I can imagine that singing the Sacred Harp would be quite thrilling....not for the words, per se, but more for the epic nature of the sound. Most Sacred Harp songs are about the extremes of joy or anguish. This is the kind of music you imagine was sung in remote areas of the country hundreds of years ago. It's one of those branches of "Soul Music" - it takes on the "religious" tone and expresses matters of the soul. However, I can't completely buy into it. It's aesthetically pleasing and moving, but it isn't anything truly meaningful. It's not some primordial method of meditation or purgation. It is what it is: a folk art.

Awake, My Soul: The Story of The Sacred Harp

6:45am

I turned around
and saw the sky
how it lay sleeping
how I saw the
gray ages
pummeling
deep
until a needle fell
and a squirrel
hid away
and the motor
of time brought
the sky to its feet
how it moved upon me
and made the air
cold and merciful

the orange--
it revealed
--the world
lifted its petticoat
and it danced
a morning
so blue.

humbled

in the enormity of
great evil
of great squalor
and great pain
one can witness the
enormity of God
for God is not only the
creator of the things
which make us happy
and peaceable
but he creates the things
that divide us apart,
wreck our lives,
and spoil our efforts
He is the author of good and evil
He is the author of our deaths
He is the author of all things
and for that
He is greater than any god preached on the earth.

tonight

It is not "me"
for I am nothing
and
to the outside world
this is insanity
but were you to walk
in my shoes
you would feel the same
that the only thing worth
anything
is the death
of "self"
the tide rushing back
into the many waters
to reveal
the Christ
the One and Only
the only thing
that has ever been
and ever will be
and that my darkness
has been a creation of God's
so that Christ would
reign in Light
for me to see
that "I" is insanity
that this is all about Christ
and slowly yet surely
I am becoming The Christ.

getting there

the old is falling away
like burnt heather
a burst
a crackle
of purple flame
it shows the faces
in the scent
the cedar
and the thyme
and the wool
relics falling
down the water slope
into a sound of rushing waters
that sustains itself for all time
it shows the faces
in the bright sun
in the water's white.

goodbye.

gravy

wish i could pack
all my things
and hit the road
by 6am
to reconfigure
bounce out of
the loop

caught the spirit

Old Time Music is bizarre in that from the outside looking in, all you see are a bunch of musicians playing some really old music (like 1700s, 1800s, etc.) But the reality is actually very different. In the act of playing these tunes, one is not playing in the past, there is a presentness to the music. It is alive NOW. Who cares if it was alive then. It is palpable music in that ordinary people play it and play it together....still. There is something profound in the fact that those old fiddle and banjo tunes have survived for so long - that people have had the interest and the zeal in succeeding generations to learn the tunes, too. Old time music, for those who have caught it, is a very accessible music for expression. Those old fiddle tunes begin to gain clarity - their feeling understood....whereas before it was just some bowing and some notes. Now you can feel the story of the tune even if there's no words at all. There is a spirit attained. Everyone grasps the spirit differently. And yet they gather together in large flocks to share the same. I once heard somebody describe a circle of old time musicians as in "communion" - their heads bowed, eyes closed, etc. Sometimes the playing is raucous and full of jubilation. After a while, one forgets what their fingers are doing and...... I think I have no choice now but to accept that there is something supremely special about it all.

Bizarre that music evolves, and yet old time is evolving at such a slower rate over time, though it evolved into OTHER forms of music that followed it: blues, "country", etc. Perhaps it is evolving in its own circle so slowly because of its distinction. There actually is an element of preservation to the music. But that preservation is not stuffy nor scholarly. It is a preservation based out of admiration and respect for those who came before us and loved the tunes the way we do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03lusDmD_v4