My grandmother, who is convinced that I'm going to hell because I don't go to church anymore (good thing she doesn't know that the reason I don't is because I've converted to Rastafarian Satanism with a touch of Scientology thrown in for good measure), recently observed that I wouldn't like gospel music because it's more spiritual than the kind of stuff I listen to. I beg to differ.
Music is always a spiritual experience for me, no matter how secular the artists or songs involved. Whether a song moves me to tears or moves me to change the radio station, it always leaves some kind of impact. And I *do* listen to gospel music, of a sort. The soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a treasured piece of my CD collection, and I'm pretty sure the Band has some soul to them, as well as Marvin Gaye (though his soul was always torn between the phyisical pleasures of the world and the divine pleasures of the spirit world). And then there's Al Green.
It is hard to put into words my affection for Mr. Green (an actual honest-to-God reverend, with his own church in Memphis). I have always like solo soul and R&B artists like Sam Cooke, the marvelous Marvin, and Al Green. Interesting tidbit: Cooke and Gaye added the "e" to their last names for showbiz purposes, while Green dropped the "e" at the end of his name for the same reasons. All three had backgrounds in gospel music but struck out to reach a wider audience in the secular world. And while Green is still alive (Cooke and Gaye were both shot to death twenty years apart from one another), he had his own brush with mortality (the infamous time when a woman he was seeing threw hot grits on him and then killed herself).
After that crisis, Green returned to his roots in the gospel world, putting out spiritual albums and eventually becoming the licensed reverend that he always was in spirit. And while I once would've marveled as to why anyone would turn their back on worldly success for the spiritual life, as I get older I see the superficiality of the modern, secular world, and I can understand why that is tempting. Hell, has worldly success worked out for Lindsay Lohan? Exactly.
A lot of the time when I'm at work, I find myself whistling the chorus to "Love and Happiness" aloud, not for long but just at intervals to keep my mind off the drudgery and other shenanigans that occur in workplaces. I think I've said it before, but it bears repeating: art has a way of lifting you out of the common ordinary and into an appreciation of something more than yourself. If that's not "spiritual," I don't know what is. Whatever my belief system (and I was raised Southern Baptist, so I still retain some of that awe-struck fear that my transgressions will come back to haunt me, be that transgression a horrible act or simply not reading my Bible enough or at all), I can appreciate that there are just some things that defy rational thought and logic. And the song just makes me feel good, even if I'm simply whistling it a little (or a lot) off-key. I doubt anyone at work would identify it as "Love and Happiness" if they heard me whistling, but then again they might.
It's been a long summer, and it looks like the fall might be more of the same in certain ways, but different in others. I'm hopeful that some job oppertunity for which I am qualified may come along, but til then I got bills to pay. Life just keeps on and on, and it's the little things that make days that suck more bearable. I guess for me, it's whistling "Love and Happiness" whenever the moment strikes me. Whatever it is for you, as long as it works I'm down with it.
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