SONG

Once upon a time there was a law that was a song.

This particular law was to be transformed into a song to be sung.* It was essentially a story that needed to be remembered not just in the present, but for generations to come. It is much easier to sing a song than remember many words, so making a song of it makes perfect sense. The story to be remembered recounts important truths that are to be passed on from person to person to ensure the best possible future for each person who engages with this song. This sets me on an interesting trajectory of thought.

I am thinking about song as law, song as story, about how each one of us is a collection of songs that have shaped who we are. When a mother sings to her child, it is not just a melody she sings, it is not just a sound she makes for utilitarian purposes (though it is particularly effective as such). She is imparting a story, because that song is part of who she is. She is imparting her story and in sharing it, she is bringing that child of hers into her story, and so the chain goes on.

Songs sung to us in our childhood stay with us always, even if not consciously or deliberately. If we hear them, one day as adults, they stir something within us for reasons we cannot quite explain or of which we may not even be aware. This is true not just of songs that have been sung to us, but songs that we heard growing up, on the radio or whistled by the neighbour, all the music that permeated our upbringing. We can easily recall them because they are implicitly embedded in our being and have become woven into who we are.

Song by song we grow to be a music library, each unique and wonderful.

Sometimes we forget our song, the song of our being. Maybe we remember parts of the melody, scraps of the lyrics, bits and pieces, all fragments strewn about. But sometimes all it takes is to somehow hear that song from an external source and it all comes flooding back – the words, the melody, every beat, every rhyme. Your body remembers and suddenly you know your song again. It’s there. It never left you. (You left it). It has been there all along, and now you can cultivate it and never let it go (or you can neglect it into oblivion).

In ancient oral traditions each story told is a way to press clay into form. As a child grows, each story (story after story) shapes this child to become a certain kind of person. Those stories are theirs, they have come before them, and as such necessarily shape their own being. More than the stories themselves, it is the ‘gesture’ of storytelling that is the key ingredient passed on from generation to generation; the art and act of storytelling is the means of our becoming. We, like clay, are pressed into form by those who came before us. More importantly, from them we learn how to continue to mould ourselves in our unique way that builds on our collective foundation. As we do, perhaps one day we find ourselves holding an infant in our arms, singing to them. What are we singing?

We are singing our being into them. We are singing our story, the larger story, for in each personal, individual story is the larger story. That is the song to be sung, that is the law by which one is to live. That, is life.

In many parts of the world not least of which is the Western world, these simple gestures of storytelling and singing are being lost. Of course songs and storytelling come in a variety of formats, but you get my point. A world-famous chef once said that cooking is embodying a set of gestures; in the same way there is a core aspect of what it means to be human that entails certain gestures. It seems to me that singing and storytelling are two key gestures. If they are lost, we lose not only ‘tools’, we lose ourselves. The question is, what stories are we telling? What songs are we singing, are being sung?

In the enactment of these things, we manifest much deeper truths about the universe and ourselves than we might realise. It might be said that stories and songs are the stuff of our being. This is art and metaphysics at play, deeply, deeply entwined. This brings me back to the beautiful concept of law as song.

Each of us is a song, a ‘law’ by which to live. We think of laws as things to uphold and obey, that keep us in line, but in this context what does it mean to live by this law? In this sense a law is a story of what matters, and the law is this: to remember who you are, where you were, your journey from there to where you now find yourself. To live by one’s law and to sing one’s song is to cultivate an intentional awareness of one’s story. That seems to me to be the ‘highest law’, if I can phrase it as such. When referring to this the ancient author says “For it is not a futile thing for you, because it is your life […]” (Deut. 32:47). Your law is your song, and your song is your life, the story of your life. It is who you are.

The song to be composed in this ancient text was to be a song of the collective: a collective journey, a collective identity and story, but each person in that collective has their own song. That personal song must also never be forgotten, because if it is, then the collective song is forgotten; the collective is maintained by the individual. Our individual, personal songs are like voices in a chorus that create a complex and beautiful, harmonious piece. 

This leaves me with two strands of questions for contemplation: personal and collective.

What is my song, my story? What has pressed me into my particular form of clay? What am I singing? Do I know? Can anyone hear?

What is the song we are singing as humanity? If we stop to listen to the voices around us, what stories are they singing? What are we passing on to those who will come after us?

What is the story that matters? What is the story worth singing?

(c) Belinda É. Samari

*Deut. 31:24-26;32:44,46-47. Things are going to go pear-shaped for the Israelites and the song is supposed to remind them that there is hope even in that situation. It is supposed to enable them to remember their story because they are going to forget it when life becomes good again; if they do, they will lose touch with their roots, their story and themselves (Deut. 31:20-21).