Silence. So much
silence. Then not, but so faint that you
aren’t sure that what you’re hearing is sound, or rather, intentional
sound. What is there? You doubt your hearing, check the volume. There’s a croaking whisper, an old gramophone
from beyond, replete with faint hiss. An
old man’s voice, draped in a cockney accent, fades into understandable, slowly,
magnetically, singing, “Jesus’ blood never failed me yet, never failed me yet,
Jesus' blood never failed me yet, there’s one thing I know for he loves me
so…and repeats. His voice grows stronger
in volume, but you still hear the whistle on his inhale, the emphatic pause
before “yet”, as though Jesus’ blood might still fail him, for faith and doubt
exist like binary stars. In the
background, other men’s voices hover, unintelligible whispers, like static,
just out of reach. After so many repetitions,
(Ten? Twenty? You’ve lost count, yet are mesmerized) the
violin creeps in, in a leisurely, glacial pace, sneaking in alongside the other
muffled voices, gently filling itself, liquid between notes, the C string
pulling it’s lilt upward so slightly, dragging the other strings with it. The verse repeats, endlessly, melancholic
hopefulness. Yet each iteration of the
phrase, while identical to the one before, doesn’t feel like a repetition. He stumbles slightly over “thing”, and slides
coyly into “I know”, with the “w” on know wrapping around the end of the word
like a soft blanket.
Seven minutes in, a plucked string is a gentle shock, a pull
to the forefront of the trance you’ve been lulled into. A warm note followed by a sharper ping, a
muffled twang. The old man’s voice
hasn’t stumbled, hasn’t changed, he drives his song forward with the faithfulness
of each foot on a long road, one in front of the other, propelled by habit and
memory. Faintly – another voice? No, the instruments are tricking you with
their minimalism, melting together into a crest, a swell, lapping at the ragged
edges of the old man’s voice. He is as
crisp and straightforward as a Walker Evans photo, as dusty as the back corner
of an antique shop. The strings are
drowning him slowly, so slowly you and he faintly notice, like the proverbial
frog in the pot. But by twelve minutes,
he and the instruments have traded places, the velvety surge of strings pushing
to the foreground while he allows his voice to dip below the surface. He doesn’t fight it, not when a bassoon
gently, subtly honks, not when a trumpet sneaks in. His meter never changes, his volume doesn’t
fight for it’s place in the foreground but is content to repeat, again, and
again, “Jesus blood never failed me yet”.
There’s one thing he knows, and we know it to, and we are comforted,
whether we consider the invocation of Jesus a comfort or not. His song is steady and reliable, and that
faith does not fail us, not for a single measure.
At fifteen minutes, a seventh chord creeps in, pulling the
tone upward, lilting, hopeful. The
orchestra is full, blended into one voice that gently pushes the old man’s lament
into itself, inside its belly. The
music is Jesus’ blood, and it is not failing him. It is covering him, comforting him,
enveloping him. He is just out of reach,
beyond the song, subterranean. The chords
are still filling themselves, brassier, more complex, tiny hints of dissonance
suggested, then pulled away from like it’s too much to endure. A melody plucks out, coming forward here and
there as tendrils wrapping themselves around the body of the pregnant, dripping
chords. Heaving upward, the man’s voice
peeking through in the silence between phrases, a tiny boat amongst the waves. Plaintive, but never losing confidence. Yearning.
But steady, ever steady, not lost, never losing hope. For twenty-five minutes and fifty-seven
seconds, he is with us, and we are with him.
And as quietly as the instruments crept in, they fade unhurriedly with
the man’s voice, in the end, leaving him alone again, whispering, fading,
disappearing, but staying in your head for hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment