Raising Voices

7.15.06

Joined an 80 strong flute choir today and was reminded of that wonderful community that music making allows. All of us strangers, gathering in a rehearsal room, pulling out our silver instruments, tentative at first to warm up, then most plowing right into a scale or other flight of fingers. Mostly women, we were, as this instrument seems to attract, but also, I think, women are community makers, networkers, bridge builders. As war escalates again, yet again, in the Middle East, I marvel at how easy it is to read music on one side of the planet while on another continent men are aiming missiles rather than arpeggios at each other.

I looked around at all our varied hues, ages, shapes and sizes and felt the potential of peacemaking through bliss seeking. Incredibly simplistic to think that if we lay down arms and raised violins or our voices or even our fists against our chests, instead of weapons, we could somehow find each other, ourselves in a common cause, a melody or a chant. But it is a fact. When we are engaged in a creative task, it is very hard to be destructive. Some misanthropic hip-hop lyrics come to mind as an example to the contrary, but by and large, it's difficult to aim a rifle and shoot for that high note at the same time.

Is it really women who hold the key to peace-making, if we can so easily join together in the pursuit of our hobbies, our child-rearing, our passions in love making and friend keeping? Would men spontaneously get together to play the tuba if so invited? I'm not in the music world so someone else can answer that question but as I look around at how men conduct themselves in leadership, I wonder how many would consider making art as part of diplomacy? I think of the statues destroyed in Afghanistan, the museums plundered in Iraq, the spoils of war which often include theft or destruction of a nation's art and it seems that someone understands the power of eliminating a people's symbols. It is another kind of rape to silence music and song and art in the hearts of men and women, either by outlaw or destruction. How many plays are being staged, tableaus being painted, songs being sung in Iraq today? Or Lebanon tommorow?

I am so grateful to live in a country of opportunities (and a city of symphonies) where I have the freedom to sing and dance for the joy of it and without fear of reprisal or having it all taken away or of it being proscribed by a fearful government. Children are born with these voices they must raise; they sing before they speak. How can we better protect these instincts, these natural rights for all peoples to speak their hearts through a flute, a drum, a fandango, an aria? When will we turn our torpedoes into trombones?