I've spent the last couple of days with a shape-note setting of Dylan Thomas's poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" running through my head. We used to sing it sometimes in the shape-note group in Oberlin, usually pitched high enough for me to sing the bass part. I really liked the way the chorus of "rage, rage, rage, rage, rage, rage, rage..." would resonate in my chest. I had meant to photocopy that tune and bring it to shape-notes tonight, but I've been busy and distracted and didn't even bring my books. (I did, however, pick up a copy of a brand new song by my friend Eric, since someone else brought copies of it for us to sing.)
I was reminded more than usual this evening that shape-note singing is a more clearly religious activity for a lot of the other singers. I suppose it should be obvious, since so many of the words are shared with hymns or psalms, and there isn't a whole lot of secular music that talks about Jesus so much, but I really don't think of it that way. If I did, I probably wouldn't go, since my religious background is pretty secular Judaism and my belief system is basically secular humanist. But I enjoy the music, both for its aesthetics and for the way it's a group of people singing together, making something richer than any one of them can create on their own, purely for the pleasure of doing so. (I really like the roundsings at Swarthmore, and social contra and English dances, but they're harder to get to and less conveniently timed, so I don't go as often as I'd like.)
I think it was while we were singing "China" (a setting of the first three verses from this), which is about why not to mourn the dead (because they're with God) that I started thinking about one of my favorite passages from Ursula Goodenough's The Sacred Depths of Nature:
Does death have any meaning?Well, yes, it does. Sex without death gets you single-celled algae and fungi; sex with a mortal soma gets you the rest of the eukaryotic creatures. Death is the price paid to have trees and clams and birds and grasshoppers, and death is the price paid to have human consciousness, to be aware of all that shimmering awareness and all that love.
My somatic life is the wondrous gift wrought by my forthcoming death.
I find that more comforting than I find organized religion, but I still miss the group hugs at the end of the Oberlin sings.
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