Brandon Pearce
It was late, and a big circle of us were sitting around a fire in the North Carolina mountains.
Earlier, everyone had written an intention or a short phrase on a slip of paper and dropped it in a basket. Now the basket went around the circle. You drew a slip, made up a melody for the words on the spot, and everyone sang it back to you. Then someone added a harmony, and someone else added another.
When the basket got to me, I drew: I am me. I am spirit. I am alive.
I sang it, the circle sang it back, and within a minute we had three or four parts going, along with guitar and djembe, in an energetic celebration of aliveness.
My back hurt from sitting on the hard ground for hours. I didn't care. I was singing with people again, and I'd forgotten how much I missed it.
What I missed
I come from a long line of choir directors. My grandpa directed choirs for a living, and so did my dad. I started directing choirs myself in high school and at church, kept at it through college, and was eventually assistant director of the Oratorio Society of Utah, holding auditions and leading rehearsals of choral masterworks.
Singing in harmony with other people was part of my week for most of my life. Then I left the church I was raised in. The hymns no longer fit what I believed, and the choirs went with them. It's been eighteen years since I last led one.
I've found pieces of it since. When we lived in Bali, I went to kirtan, and for a while I played in a kirtan band. I loved the music and the people. But singing Hindu chants never quite resonated with me either. I'd much rather sing in English, about things I understand and believe.
So for a long time, singing with other people mostly wasn't part of my life.
Finding Love Song
I heard about Love Song by chance. Someone left a water bottle at a friend's party in Asheville, and another guest said they'd bring it to Love Song. I asked what Love Song was, and they sent me the flyer. It was a gathering in the mountains of North Carolina where people camp for a few days, learn songs by ear in workshops led by musicians from all over, pitch in as volunteers (registration, setup and cleanup, the kitchen, the tea temple), and sing around the fire every night.
Love Song doesn't have a website yet (I'm hoping to help with that). If you want a picture of what it's like, Singing Alive is a similar gathering with song circles, camping, and night fires.
I knew I had to be there. It started the following week.
I asked my family, and everyone said yes. Jen, our oldest, Emrys, and our youngest all came, and our daughter got to skip two days of dance school for it.
A few days before we left, I scrolled through the event's group chat and got a little nervous. From what people were posting, it wasn't the choral training I was raised on. I heard some out-of-tune notes and mumbled words. I told myself I'd just try to flow with it.
By the end of the first night, I'd stopped worrying about it.
Four days of singing
The music at Love Song is simple. Most songs are a few lines long, repeated, with harmonies layered on one part at a time. Nobody hands out sheet music. A leader sings a line, and the group sings it back.
And it turned out that simple was enough. The things I've loved most about singing in a choir were there: the moment your voice finds its place inside a chord, the way a room of strangers starts breathing together. What I didn't miss was the religious lyrics or the pressure to get it perfect. None of that was needed.
On the second morning, in a workshop about body percussion, we sang about joy and about our bodies, and tears kept coming up for me. A few times I had to stop singing and just listen. I hadn't felt that in years, and I was glad to feel it again.
At the opening circles, Ríomas led some powerful songs about topics like codependence, finding healing, and how shame doesn't exist in nature.
On the second afternoon, Steph and Paul from Fiercely OK, a song circle in Canada, led a workshop with songs about forgiving yourself and being a messy, weird human. One of them has the line "I'm a tender-hearted human." I bawled through it, and I wasn't the only one.
The next day had a Brazilian samba reggae drumming workshop. I played the timbau, a tall Brazilian hand drum. Each section played a different rhythm, and when they all locked in, it was so much fun. At one point the facilitator had us play a bit of Paul Simon's "The Obvious Child," which felt exhilarating. The Rhythm of the Saints is my favorite album of all time, and much of it is built on these same Brazilian rhythms. I drummed hard enough to break a few blood vessels in my hands. It was worth it.
In between, the family hiked to a small waterfall and cooled off in the water, which also counted as our bath for the day. Camping wasn't very comfortable. It was hot, and my back did not love four nights on the ground. Our youngest daughter (age 15) thought the whole thing was a little too hippie (and had too many bugs), but she still had a good time.
Being held
I had a lot of favorite parts, but some of the nights were highlights.
