A Song is a Wish Your Heart Makes. . . .

I know that’s not how the song actually goes but it does describe my reading of late. Over the course of the past several weeks, I’ve encountered three different and yet important portrayals of song. I’m just not entirely sure what to do with these distinct images. I feel much as if someone handed me several puzzle pieces and told me to make a picture; I’m just not sure if the pieces make the same puzzle. Nevertheless, I must see if I can make a cohesive image.

Having spent the majority of my life engaged in a relationship with a giant singing mouse, I appreciate the idea that each of us has songs lurking inside, waiting for the right moment (and the perfect assembly of ensemble) to burst forth. I also believe that there are times when songs are the only means of expression. True, we may not have a “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” type song erupt from our imagination impromptu but that doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been a song performed and created by another that seems to represent more than we can put into words.

With that said, with such feelings on the subject, perhaps I merely see a connection of melody where none actually exists.

The first piece of the puzzle comes from this week’s assigned text: August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.” One of the most powerful moments of the play is delivered in stage directions for some ambitious actor to embody. Wilson writes that Loomis, “[having] found his song, the song of self-sufficiency, fully resurrected, cleansed and given breath, free from any encumbrance other than the workings of his own heart and the bonds of the flesh, having accepted the responsibility for his own presence in the world, he is free to soar above the environs that weighed and pushed his spirit into terrifying contractions” (93-94 Plume Edition). How, I ask, is an actor to portray all of this? How is the audience to know that such a pivotal moment has just occurred? Even if the best actor manages to convey freedom in his body language, how can he show that his song has been actualized? In some ways, I almost feel as if Wilson has cheated his audiences here. Instead of struggling to find the words to express this sentiment, he just writes “Goodbye, Martha” and leaves the rest up to the acting (94 Plume Edition).

Take that idea, that image, and juxtapose on top of it the images that Wole Soyinka creates in “Death and the King’s Horseman.” Soyinka, in capturing the essence of his people, the Yoruba, ensures that song is an ever-felt presence. Here, however, it comes most often from the Praise-Singer, a man whose job it is to sing not the songs hidden within his own heart but the melodies belonging to another man. The Praise-Singer’s music is critical; it is not only the acknowledgement of Elesin but the insurance that Elesin fulfills his sacred duty. No less important that Loomis’ “song of self-sufficiency,” the Praise-Singer’s music gains its power based on the needs of a greater collective. We have then, two types of song: the song of the individual and the song needed for the community. These two portrayals of song couldn’t be too much more different in nature (one sung by a man, the other sung to a man, one sung solo, the other sung communal) and yet found in each is a truth powerful enough to shake worldviews and rock entire foundations.

Over these two images, I find myself complicating things by adding a third. Frederick Douglass, in his personal narrative, wrote “I have often been utterly astonished, since I came north, to find persons who speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relived by them, only as an aching heart is relived by its tears” (9 Dover Edition). Out of all that Douglass had to say, much of which was powerful, this image has taken precedence, twisting and reshaping my thoughts. And as I read these two other plays enriched with music, speaking of the colonized Yoruba and the recently freed African Americans, I wonder how Douglass’ observation fits into the greater whole, if it does at all.

As I’m not sure that I’ve found anything amazing to stay about my puzzle pieces, I don’t have much else to say. Perhaps there is no connection or perhaps the connection is so profound that it boggles my little mind (much along the lines of ‘can God create something so large, even He can’t move it?’) Either way, I can’t help but feel that these three images are stuck in my head for a reason. Any thoughts?