A Polyphony of Voices
Friday Bricolage
Greetings!
Last night, Alexandra and I were on our way to see a play, standing on the platform waiting for the “L” train, and trying to stay warm while the 30 mile-an-hour wind whipped around us. The station is directly above a place called Le Piano. Despite the cold, they were hosting their outdoor music and the sound of an extended and beautiful flute solo drifted up to us. I could also hear the wind whipping the trees around. A car revved loudly and it all became a sort of symphony. A delightful tapestry of sound that I won’t soon forget.
I do love a mélange.
The collage above is from this post of mine and anchors the week’s emerging theme: A Polyphony of Voices.
Polyphony
I was introduced to the idea of “polyphonic voices” in a book published by Americans for the Arts about civic dialogue. The concept of making sure that we make space for a polyphony of voices in theater and beyond sticks with me. I prefer this definition from StirWorld over the more limiting dictionary definition:
Polyphony: the act of simultaneously combining a number of parts, each forming an individual melody and harmonising with each other—the antithesis of a single story, the presence of a multitude that allows for layered meanings.
As I went to write about polyphony, I ran across this fascinating bit of history from Wikipedia:
The use of and attitude toward polyphony varied widely in the Avignon court from the beginning to the end of its religious importance in the fourteenth century…Harmony was considered frivolous, impious, lascivious, and an obstruction to the audibility of the words. Instruments, as well as certain modes, were actually forbidden in the church because of their association with secular music and pagan rites. After banishing polyphony from the Liturgy in 1322, Pope John XXII warned against the unbecoming elements of this musical innovation in his 1324 bull Docta Sanctorum Patrum.[12] In contrast Pope Clement VI indulged in it.
Reading that reminds me of a Pentecostal school my mom enrolled me in for 7th grade that told me I had to burn my secular records. Their belief was that all secular music was from the devil. So I said goodbye to my vinyl records of Olivia Newton John, Shawn Cassidy, and Andy Gibb as they went up in flames in our burning barrel in rural America. They also told me that “only a harlot shows her thighs”. I left halfway through 8th grade.
When I was a new mother, I ran a music program for children out of my home studio. The program was grounded in the Western musical tradition with sprinklings of “world” music. I felt constrained by it so I stopped and created my own program that incorporated arts, music, and creative play. I had the kids draw and paint to both Mozart and Jimi Hendrix and I had way more fun.
I still have a thing for polyphony. I also show my thighs because I like to feel the air on them.
Honoring the Dead
One of the reasons I’m passionate about polyphony isn’t just about the untold stories of the living but also the dead. The conquered. The marginalized.
These stories tug at me and I listen.
We visited a cemetery last weekend. As we walked around, we noticed how enormous some of the tombstones were. Many of them had German surnames and many marked their family roles: Mother, Father, Wife, etc.. Seeing all of this reminded me of how I don’t have physical markers of my family’s lives. Those that exist are scattered like pine trees by migratory birds along with their stories.
History is written by the victors. Not everyone has a gravestone. Not everyone’s story is carried forward. Some just float downstream like my mother’s ashes, scattered in the Skagit river, returning to the sea.
She was a songbird. She was kind and complicated. She was strong and also battered. Her name was Jeri. Please say her name with me: Jeri.
Today is the Day of the Dead. A day for honoring our ancestors. It’s not a tradition I grew up with but have adopted in my own way. For me personally, it is a day to honor my ancestors and also acknowledge that everything is in a constant state of transformation. Creating and sharing something every day in October was a powerful way for me to work on my own personal transformation and embrace my existential courage so I can go on living, listening to stories, and telling my own. Here’s one of my daily creations, La Mort.
Sending blessings to my ancestors today. Join me if you like.
Inspirations
Agnès Varda
Someone in my artistic lineage—an artistic ancestor, if you will—is Agnès Varda who was a Belgian-born French film director, screenwriter and photographer whose work often told stories from the margins. Her work speaks to me and, when I listen to her talk about her work, I connect with a part of me that I inherited from my matrilineal line. The part of me that is outspoken and lives life and creates on my own terms. She was short, intelligent, curious, and outrageously talented. I truly wish I had known her. I get to know her a little bit through her work and by sharing her with you. I adore this video of her talking about being a woman in film.