After the closing circle on the second night, a group of us stayed up past midnight in one of the gathering spaces. Travis Redtail and the Rituals, who also led the event's closing ceremony, kept really fun music going with guitar and drums, and the rest of us joined in, singing, throwing out words, taking turns at solos. Between songs, we talked about our lives and what we were learning. There were long hugs and held hands, and Jen and I danced a little.
At one point Jen was lying with her head in my lap, and a woman we'd met earlier that day was leaning against me while we talked. She'd been traveling for a long time without a home base and was feeling ungrounded (which we could relate to from our 11 years of nomadic family travel). Jen and I listened, held her hand, and offered what support we could. We kept finding each other for the rest of the weekend to talk and hug.
Affection and touch have always been one of the main ways I show love. Being somewhere that kind of closeness was normal and welcome, with Jen right there beside me, felt very freeing.
On the last day, we thanked everyone who had helped serve the event, which was all of us, by "angel washing" each other. One person lies on the ground with their eyes closed while the others come by and offer a gentle touch and a few kind words of gratitude. I got angel washed, and I got to angel wash others. I recommend both.
During one opening circle, a mother with kids at the gathering and I got talking about belonging. I told her that on a scale of one to ten, I felt like I belonged there at about a nine. It's reassuring to be able to feel that in a group of people I'd known for three days.
Emrys had about as good a time as Jen and I did. It felt like they had found their people: an inclusive, nature-loving group that welcomed them as they are, and a place to share their music, which they have a lot of.
Before we left, Jen and I offered to join the leadership team for next year's Love Song, as it feels like something we'd love to contribute more to, and also have something to offer, with our experience running Family Adventure Summit.
Why we're starting a song circle
On the drive home, three of us brainstormed how we could bring this back to Greenville. The next morning, lying in bed, Jen suggested a name: CommuniTree. I loved it.
I've felt pretty isolated here lately. I work from home, and my life tracker has been telling me for a while that my social life needs more attention. I've been working on that. The week after Love Song, I volunteered at Tech Week Greenville, which is a Black-owned, woman-owned business I wanted to support, and met some great people in the community. Starting a song circle is another way to get out of my head and into a room with people. It's also something I know how to give.
So here's the plan.
CommuniTree is a community song circle. We'll meet in our living room on Thursday evenings, starting October 22, and sing short songs in harmony, taught by ear. No auditions, no sheet music, and no concerts. It's free, at least until we need to rent a space. You don't have to be a good singer, and you're welcome to just listen. Jen, Emrys, and I will lead it together, and we hope to pass the lead around as people get comfortable.
We're calling this first season Ring 1, like the rings of a tree. Each ring grows out of the last. If we outgrow the living room, we'll find a bigger space.
The songs are about gratitude for the earth and for each other, the wonder of being alive, and remembering to be present. Many come from the Love Song community, and we'll credit the songwriters whenever we teach one that isn't ours. Some will be our own.
Driving to pick up our daughter from school last week, I worked on a song that came to me at Love Song: I am home. I am free. I am here. I have everything I need. I think it might turn into something good once it has a few parts.
That's a big part of why I'm doing this. I want to make my own music again, share it my own way, and keep having the kind of heart-opening experiences I had at Love Song, in my own home and community, every week instead of once a year.
I also had a lot of fun building the CommuniTree website. When you open it, it's sunset over the Blue Ridge foothills, and as you scroll, night falls, an owl lands in the tree, and a campfire lights up in the middle of a circle of singers. I wrote about how I built it in my last post, and I'm proud of it.
If you'd like to sing
If you're in or near Greenville, come sing with us. You can ask to join here, and we'll send you the address and details. You don't need to know anyone, read music, or have sung since grade school.
If you're not nearby, song circles like this exist in a lot of places. Search for "song circle" or "community choir" plus your city. Fiercely OK also runs weekly song circles online. Or invite a few friends over, pick one simple song, and sing it together until the harmony shows up. That's most of what we're doing.
Invitation
When was the last time you sang with other people, and what would it take to do it again?
Pair This Post With…
Music
- Messy Human by Steph Drouin of Fiercely OK — If you've never been to a song circle, this is a good taste of what we sing. The page has the full song plus a recording of each of its four parts, so you can hear how the harmonies stack.
- The Obvious Child by Paul Simon — The opening track of The Rhythm of the Saints, with drumming by Olodum from Salvador, Brazil. Play it loud.