the chariot's wheels roll in fire II

I have in my possession right now an email address that could kind of be a big deal. I have so many ridiculous expectations about what could happen if I send a little bitty email that I will probably let this address just sit for a while. Then I will probably write many drafts of an email and look up every word to make sure I am using them all properly and analyze the email a few more times to make sure it shows a little personality and charm and intelligence and then I will send it and feel quite stupid and regret everything I said.


In other news.


I keep finding myself singing Peter, Paul and Mary songs as I ride Bicycle (yes, Bicycle). I've been singing out loud. People look at me strangely and I usually only know half the words. But I don't really care. It's summer.
Funny thing is, I haven't even listened to PPM in a long while. I've been too busy with The Troggs, Yardbirds, Pretty Things. Yesterday it was The Isley Brothers' "Twist and Shout." Oh baby, I started a Pandora station with that song and it is hot.


Music is one of those proverbial things that affects your soul. A soul like mine will be perpetually stuck in its own little world since it loves the present day yet can't get enough of those 50s shoobiedoowops, 60s beats, and 70s...something or others.

But then there's the second Tuesday of the month which means that an irregular group of us met in St. Mary's Episcopal church near down town to do Sacred Harp Singing. Then my soul meets eternity.






Who knows what we sound like, sometimes our group is small, last night it was lovely larger. There were maybe 20 of us. The age groupings of us is rather interesting. Most people are old or young, there's hardly any in between.


I love the stolid, wide-mouthed, uninhibited singing in little chapel setting. It seems such a primitive, soulful way to express yourself. To worship, even. In large part the hymns are about death and afterlifes. They talk about burning chariots, drunkards, going home to meet your father, bright lands, Babylon fallen. Some songs have sections sung in rounds but it's not written anywhere. You just learn it. O the folklore! The mystery, history old magic of it all! They have names like Amherst and Haw Ridge that say little about the content of the song but allude to an older kind of history-taking. Where people, places, and face-to-faces were everything and nothing exists without story. Underneath each title is a short line of scripture. Many come from Psalms, Peter, Romans; they praise Jesus or dispense some short, slightly ambiguous bit of wisdom. Everything about it makes me feel the clapboard, ramshackle, appalachian past. I know I'm there with snake handlers and literal believers. The book of Revelations makes sense in such a setting.


David's Lamentation 268
David the king was grieved and moved
He went to his chamber
His chamber and wept


And as he went
He wept and said
Oh my son, oh my son


Would to God I had died
Would to God I had died
Would to God I had died
 
For thee, O Absalom
My son, my son