The Upstairs process generated more publicity, crowds, and criticism than I'd ever experienced.It was a little overwhelming. I was surprised by the depth and nature of my own reaction to both criticism and praise, and I withdrew a bit from all of that intensity. After all, it was a long period of engagement. The questions had started from project's earliest announcement, and they never stopped. Was Upstairs: the Musical a good idea? Some said no; I said yes. Was Upstairs: the Musical a good thing to do? Absolutely. It wrought good things. It a worthy pursuit.But was Upstairs: the Musical good?
Of course I preferred presents to boiled eggs. Who wouldn’t? But still: Easter was better, no question. Maybe it was just a fact of growing up a Southern Baptist in rural Louisiana, since the weather was nearly always great for Easter, and the Easter music was always lively. The Sunrise Services out by the lake were happier by far than the bleary-eyed, tense Christmas mornings pretending Santa had brought the very gifts my parents had literally fought to afford mere days ago.
Among the many inspiring, tear-inducing, beautiful speeches and photos memorializing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. today, one is apt to find this video:
They say children play out their anxieties. For example, psychologists tell us not to be surprised to see children exposed to the violence in Newtown playing out the scenario. Re-enacting it. Maybe certain pop culture phenomena are our adult way of doing the same. It seems we have a need to envision and play out the end of the world. There’ve been many popular apocalyptic cults, of course, but our larger society also has its Y2K’s and its Mayan calendars. We have our zombie apocalypses and our asteroid armageddons.
Because the frustrating truth about my Facebook (and blogging) experience is that I have a lot of FB friends who either didn't bother to get to know me, or did and weren't that impressed. And those people--the people to whom I feel I must introduce myself, are the audience for this note.
Around 8pm last night, I finished Wise Up! For those of you who don't know, this is a musical I've been working on for about two years. It's a full-length play, with a cast of a dozen and about 30 songs, each of which had to be notated and recorded. The first staging of the play will take place in Jan 2011.
I don't really have time to write anything that's not music at this point, but there are some things I haven't heard regarding the bullying and suicides that have been in the news that need to be said. So, at risk of opening a can of worms and starting a conversation I haven't time to finish, here goes.
My "fast" suddenly turned into an Internet fast yesterday, as my cable internet suddenly stopped working. What a mess! Our phone, which my mother-in-law relies on, is internet-based, and our DVR was being all whiney. My printer needs the network to work. Lost some substantial productive time!
The bad news: my first blog entry in a long time will be about my eating habits and some of you may find it tedious. The good news: you're welcome to respond with tedious food consumption rant and I'll listen with real interest. I could talk about diet and exercise ceaselessly.
I've heard enough from the jowly sports turds on TV to see they've already got the whole thing figured out.
Sometimes, I get laughed at. It's happening a lot, right now. I get laughed at in dance class, especially tap. I get laughed at for having the nerve to call myself a "composer" in a school full of singers. I get laughed at for being older than my peers, for putting on a dress and a wig and doing a queer Christmas play.
The denomination of the church I go to is MCC: Metropolitan Community Church. It's a church founded by gay people primarily for gay people. It's colloquially called "the gay church," though MCC leaders tend to despise that designation.
So the last time I posted, I was engaged in a process of trying to figure out whether to pursue ordination and/or ministry. I ended with a warning about "serious concerns" that were keeping me from going forward enthusiastically into it. But my navel-gazing got interrupted for three weeks by the need to actually, you know, do stuff.
"I love to tell the story of unseen things above. Of spirit, and of glory. Of spirit and of love. I love to tell the story, because I know it's true. It satisfies my longing, like nothing else can do." (From the hymn "I Love to Tell the Story," by Arabella K. Hankey) To those of you who are paying attention: thanks. Thanks so much.
So here I am, roughly halfway through seminary, when it occurs to me: "What the hell am I doing?!!!?!?!"
On the chatterbox, they keep debating whether there's a racial element to the criticism of President Obama. The coverage makes me wince. It's like the reporters leading the dialogue have never had to talk about race in any real way. It's even worse than coverage of religion.
As soon as I sit down to blog, there's this feeling that what I write here has to be "finished" somehow, or good, not just my ramblings. Not sure why that is. So I wait until I have time to finish something. But then, when stuff is finished, why put it on the blog?
Well, I pretty-much ignored the blog for quite some time. It was hard to find time to do any writing outside of classwork and other projects.
The cola, not the drug, although I'd be hard-pressed to tell you the difference. Despite my success in giving up cigarettes, I've never been able to shed my nasty Coke habit. I'm simultaneously talking about Coca-Cola and all sodas since I'm from the south and there's no difference. All sodas are Cokes, but Coke is my soda of choice.
Wayne Self is an award-winning writer, composer, and music director with deep spiritual and historical roots in rural Louisiana.