Robin DG Kelley
I went back and listened three more times to the Process song. BTW, I shared it with my friend, the playwright Naomi Wallace whom I mentioned, and she wrote back simply: "Lyrics, breathing, spirit. So beautiful.” Of course, I agree, but what I found striking is her choice of three words, a kind of trinity. Lyrics, breathing, spirit. I tend to listen to the music before listening to lyrics, and I noticed that three chord sequence you would play, then allow the piano to ring (sustained) as your voice comes in. Not every stanza has three chords sometimes two. But those three chords are powerful and I hear them as a kind of holy trinity, but for me they represent the process: for me it’s what I do with my therapist—recognize the problem, approach it from a place of consciousness, and then work to change the situation (the system, my behavior, my outlook). And yet, even though one could listen to your lyrics and come away from the Process song with deeper insights into therapy as a process, what I heard was a deeply SPIRITUAL song (“spirit”), not religious in the formal sense though I’d sing it in church!!
That said, I felt a slightly different trinity in operation here: John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” in which the first three movements are Acknowledgment, Resolution, and Pursuance [and of course, Psalm, his prayer]. These feel like the steps you passed through in dealing with your struggles and your grandfather’s passing. First acknowledging the problem (like the pilgrim acknowledging the divine), second resolving to confront and push through these feelings, and then third the pursuit of spiritual enlightenment, which is to say consciousness, learning from the painful journey to achieve something higher, transcendent. Psalm, of course, is the song itself.
Hope I’m making sense, but that’s what I took away. It came as much from those three chords as from your beautiful and honest words.
much love to you,
robin
That said, I felt a slightly different trinity in operation here: John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” in which the first three movements are Acknowledgment, Resolution, and Pursuance [and of course, Psalm, his prayer]. These feel like the steps you passed through in dealing with your struggles and your grandfather’s passing. First acknowledging the problem (like the pilgrim acknowledging the divine), second resolving to confront and push through these feelings, and then third the pursuit of spiritual enlightenment, which is to say consciousness, learning from the painful journey to achieve something higher, transcendent. Psalm, of course, is the song itself.
Hope I’m making sense, but that’s what I took away. It came as much from those three chords as from your beautiful and honest words.
much love to you,
robin