Now shall my inward joys arise and burst into a song! Almighty god inspires my heart and pleasure tunes my tongue. Why do we then indulge our fears, suspicions, and complaints? Is he a god and will his grace grow weary of his saints? In late March I went to my first Sacred Harp singing. That one was in an old brownstone on the Upper West Side which is now a church but used to belong to Duke Ellington and was once all full of pianos. The inside is painted purple and when I went in, about ten minutes after the listed start time, there were four sections of pews full of people singing. The pews faced inward and one person stood in the middle conducting. When the song was over the person in the middle smiled thankfully and took their seat. A few seconds later someone else called out a number, took their place in the middle of the square, and began conducting. The group broke into song. I've been going to Sacred Harp singings regularly since that one, almost every week. I've also been to three all-day singings: one here in the city, one in New Haven, and one in Boston. Going to these singings has been a huge amount of fun, as I love to sing, and also hugely clarifying for me. For the past few years I've been trying to wrangle my spiritual self, trying on different perspectives and philosophies as I am allowed to do per the rules of Jingle dance, and still have yet to settle on any single one I like the best. I'm certainly not religious; I don't believe in any god described in major religious texts and I would still proudly call myself an agnostic. Yet I do think that for most of my life I have been neglecting proper spirituality. The soul precedes all (I have recently found out that this is called solipsism), so I ought to spend at least a bit of my time tending to it. And so I've begun to come to the conclusion that these singings might be the most important thing I do. I will proceed in two parts. First, on the creative impulses and their implications; second, on our current society (which I so love to complain about) and the deterioration in our collective relationship to music. Existing is a great pain. Life itself is so often a pleasure, but when it is not it looms much larger and casts a shadow over all the good around us. I think that the root of this pain is the great injustice: I am made to exist with nobody even asking me what I thought about the whole thing, and to add insult to injury, the universe seems completely oblivious to my existence. I feel that I respond emotionally to this fundamental injustice with two base impulses: first, there is the desire to dissolve, to stop existing as a singular Self, to become one with something greater; second, there is the desire to stand out, to emerge on the cosmic stage and define my identity for once and for all so that it can never be refuted or ended. I think many common actions are motivated by the first impulse. To join a political movement, or a community organization, or to die and be scattered at sea. Society can dissolve a person in many ways. Sometimes it is nice to stand at a party out of the way of the other people, not talking to anybody and just looking at everybody milling about. Part of why it's nice is that it's almost like you don't exist; you get to be an ethereal something that is just a part of this whole, not an individual piece separate from everybody else. I think many more actions today are motivated by the second impulse. To have children, to sacrifice oneself and become a Hero, to forge a legacy, or to create art. Society promises to distinguish a person in many, many, many ways, through degrees and promotions and awards and all the rest. Some of these work pretty well, others not so much. It is a very difficult thing to truly stand out; there are so many people. And there is also the shitty Randian Incredibles aspect: when everyone is super, no one will be. True but not in the way it was intended. Distinguishing oneself requires that others are less distinguished. It's a comparison between different people, and in the drive to emerge from the fabric of everybody else there is also a great deal of ego and I think some disdain for one's fellows. Already my feelings that I meant to save for the second part are leaking through. I don't mean to imply that the second impulse is not an essential, amazing aspect of the human experience. One can certainly pursue distinction without disdain for others. But I do think that much of our society encourages people to scramble over each other, to knock their comrades down in the vain hope that they will somehow come out on top, that the universe will wink at them and say "good job; I see you." I also think that, in a society that did not encourage that, some people would and should still attempt to set themselves apart. I also think that Art, what we mean when we say the word these days, falls fully under the second impulse. Art is the patron and the patronized, the creator and the audience, and it is one of the most socially reinforced paths to distinguishment. The names of great artists are enshrined in history; they attained immortality without Caesar's bloody conquests or Jesus's adoring apostles. Their work stands on its