Roads to Joy

Sometimes I wonder if the best meanings are most often conveyed through metaphor. I know I’ve not been able, for example, to make any sense of the venality of so many contemporary politicians across the world, without thinking of original sin and selfish lies.

But then, my upbringing was built on a foundation of metaphor, and stories that illustrated how the world was understood to work were embedded into my consciousness from a very early age. It took me a very long time, however, to understand that these stories were perhaps never meant to be literal, and even, that they had more resonance when understood as signifying a general concept.

Now that I am older (and in the recent past I’d have been thought to be just ‘old’), I find that I can accommodate the concepts of story more flexibly than I could as a young acolyte. This flexibility of mind is never more true than when song comes into the picture. There are many times, for example, when singing the hymns of my childhood, that I’m overcome with emotion, gripped by a powerful sense that the story is strong, and that the story encompasses my early experience as well as that of the present.

So we’ve been having quite a joyful time rehearsing for a concert, a brief oratorio if you like, which our neighbour Geoff has been putting together. This concert recapitulates the story of the banishment of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, as sin and our realisation of our own mortality (the knowledge of life and death, as it were) enter the frame. The eventual hope of the future, the hope that our children may thrive, that successive generations will follow on to build a better world, is built into the fabric of the concert’s conclusion.

Of course, having practised our numbers for many weeks leading up to the concert, I would know this because of our efforts in rehearsal. But additionally, I understand a bit more of the programme than I’d ordinarily follow because I was asked to write portions of it! My own deathless words are included in a Prologue, a recitation invoking the spirit of Mary, Icon of Love, and finally in the Song of Hope itself. Just writing these pieces was a joy in and of itself, but singing to music that’s been put to them is in another sphere of joy altogether.

The only comparison I can make was, I think, one precious evening at a folk night, when our daughter treated me to a rendition of a song I’d written celebrating our rural lifestyle high on a North Pennines fellside. Or, contrari-wise, a song written by a dear friend for me to sing at the club that had a similar resonance. But never had I ever dreamed that I might one day compose lyrics to a song a choir might sing.

Nevertheless, at our concert on the 4th of May, I shall be singing my words to the Song of Hope along with the choir, and struggling to hold back tears of joy.