My blessings (a/k/a kids) flew me to Los Angeles earlier this year so I could see her work in the Desire to See exhibit at the Fahey Klein Gallery. Here are a few photos for you:
Susan Glaspell
Another inspiration this week is playwright Susan Glaspell. I saw her play, Inheritors, at DePaul Theater School last weekend. The play was a defense of free speech and an individual's ability to stand for his or her own ideal during a time of aggressive anti-Communist politics in the US but it was also a story of land and lineage and the consequences of colonization. First performed in 1921, this work is very ahead of its time.
I’ll be talking about her in more detail in next Wednesday’s Deep Dive so look forward to that.
Helene Delprat
Another one of this week’s inspirations is Hélène Delprat. She is a French multidisciplinary artist who, for more than four decades, has been exploring the human condition, and life and death in an oeuvre that includes painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, video, theater, interview projects and installations. She was recently chosen to complete a missing scene in the millennium-old Bayeux Tapestry. She will add the coronation of William the Conqueror to the already 230-foot-long artifact. You can read more about it here. This jumped out at me from the article:
But don’t expect anything too literal. “This is neither a restoration nor a reconstruction,” the artist told Le Figaro. “I would nevertheless use my vocabulary to maintain a link with Bayeux embroidery. What I am proposing would evoke the coronation scene of William the Conqueror. [The] Bayeux embroidery itself is never literal: it does not describe, it does not illustrate. It constantly invents. It speaks. It declaims.”
And so it is with life. It’s a tapestry. A story to write. Many threads. Many voices. Many possible storylines.
I have recently been inspired by how the Jewish people tell the story of their people’s history at their holiday meals. In a mesmerizing performance at DePaul University about Otto Frank, father of Ann Frank, written and performed by the illustrious actor, Roger Guenveur Smith, I learned that, citing the sanctity of the human body and reverence for life and death, traditional Jewish law prohibits cremation. What a different framework of existence!
I don’t know how my life will be marked when I die but I do know I don’t want to lose the thread of my people’s history or my own history to migration and displacement. I want to hold onto to our threads, tell and retell our stories and continue to listen to the polyphony of voices and stories around me.
I also don’t want to be reduced on a piece of rock to the role of mother.
I have so much more chromatic splendor than that as do we all.
Movie Recommendation
This week’s movie recommendation is Daguerréotypes by Agnès Varda.
Like many mothers, Varda spent many of her days at home following the birth of her son. Curious about the people and places that surrounded her, she found inspiration on Paris’s rue Daguerre, where she had lived and worked since the 1950s.
In this film, we are given intimate portraits of the many people who live on this street including the business owners whose shops shape the neighborhood and listen to their engaging stories. We hear about the relationships, work, and dreams of tailors, a butcher, a baker and his partner, a driving instructor, and more as we watch them work. It’s an exquisite tapestry of one block as seen and experienced by one woman who was generous enough to share it with the world.
I love this bit of history from wikipedia:
The film's name is a complex pun: The street, Rue Daguerre, is named after Louis Daguerre, inventor of the Daguerreotypes method of photographic printing. During a voiceover in the film, Varda explains that the business owners and occupants of Rue Daguerre are her 'types', in reference to typologies both as the photographic style and practices of social classification that Varda was critical of.
Let it charm you. You can watch it now on The Criterion Channel.
I wrote last week about how the late John Berger explored themes of erasure, selective seeing, and more in his BBC series, “Ways of Seeing”. This quote of his is a standout:
“Never again will a single story be told as though it's the only one.”
Can I get an amen? ;)
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All my love,
Kymberlee
PS, Here’s a photo honoring this season of release. Milkweed reminds me of my childhood and conjures the smells of summer, dust floating on my tongue, and sticky fingers. Happy memories are worth holding onto.
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