In the dark times,

will there also be singing?

Yes, there will be singing

about the dark times.

-Bertolt Brecht, from the poem “Motto”

As we stood holding our dishes in the kitchen, Mike said, “you’ve been singing a lot lately.” I turn to him, thinking of the constant chorus that takes up all the free space in my waking mind, and wondered aloud, “But I’ve always been singing. Did you just now notice?”

And then I wonder to myself, “Or am I just starting to sing aloud, the governor of my inside voice somehow giving up her post during the pandemic. The one to say, oh you have a horrible voice don’t sing aloud please. Maybe she’s gone? And my only voice is now my outside voice, the one that sings?”

But maybe it’s this: in the dark times, there will also be singing. Yes, there will be singing about the dark times.

The darkest of times.

Losing a parent, losing a life, losing a sense that I have an ounce of control, losing a freedom of safety, mobility, connection, breathing, losing faith…in humanity, in the goodness in people’s hearts, in the system, in the manifest destiny, in the artifice of whiteness, in arguments that are based in truth, in arguments that are based in love, in arguments that are based in the sanctity of the 99.9% of shared DNA that we have.

For all these things, and for you, I sing.