When I was seven, I felt like a really big girl on the day I stepped into our local high school for dance camp. This was a five-day experience where the Dazzlers, the extremely cool, popular, way-older-than-me heroes I thought I would want to be like when I got older, taught us how to dance, just like they did for high school sports games.
Toward the beginning of the experience, they told us that they were going to give out a number of specific awards at the end of the week. One of them was “Miss Smiley.” Well, my seven year old self decided I really wanted to be Miss Smiley. So what did I do? For five days of my young, first-grade age life, I smiled consistently all day long like a cute, creepy freak.
Whether the music was playing —
You broke my heart, ’cause I couldn’t dance, You didn’t even want me around, Well now I’m back to let you know, I can really shake it down. Do you love me? (This song by the Contours was the one for the dance they taught us) —
Or whether I was walking through the hall, eating lunch, or tying my shoes,
I was smiling SO BIG. So fake and contrived, but so consistent.
I am here to tell you that I did not win Miss Smiley. I was not even chosen to do this dance at the high school football game like some of the other little girls. I faked it until I did not make it.
Later in life, I would come to learn that sometimes, people expect women to smile a lot, and I would find that expectation to be sexist. It absolutely is.
But interestingly enough, people often tell me that they like how often I smile. It turns out that when it’s genuine and hard-wrought after having a full human range emotions, including difficult ones, it’s pretty contagious. I don’t have to have smiles (no awards, no sexism) but I’ll take it.
When I was six years old, I would wait for the school bus at the end of my driveway, and every morning, I would make up little songs daily, singing to God. I don’t remember at all what sorts of things I would sing but I know it wasn’t praise choruses or something like that (there was no 7-11 music, i.e. seven words sung eleven times). I think I would just tell stories but sing them.
Anyway, one night a neighbor was taking an evening walk. She was someone who lived not on my street but on the street well behind my house. She saw me outside, and she said, “I hear you singing every morning.” Of course, she was delighted to say this a six year old, but I was mortified to learn I was that loud.
If you fast forward all these decades later, I’ve had two, quirky, overly-specific hobbies over the last year and a half. Since January 1, 2023, I have spent a solid hour+ per day learning German. I am about 30 days away from finishing German DuoLingo, and it’s very satisfying. (Es ist sehr zufriedenstellend!) Meanwhile, since I bought my e-bike last September, I’ve been biking to the streets in my town in alphabetical order. I’m about mid-way through the Cs.
We had a big heatwave recently, so I found myself riding my bike in the early morning, and whatever time of day it is, if I may reveal something silly, when I’m on my bike, I sometimes zoom down the street, singing in German. (Keine sieben-elf musik.) I just find myself singing auf Deutsch about things I see while I Zoom past.
I’m not so loud this time. No one can hear me but the wind in my face. But I’m having fun. And suddenly, making a turn down a particular street, I remembered being six at the edge of my driveway, and I thought, “Oh, this is a throughline.”
Renee, you’re a delightful weirdo. A weirdo, who loves spotting things that delight. And… singing about it. Warum nicht?
Every year, I like to make a pilgrimage of sorts. I get myself to a Jacob Collier concert, which is always an experience like none other. This is not an opportunity to be a mere spectator, by the way. If you are in the audience of a Jacob Collier concert, you are also a performer — an integral part of the experience.
Here are two things I typically share with others when I mention what this experience is like:
— Jacob Collier is a person of near unbelievable talent. He plays at least five instruments during a given concert and masterfully. And he improvises brilliantly, especially on the piano and the harmonizer, an instrument he himself invented, which allows him to sing one note and play keys to create harmonized versions of his own voice. Basically, he is singing chords with himself.
— Despite this near unbelievable talent on display, there is no Jacob Collier concert without the audience. He is all about collaboration, and he can craft a collective, interactive musical experience with the audience that feels powerful, playful, and sacred. He is remarkably skilled in being a moment-maker.
And here’s what I noticed in the concert I attended this year:
He always ends with us. He always ends with the community.
We were the finale to the concert. After the long set was over, he concluded by making us into an audience choir. He makes eye contact with certain sections of people, gets them singing a note, and then adds the others. He gestures up or down, and we know what to do with our voices. Now we are singing chords with ourselves. How many audiences end up being a choir and the conclusion to the concert?
There were encores, of course. And in this instance, too, he always found a way to end with us. He put us on display each time, and this was a collective experience. As a remarkably talented person, collaboration and transformation matter most to him.
Vignette 2:
This past Saturday, I was driving to the Midland Stroll for Epilepsy, one of the annual events at the Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan. I was just about to pull into the location, when the short conclusion of the Beatles’ album Abbey Road started playing. It’s just two minutes long and is called “The End.”
It’s a jam. But the final words are reflective,
“And in the end… the love you take… is equal to the love you make.”
