast. At that time I had been part of the Julliard Choral Union, which was a Continuing Education class at that noble institution. I did have to audition. And it was tough and it was great and it really kept me going. The last concert I did with them was in 2003 at Carnegie Hall, Benjamin Britten’s powerful 1961 War Requiem. I wrote about that in an earlier post here.
Another side note, is that site now dubbed Lincoln Center is featured in the great Jack Smith film from around the same time as the War Requiem. The film is Smith’s first. It’s called Scotch Tape because there was a piece of scotch tape stuck in the camera when he was filming it, so you can see it in the corner of the whole film.
Watching Scotch Tape, you can see the pile of rubble that would become the Robert Moses’ modernist “high art” pleasure palace and know that it had once been a busy, vibrant neighborhood called San Juan Hill that was full of art and music and life. You can watch Scotch Tape here, in a terrible copy but a fantastic film. And you can read about the demolition of San Juan Hill here.
But rather than talk about the site and the current choral project and how it all works and my perpetual ambivalence at it all, I want to talk about my notes above. To explore what I meant. And you can read on if you want.
The automatic behaviors.
I’m locking up my bike in front of the church, kneeling in dog pee and cursing the way signposts are designed in NY so you can’t get the lock through the wheel and the post without hoisting the bike up. All I can think is: God, I should just forget about locking this fucking bike and go home. Or go back to the studio.
And then I go in.
Rehearsal is in the enormous Church of St. Luke & St. Matthew. I know the place, I’ve been walking and biking by it for 25 years but never went inside. It had been under scaffolding for years. The church is in Fort Greene right near the chaos of Atlantic Avenue, just over by the McDonalds and the huge storage place where I made another film a long time ago.
I pick up my name tag and stick the sticker on my thigh and sit down on the very edge of a mid-back pew, stuff the bike helmet and bags underneath, and take out my score. My itchy self begs to flee. My choral self sits up as straight as possible, waiting for—looking forward to—instruction, gestures, sounds. I crave the warmup, stretching my creaky voice after a day spent in silence and stress.
My body goes into an attentive state, anticipating the downbeat. The voice—my voice—comes out and mixes up in the echo with the other voices, none of them amazing, all of them making sound. I don’t take my eyes off the conductor. I smile at the bad jokes, I memorize the music as swiftly as possible, I follow and my voice follows and in that way we all lead. My insides hollow out and relax. Things are moving through. These are some of the automatic behaviors.
I can’t ever not think about age 8 being chosen by elementary school music teacher Bob Lee (I wrote about him here) to sing as part of the children’s chorus at the university in my hometown. They were doing Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. The level of excitement and fanciness I felt going into those hallowed rehearsal halls and stages was unlike anything else. I had been chosen, got to shine. I also got to be safe in the group of fellow child singers all of us shining because we had been asked to take part.
We performed, touring around Southwestern Ohio, performing all over the place. Dayton, Cincinnati, Hamilton. Tour buses, brown bag lunches, important conductors. We even recorded an album. Just thinking about it now makes me sit up straighter with a tiny spark of that sheepish excitement and palpable memory. Singing takes you places, takes you away and lets you go is the message I received so young. And so it did.
This is not the place to go on about all the singing I did since that time, university choirs, random choirs I joined in any country or city I lived in, tuning my ears, tuning to a subculture of the third kind. Suffice it to say that I will never be a soloist, nor do I even know if I will join another chorus after this. But that feeling of attentiveness and spark of initiation into the hollow feeling of vessel-ness is the best.
I suppose I have already written about number 2, feeling, training, acceptance
I don’t know what I meant by number 3 word, but it seems profound. I’ll leave it at that.
Number 4, sequentia, is a longer story for another time. In short, it involves me becoming a superfan of the early music ensemble Sequentia, and traveling in the early 1990s over and over again from Prague (where I was living) up to their many performances in Cologne. Spooky night train, no money, no sleeper car. As often as they sang is as often as I went. And at one point them suggesting I travel to attend their week-long medieval music performance workshop in Vancouver and I don’t even know how I afforded it but I did it and of course I was the worst singer there because everyone else was a professional but in retrospect who cares, I was enthralled. There, Benjamin Bagby and the late and great Barbara Thornton taught us the mnemonic songs medieval monks used in order to remember the musical modes. And I still know them because those monks sure knew how to memorize and those teachers sure taught us well.
Number 5, always want singing.
At its best, making art feels like it feels to sing in a chorus. I don’t know who the chorus is in this solitary studio space where I write and often work, but it’s there. Maybe the chorus is you. Most likely it’s us.
Thanks for reading.
P.S. This post marks exactly two years since I started The Beyond Place. If you have it in your heart to become a paid subscriber it would mean a lot. I write for the love of writing. But money is also helpful and a welcome sign of appreciation if you enjoy these essays.
Finally, my feature documentary BUNKER is available to watch on Amazon and Projectr.tv. If you haven’t seen it yet I hope you will.