no one wants to hear a speech just do the concert dammit

Hi guys, thanks for coming out.

I’m not going to tell you about my depression and anxiety, because I think we’ve had enough of that (what with literally every other student sharing the same unique story of their special darkness and making us worry about mass shootings and farmgirl suicides in between the songs of supposedly hope and cheer.) I’m not going to tell you about my time in the military, because I didn’t have any time in the military. I hope I will never be able to say anything different and not be lying. But I lie a lot, you know. All of life is a performance — this is a performance, a performance at college which is a performance of intellectual academiademicness and stuff — but now I’m going all English major on you. So I’ll stop now that I’m behind.

Actually we’re not quite done yet. As I’m sure you already know from the multitude of promotional materials and the speeches that preceded this one, the theme of our choir concert today is the power of music. Whoop-de-doo. I was supposed to write a cute little spiel about how music has affected my personal life. But honestly, I’m not interested in telling you guys about my personal life, and I have a feeling you’re not interested in hearing about my personal life either. So we’re square. Also, I just kind of don’t really think music is all that special. It’s just a thing, like other things; it feels special if you happen to be doing the things with people who make you feel special; it gets corrupted over time if you leave it on the table to ferment through endless chatter. So let’s stop wasting time and do the convenient segue. Let’s end this cacophony of pretending not to be pretending and slip once again into the honest pretending that admits it is pretending — let the music begin! (when our marvelous conductor Grace Wellman raises the baton that is.)

Christmas Music

It has lights in it.

Shameless major lifts cascading into perfect authentic cadences

without so much as a dip into the diminished or minor mayhem

of the world outside.

It has bells in it

Plastic candles with off-switches perilously close to where one’s fingers grip the base

It has snow-white children in it, crowned with marigold hair

(and I imagine you)

And millions of Marys, the main characteristic of each being their sexual status

but when it’s in Latin, Swahili or Chinese

even the knifened people of the cold northwestern charcuteries can swallow it

without choking the exit doors, an uncracked nut of protest.

How can people protest

against what has love in it

and joy, joy, joy, an overflowing goblet of it

in it

an ocean of sweet liquid joy to duck your head

under

disappear in it and hear

the music all the same.

Christmas music:

it has ancient ports in it, beckoning green Renaissance tides

with each rise and fall of the organ’s breath

it has angels in it, not graphite rained-on scribbles but real

angels in it has

love in it

blue and white and stars all over the ground in it

resound in it

resplend in it

release your poor tense shoulders so deeply into it

you forget to hold fast to the railroad tracks

and you miss the bloody train.

This music

has friends in it

has scrub jays in it

has dawns again in it

and for now, whatever the gods may think, there is

me in it

and you in it

Mush, major fifths!

And on we go.

Image credit: By Dchendyson – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9003448