Post-concert ruminations

[quesarah]

Concert yesterday was a smashing success. The combined performances were, I feel, powerful and inspiring. We had a full house, a nice profit on the raffle, and a few inquiries about when rehearsals for the next concert begin. All in all, thumbs up.

There's a piece we did yesterday that we've done before, an arrangement of Lucille Clifton's poem Sisters. It never fails to affect me on a personal level. I sing her lines about "me and you be greasing our legs/ touching up our edges" and I see Geli and me putting on makeup and doing our hair, trying on different versions of femininity before we found our own true expressions of it. I sing the line about "me and you come running high down Purdy street" and I remember the feeling of being intoxicated, not only on alcohol but on the glimmering knife-edge of uncertainty every day held as a teenager. Finally, I sing the lines "me and you got 35 years / got babies now / be loving ourselves" and I see Geli's face. I see the girl I clowned with, fought with, cried with, dreamed with. But I also see the woman she's grown into; smart, funny, loving, proud. And I know that when she looks at me, she sees the same thing. We find in each other a reflection of ourselves; who we were, who we are, who we may yet become. And through loving that reflection we eventually learn to love ourselves. More amazing still, is that by teaching me this lesson I feel that Ms. Clifton has shown me the reflection of her that lives in me, and of me in her. It is the reflection that, if we look for it, we can find in all women, all humanity.

It's one poem, one song, but I've learned so much from it.

Comments

[sexxyred1.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for that memory, it certainly adds a dimenion to a song that was pretty much a throw-away for me. I am so glad that you're in my life and that I'm getting to know you more. You're pretty cool people biogeek!

[biogeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

Thanks, the feeling is very mutual. :)