I thought, “Here, too, the community is the end.” My colleagues do all sorts of detailed planning to make the Stroll happen, and individuals and team captains organize themselves, raise money, make t-shirts, or get themselves ready to volunteer. And… it’s all leading to the community experience. It’s all leading to being together, celebrating one another, and casting a vision where all belong, are included, and empowered to be advocates. It’s all leading there.
And a word like ‘end,’ brings this home. Yes, it can be a conclusion. But ‘the end’ can also mean the goal or the purpose.
And so,
The community is the end, and The end is community.
I wrote this piece seven years ago, and I’d like to share it once more because tonight, I’m singing Beethoven’s 9th Symphony again, but this time, with the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra. And a quarter century (wow) after running through Vienna, I’ll be returning there in August. Looking forward to it.
My dirty shoes, after running through Vienna.
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve found myself listening to the 4th Movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony almost every day. I had the wonderful occasion to sing it recently with the UMS Choral Union and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, and I reflected upon that incredible experience on this blog. But I’m nowhere near tired of this work. Musically and emotionally, it’s a masterpiece.
And I realize that it draws me back almost daily because of its obvious subject matter: JOY.
Each day, I seem to get some new joy from it — a hope, a feeling, a dream, a memory. A few days ago, a vivid memory popped in my mind while listening. I had not thought of it for many years, but there it was, so clear and wonderful. It was an embodiment of joy. All these years later, it reminds me of something important.
When I was 17 years old, I traveled to Austria with my high school choir. That summer, we toured in several major cities. It was the first time I had ever traveled outside of the United States, and from beginning to end, the trip felt like an absolute adventure.
My vivid memory takes place in Vienna. One afternoon, everyone in our choir had several hours to explore the city on foot. We were all given a map, and my adventuring took me pretty far away. My friends and I left enough time to turn around and get back to the tour bus, but it seems we “turned around” in the wrong direction. We thought we were tracing our steps, but we were actually moving even farther away. We consulted the map and found it confusing. Eventually, fear hit us. We realized odds were quite high we wouldn’t make it back for our agreed upon meeting time.
Horrified that an entire bus of students would be waiting for us, or worse, that we might miss a performance, I was flooded with stress. If you knew me in high school, you would know that I was fun, but a perfectionist, goody two shoes. I did not like to disappoint. I did not want to get in trouble.
So we did what we had to do: We ran. In fact, we sprinted.
I began that long run back with stress. Worried, we flew by old, colorful European architecture. Anxious, we zoomed past folks sitting in the squares of outdoor cafés. Yet at one point, in the midst of all that adrenaline, a realization dawned on me, and everything changed. I was running. . . in Vienna! Suddenly, that sense of adventure overtook me, and I felt utter joy. I felt completely alive, taking in all the details around me.
My seventeen year old self sprinted with joyful abandon. Such a vivid memory. . . I was wearing a blue dress with butterflies on it. The front was stained with chocolate ice cream I had dripped all over myself earlier in the day. And I ran in Mary Janes, those shoes popularized in the 90s. They were filthy with dust and gravel from adventures earlier in the day.
Joy found me unexpectedly, and I became unexpectedly alive.
A portion of Beethoven’s 9th reminds me of this moment musically. I think of it every time now.
And all of it reminds me of something I need to hear. Maybe you do too.
There are times these days when we’re working hard, alert to the stressors around us, deeply aware of changes we want to make in our neighborhoods and in our world. The work and the awareness are necessary and serious. No doubt.
But there are also times — thank goodness — when we’re reminded of the larger vision too, not only of what we’re working against, but what we’re working for. . .
Who and What we’re working for. . . We catch that vision, imagining that its fullness could become a reality, and suddenly, we feel the joy of it. And we begin to make it happen, even just a little bit, right now. Right this instant.
Joy finds us unexpectedly, and we become unexpectedly alive.
Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of singing Handel’s Messiah with approximately 120 choristers, an orchestra, and four incredible professionals who served as our soloists. I’ve done this every year since 2015, although this choir has a much longer stretch. In fact, we have the longest stretch in the whole world; our choir has sung Handel’s Messiah annually since 1879. We hold the record.
Over the next three days, I’m going to share some posts in reflection from this piece and from this experience. I want to begin here: On the evening of our first rehearsal, the choir was gathered in a room together, where we warm up and line up to walk on stage. In a few minutes, we would stand in front of 2,500 people to share these texts and deliver this story in song.
Our conductor said that earlier this year, he heard another conductor share a statement that he tells his choruses before performances. It touched him so much that he thinks of it each time too.
“You never know when you’re going to change a life. You never know when you’re going to save a life.”
And so I offer that to you today as well. In all our collective acting and living — not only in our performing, but also in our learning, loving, sharing, advocating, and simply being ourselves with one another —
“You never know when you’re going to change a life. You never know when you’re going to save a life.”
This brings a sense of awe. I also hope it brings a sense of empowerment.
Smuggling Grace 