Songsmithing: Dancing the Creed

Today I've been working on a song. I stopped for a lunch break, but this one song has been in process since about ten this morning and it's almost four in the afternoon now. David Taylor was commenting on how he liked to read blogs written from within the creative process.  It started with an idea that I jotted down as I was driving back from Laity Lodge near Kerrville, TX. There I had watched as Sandra Organ-Solis led us during a worship service by dancing the Nicene Creed. As she recited the Creed and accompanied the words in movement I was surprised to find tears running down my face. To see the creed thus embodied was very moving! 

I'm trying to write a song about it now. Usually, I sit still for long periods of time when I write. In my head I'm jotting down a lyric, then throwing it away. I try different words, follow rabbit trails of possible narrative direction then finally, when I've explored many options in my mind's eye, I'll try writing something on the paper. If it reads right visually, I'll sing it a few times and see how it 'tastes'. Is it oppressively expected? Cliched? I try to boot it out if it's too obvious of a lyric. I feel a challenge to dig down closer to the heart and substance of Reality. 

Ironically, I don't think trying to be original is really an important goal. Being true is most important. And then, being alive. Cliches are so chewed up they have little taste left (lost their saltiness?) - they may sound good, but they're all light and no warmth. I don't need something 'new' per se but something alive. Old things are often much more alive than you'd think. Maybe cliches are words without glory (mass without weight), like obscene words are a kind of un-word. Like a vampire is un-dead. Same as faith without works is dead? (I get to brain-riffing sometimes)

Anyway, I'm still working on this song. It's mostly about how God has made us creatures simultaneously material and immaterial. I saw how Sandra's dancing the creed was fitting. These are not immaterial words, they are embodied realities in Jesus and now in the Church. It's funny though, I'm struggling with keeping this song from being too abstract lyrically! Wish me luck.  I'll leave you with a little bit of poem that will probably end up as a bridge: 

 

The brass trumpet sun blew a copper dawn down on the yawning lawn

and shook golden leaves on the living limbs of these graceful (grateful?) trees

who flung the Kingdom song, invisibly sung, out in a whirl of bright and green.