The Soundtrack of Your Revolution (Leading an Activist Life...Part 3)

I have not been a regular churchgoer for over a decade. Now when asked about my faith I tell people that I am an ethnic Christian in that there are ways that I can not understand myself, my family, or my blackness except in the grammar of Black religiosity. What I am, first foremost, is a person who wants to tell the truth. I am not a particularly religious person, but there are some forms of even my most intimate self-expression that are intricately tied to my early religious upbringing. Particularly the music. It is the close connection between race and religion that led me to listen repeatedly to Kathy Taylor’s Corinthian Song when I found myself alone, away from family—away from biological family is more accurate—and pregnant with my son

I’m a vessel full of holy ghost power

I got a treasure in me

Thank you father for your power

it has resurrected me

Oh the painful circumstances

that my poor soul could not flee

In the 37 hours of labor, it was that last line that was playing on some sort of postmodern hip hop remix or like when the needle used to get stuck on the record player: that my, that my poor, poor, that my poor, that my poor soul, that my poor soul could not flee, flee, flee, flee, flee.

In the wee hours of the morning, the hours that they always sing about in those songs, with my beautiful baby to my breast hymns burst forth from me out of nowhere. It could have been the pain medication after the eventual c-section but there they were like old friends. And they have lingered. Lord, Don’t move my mountains just give me the strength to climb. I do not know just how he came to love me so, but he looked beyond my faults and saw my needs. I am weak but though art mighty hold me with your powerful hand. Or sometimes I would just hum in my attempts to recreate the soothing power of some old sister for me and my new baby. [For those among us who do not yet know…pregnancy, childbirth and children will give you a moan if you don’t already have one]. These songs are as much my home as Texas or my mother, or the house I occupy with my child.

THOUGHT NUMBER 3 ON LIVING AN ACTIVIST LIFE: YOU NEED A SOUNDTRACK. You need a song, a cord, a blow over a ceramic jug, a rhythmic scraping of spoons across a wash board, the anguished beauty of an accordion squeeze. You need a sound that you can save on your ipod, iphone, mp3 player, laptop, compact disc or in your brain that will always remind you of who you are, where you come from and that there is something in the world that is bigger than you.