Greetings!
I hope you are well and have found a way to navigate through the darkness.
I write today to ask for your support of The Crossing. In thinking about what I would write, how to ask for art-sustaining gifts at the end of this particular year and the beginning of an uncertain Winter, a few lines of Gwendolyn Brooks keep coming back to me:
There is a moment in Camaraderie
when interruption is not to be understood.
I cannot bear an interruption.
This is the shining joy;
the time of not-to-end. †
“I cannot bear an interruption.”
Eight months ago, that translated in my brain as, “This isn’t happening.”
We have indeed born interruption and been confounded by it.
Yet, we have proven resilient in the face of difficult questions. What do we, The Crossing, do, when science determines singing in groups is unsafe? When we’re surrounded by grief? Our response has been to pause, step back, and ask questions of greater depth and endurance: What is our mission? What is truly important to us? What do we want – or need – to say?
These questions proved surprisingly easy to answer:
- we need to say something relevant
- we need to take care of our community and provide work for our singers who have otherwise lost all income
- we need to rethink how we present art
- we need to sing, to listen, and respond.
The answers prove to be the same as in the absence of pandemic; they do not change because the world does, but they are magnified.
So, interruption evolved – out of sadness, into determination, then into creativity. Since the interruption, the way forward has been profound. I offer elements of that ‘way,’ not with any lack of humility, but instead as a means of saying, “we’re still here.”
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we’ve designed a sound system we call Echoes* that allows us to sing together, outside, safely, expressively
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we’ve produced sold-out plein air performances…in a forest!
- we’ve made nearly eighty editions of Rising w/ The Crossing, which has been archived by the Library of Congress as “an important part of this collection and the historical record”
- we’ve produced seven new films
- we’ve participated in a company-wide, four-month education program in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
- we’ve released three albums
- we’ve commissioned four new pandemic-time works
- we’ve created new ways of music making that retain our commitment to the importance of words, to intimacy in colors and textures, in feelings, and in...
...values.
That word. Values. It has guided us through the grief and inspired us to solve problems, to get to work, and to make art at the close of this indescribable year and into the next. Indescribable, because there is no way to adequately capture this Time. Instead, there is Music. Music makes sense of the chaos. Choral music reminds us that words matter. Saying something – is the reason The Crossing exists. Saying something is why we’re asking for you to join us in ensuring that we’ll be here and be strong when we can emerge into conventional ways of singing together.
I used to think emergence into light was the goal – when we can get “back to normal.” I now know that the goal is this journey; what we learn during it will be with us forever. It has made us more creative, and more empathetic.
So, when we do emerge into a kind of normalcy, will singing together ever be the same?
I hope not.
I hope that we will never forget how we longed for live sound, for breathing, for listening, for community and meeting and sharing. Coming together to support that longing, and the ingenuity of our collaborative art, provides our singers with work and income, sustains our company through this journey out of interruption, and allows The Crossing to continue to lead by reimagining, making new commissions, and singing. This is the shining joy; the time of not-to-end.
Light enters this letter as we observe how much we’ve been through – how much more we’ll go through – as a country, as communities and families and choirs and individuals. The opening lines of the poem with which this letter began resonate differently than they did eight months ago. In fact, they carry a different light than they did a few weeks ago. They remind me of how many times I’ve written “we” on these pages.
In a package of minutes there is this We.
How beautiful.
We are a “We.” And that is beautiful.
Gratefully,
Donald
For the Whole Team @ The Crossing
