Incredibly powerful
An amazing thing happened today. We were having a really informal, off-the-cuff talent show. One girl gets up and says, I don't have accompaniment, so I'm just going to sing this, but you probably know it, so go ahead and sing along on the chorus if you want. And she breaks into Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley.
This by itself is just great. That's a wonderful, beautiful, bitter, anguished song, and she has got an absolutely gorgeous voice. But the great thing was what happened about two seconds in, when everyone recognized it. A couple people started humming along with the melody. Then people were in octaves, and then other people started harmonizing, both below and above the melody line. By the time we got to the first chorus, maybe 1/3 of the room was singing. Second chorus, maybe 2/3. Third chorus, the whole room was singing.
It was incredibly powerful. I was trembling near the end. We all just drew together, one at a time, each adding our voice to a whole that was so much greater than the sum of its parts. The song took on a life of its own. And it was all spontaneous. And because the program is full of ridiculously talented people, all the harmony lines fit -- maybe not perfectly, but damn near it. And we were all singing the one song, all together, cells in an orchestra. I've never felt anything like it.
(If this is what happens in organized religion, I can see why people like it.)
We took a field trip to Lobby 7, aka the Little Dome, aka the place I wrote about in the previous post, and recreated the experience, and spent quite some time doing the same thing for other songs. It was brilliant, but it wasn't the same.
This by itself is just great. That's a wonderful, beautiful, bitter, anguished song, and she has got an absolutely gorgeous voice. But the great thing was what happened about two seconds in, when everyone recognized it. A couple people started humming along with the melody. Then people were in octaves, and then other people started harmonizing, both below and above the melody line. By the time we got to the first chorus, maybe 1/3 of the room was singing. Second chorus, maybe 2/3. Third chorus, the whole room was singing.
It was incredibly powerful. I was trembling near the end. We all just drew together, one at a time, each adding our voice to a whole that was so much greater than the sum of its parts. The song took on a life of its own. And it was all spontaneous. And because the program is full of ridiculously talented people, all the harmony lines fit -- maybe not perfectly, but damn near it. And we were all singing the one song, all together, cells in an orchestra. I've never felt anything like it.
(If this is what happens in organized religion, I can see why people like it.)
We took a field trip to Lobby 7, aka the Little Dome, aka the place I wrote about in the previous post, and recreated the experience, and spent quite some time doing the same thing for other songs. It was brilliant, but it wasn't the same.