This evening was the annual Big Sing, an event where anyone can go to St. John's the Divine and sing great choral works with some of the most prominent choral conductors in the city for free. The church is a wonderful space, a very inclusive community and so it was fitting that the event be held there. A parent from the school where I taught joined me. She is looking for solace from the passing of her father two weeks ago.
Singing is such a wonderful way to connect with others and to open a space we forget we have in ourselves. She grew up as Jehovah's Witness and said she renounced it 15 years ago because she wasn't allowed to sing. And now she is a Buddhist or atheist, trying to reconcile the incredible emotion that Bach, a composer of God, is able to transmit to her through his choral works. She can't read music ("It's Chinese to me") and so I pointed along to the words and the notes and she followed the line as best she could, and the words, her first language being Spanish. She was finding her way in a non-native sound scape, singing for the first time in years.
It's touching what people will do. Who is this person who has now asked me to come to her home for dinner to be around her children and her family? Who is this open heart after such loss?
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