It was one of those strange, amusing moments that make it easier to get through an eight-and-a-half hour workday. A workday that was made harder by the fact that it was my first time back in over a week.
Why was I gone so long, you might ask? Good question, Clive.
Bright and early on Friday morning, I packed up my duffel bag, my orange backpack, and my black backpack and departed for John Denver's source of lasting fame, West Virginia, for camp staff training. While there, my bonds with the other counselors took on a new strength, as did my cold.
Sunday afternoon, I put my orange backpack, mostly used up now, in the trunk of the Mazda, and we three started to drive back down to the South. While I was gone to Carolina in my mind, that was not our immediate physical destination. No, we were headed for her neighbor, Tennessee Ernie Ford.
And now we're actually getting to the point of this whole post; because after spending the night at Virginia's house and eating lunch with her at a charming German restaurant, we drove ten minutes sideways to Elizabethton, and more importantly, Milligan College, location of the Biblical Worldview Student Conference.
This was my fourth year, and I looked forward to it eagerly. It really is a fantastic conference. It's interesting going from the small, intimate all-girls group at camp to two hundred fifty young men and women living on a college campus for a week, but the contrast doesn't make either less enjoyable. I had solid friendships already in place this year, and tentative ones that I was able to build on, and as far as social activity goes, this year was by far the most comfortable for me.
I don't think it was the best year for speakers that I've had so far, but that has less to do with their individual merits and more to do with the tough task of balancing them against each other in terms of what they covered and what they didn't. I had gone expecting to like one speaker in particular. Rebecca's all-time favorite from her years of going, and a friend of the best teacher I've ever had.
And you know what? I did like him.
Mr. John Hodges spoke on Christianity and music in particular, the arts in general. His lectures went from good to amazing, and the last in particular was glorious.
I don't know if I'm really an artist, or if I'm just trying to be. Whatever the case, I was able to think about it more last week. And it came to a head on Friday night, during the talent show.
A girl stood up and performed a spoken-word piece entitled "Pride" that she had written. I am not familiar with this medium, but as far as I could tell it was well-written and well-performed. Yet I found myself thinking as she spoke, This is not enjoyable.
And very quickly, I found two conflicting opinions colliding in my own mind. Is art communication, or is it entertainment?
If communication, the poem performed its purpose well. I well understood that giving over to pride that she described, that self-attack as a response to not being perfect. But if art is entertainment, this piece was anything but. I was not entertained. I was uncomfortable.
Let's look at the song "My Confession" by Josh Groban. Go ahead: give it a listen if you'd like.
Now I feel myself surrender
Each time I see your face.
I am captured by your beauty,
Your unassuming grace.
And I feel my heart is turning,
falling into place.
I can't hide it.
Now hear my confession.
Try and say those words out loud, straight up, regular-like. They don't sound nearly as nice. They're awkward, if not downright creepy.
Yet we set them to music, and suddenly they're beautiful. Why?
In my thinking, there are two possible reasons. First, because the music acts as a beautiful distraction, a layer of separation between what the words really mean and what you hear. Second, because the music is actually part of what we feel and thus the message is incorrectly translated without it.
I've thought a lot about separation in my own writing. Sometimes I'll write a song, and think, I would never perform this anywhere. Even I don't like it. And why? Because it's too close.
Too honest. Too raw. I feel sometimes like I distract people with enough things that aren't me in a song so that I can drown them in the underlying truth that is all me.
NOTE: It is midnight. I am tired. Pardon me, my three readers, for saying vague things and not explaining them. If it's any consolation, I'm muddling just as much as you are.
But that's not just music. You can also distract with words. Humor, in particular. It's like hiding the medicine in the peanut butter (I think of dogs as I say this); they eat it for the peanut butter, but they still get the benefits of the medicine.
Maybe we're too proud nowadays to accept that which we have not prepared ourselves for. Maybe the problem with the spoken-word piece wasn't that it wasn't art. Maybe it was that it was a different kind of art than we were prepared for.
I'm more confused now than I was when I started, so maybe I should go to bed now. It feels like anything else I could say would be too disconnected.
So long,
Anna
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