own, and is not some purely functional thing but is made for the conjuring of joy and the elevating of the human spirit (which, again, I think we could generally do with a lot more of these days). Art is an indispensible piece of what it means to be human. It is the purest expression of the distinguishing impulse, and probably one of the most important things we do as a species. For art is something outside of other people; although I believe the vast majority of creatives long for recognition, a tree falls in a forest and great art is still great even if no one notices. Even greater, maybe, as post-mortem fame is something especially romantic and belongs to the ranks of the Van Goghs and Monets and Kafkas. Once art exists, then for all the rest of time it will have always existed at one point, and its magic is not derived from having people around to remember it. If it is forgotten, it is a tragedy for those forgetters; if it is lost or ruined, it is a tragedy for the losers and ruiners. The art itself is an abstraction, something immortal, and cannot be destroyed. And yet there is also that which is not Art, and that's okay too. One such thing has crossed the threshold relatively recently, becoming Art after having been something different for so long: that thing is Music. Of course, some music has always been Art. Beethoven and Mozart were commissioned for their symphonies and operas just as Michelangelo was commissioned for the Sistine Chapel. But these were the exceptions: for the vast majority of history, normal music (or "folk music" as it's now called) belonged to the people, not the patrons. It was not used as a means to pursue the distinguishing impulse, but a way to dissolve into one's community, to join with friends and neighbors and create something greater than any Self. Since the advent of recording equipment, this has become less and less the case. I asked my grandpa about this a little while ago, mentioned my then-nascent thoughts on our current relationship to music, and he told me a good story: when he was growing up, you would go to a movie theater, with a date or your friends or by yourself, and maybe show up a little early when the movie hadn't started yet. Some people were there, sitting around and all bored, and there were songs that were known and shared by the common culture. To pass the time, people would break out into one of these songs that everyone knew from the radio or that were passed down from much older tunes. The repertoire was surely not huge, as people can only remember so many songs, but there was Oh Susanna and the Carter Family and Woody Guthrie and you could get by okay. I've mentioned this story to a ton of people since I heard it. It tells of such a completely different relationship to music than the one I or anyone I know has today. Many people have mentioned similar stories; before there were a thousand songs in your pocket, you had to take matters into your own hands. Today, music is about the special star, the Artist, and this is surely a result of the music industry and big labels and all that, but there is a chicken and there is an egg. As people continue to rocket tirelessly towards the ideal of the omni-consumer, more and more of what people used to create gets swept into the capitalist mode of production. The dissolving ideal, which is the thing that is communitarian and selfless and socialist, is discarded for the distinguishing ideal, which fits very well into the modern economy. Even when people do go out singing, a karaoke bar or something like that, there is still the person with the microphone and there is everybody else, the singer and the singers-along. I think music must reenter the realm of the public for our collective spiritual health; making music is simply too good and important to be restricted to a select few. I believe this will require people to stop thinking of all music as Art; one does not need to be good at singing to go singing, or practiced at guitar to pick up a guitar. It can be a thing you do for its own sake, not always for some deep creative expression or annunciation of one's most inner self. What has been relegated to campfires must reenter urban spaces and homes; people must get their voices back. And so here we get back to Sacred Harp. It might be the most important thing I do. Sacred Harp is the first musical space I can remember being in that is truly for its own sake; there is no audience, there is no distinction between the singers and the listeners. You are not practicing songs for a concert or to get them right next time. The vocabulary we use to describe music today does not work for these singings. Even bluegrass (another music scene I love for its democratic and open format) is far from the intentionality and present-ness of Sacred Harp singing. You sing the same songs that were sung in the 1700s, and the 1800s, and the 1900s, and they are good American songs and many of them are so beautiful. In the North huge swathes of the community are completely secular, as far as I can tell, and show up for the music and to feel something stir in their souls, as I do. I tell my friends about it, although none have come out yet. I hope they will soon.