Musical harmony cannot be sung by one voice alone.
... a unique metaphor for community. Growing up in a home that had no television 'til my teens, my nostalgia is older-fashioned than the nostalgia of my contemporaries, because my life was shaped more by the pattern of earlier generations. Two poems powerfully evoke to me those first-hand experiences of participation in and witness of the alchemy ordinary people conjure by ferociously joyful disciplined joining in community life. They're transcribed below to offer the possibility that re-committing ourselves and our children and grandchildren to local community life, reviving there the practice of artistic, technical, recreational and scholarly skills, revitalizing the in-person power to move our communities forward together, as the most constructive communities of the third world are doing, just may be the saving of us all. And the making of us. L'dor va'dor— from generation to generation—we return to the wellsprings. "It takes a village to raise a child," and "Live simply, that others may simply live" are credos we recognize. Deep inside each of us a piece of child-spirit always burns bright, creative and needing, uncivilized yet and yet eager to give, wildly independent and also yearning to embrace the warmth of joining with those around us and empowering us all by wisdom hard-learned from before us in daily-life heroism, with all our differences of face and voice and all our samenesses valued and nurtured.
Grace Paley from Begin Again: Collected Poems
Happiness
If you have acquired a taste for happiness
it's very hard to do without
so you try jollity for a while
jokes
and
merriment
Song is one of the famous methods
for [summoning up ,] continuing or entrenching happiness
You may say what
about sex is it its own
keen pleasure or according to some
the night’s sorrow
Here is another example of ordinary joy
it is prose but uses whole days and nights
the gathering together of comrades
in bitter disagreement then resolution
followed by determined action
Still the face of life will change
partly because of those miserable scratches it makes
on its own aging surface
then
happiness
in the risky busy labor of Repair the World
after which for the unsated there will surely be
talking all night dances in schoolrooms and kitchens
and later
love
of happinesses the most famous of all
Aaron Kramer from The Burning Bush
Homage to those who sing in chorus!
whose names are not advertised, or listed on programs;
whose smiles are not photographed, or spotlighted;
whose interviews are not requested by interviewers;
whose art is not compared to Galli-Curci's or Caruso's . . . .
Homage to those who receive for their singing
neither contracts, nor bouquets, nor ever a penny!
I know them — I have seen them marching to rehearsal
when great trees were being overwhelmed by windstorms;
year in, year out, more punctual than the postman . . . .
The men, after a Wednesday of wrestling in silence
with foremen and machines; the women,
after a Wednesday of dragging bargains from faraway markets
— rush through the meal, leave the dishes for tomorrow,
and hurry downstairs as though to meet a lover.
He who comes first is allowed the highest honor:
to set up the benches, and perhaps move the piano.
One by one the others arrive and take their places;
they gossip and jest, till an arm is lifted — the piano strikes a chord
and the room is enchanted
A song of ancient love or of modern valor
a mockery in rhyme or a lamentation.
Ripped from their hearts is the steel chain of silence;
Driven from their eyes, the dark veil of aloneness.
Winds beat at the windows,
but a harmony is born.
Their separate wounds become one vast anguish;
their separate alarms become one vast terror;
their separate growls become one vast fury;
their separate dreams become one vast commandment.
What can the winds do? A harmony is born!
Is an alto off-key? A soprano too hasty?
Do tenors forget and sing bass for a moment?
—Patience, patience! Three weeks ‘til the concert,
Let's try it again please. Just once more. That's better,
much better. You'll go over great. Now, from the beginning.
—the curtains part: shhhh! Startling in their splendor,
our mothers and fathers, half strange among strange faces—
shine solemnly, row upon row, before us.
At last we may learn what was special about Wednesdays
The piano strikes a chord —and the hall is enchanted.
Homage to those who sing in chorus!
Whether they'll go over great, or not, there is
in their harmony a greatness, in their faces and voices
merged to one face, ancient and everlasting—
merged to one voice, ancient and everlasting.
Homage to those who sing in harmony, repairing the world because of
a taste for happiness.