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Singing
the Proclamation
by
Marvin Payne
Well, I'm not
exactly backstage for this month's column, but sort of.
I'm writing
this in the recording studio, where I'm living pretty much day and
night, and since I'm not out where the microphones are, but in the
control room, I guess that's sort of backstage. One thing's for
sure--on the other side of the glass is lots of drama ("are" lots
of drama?) stage or not. Right now we're recording Archetypal Man,
in a soaring sealing room duet with Archetypal Woman. Yesterday
we recorded the final and seventeenth hour of sixteen pretty wonderful
singers (which we magically multiplied into sixty-four pretty wonderful
singers). We had thought to designate them in the liner notes as
"The Heavenly Light Choir," but now I'm sort of warming to "Archetypal
Everybody."
I'm not sure
if the string and woodwind players are particularly archetypal,
but the dobro, African percussion, bagpipes, penny whistle, and
didgeridoo are archetypal beyond any reasonable doubt.
Our orchestrator,
Greg Hansen, is maybe not so much archetypal as quintessential,
but our legendary engineer, Guy Randle, is definitely archetypal,
practically mythical. The writers and producers, who are me and
Steven Kapp Perry, are just guys.
The piece is
"Family, A Joyful Proclamation!" and it's a sometimes serene, more
often raucous and abandoned (but always reverent--good luck sorting
that one out) celebration of the Proclamation on the Family. We
figured that since everybody has it mounted on their walls anyway,
most often lovingly festooned with gold-sprayed macaroni curls or,
as on the wall of our cabin, with dried flower petals, why not festoon
it with strings, winds, wild ethnicity and passionate singers and
dance to it with our babies?
My son John
(who just connected us back to the gospel by qualifying for nursery
attendance) dances most recklessly to the movement in which Archetypal
Everybody is agreeing, with Celtic drums ablaze, to risk the plunge
into mortality, and my lovely Caitlin the Sunbeam hums along (no
lyrics recorded yet) with the tender little melody created for Archetypal
Man and his Archetypal Bride to share on their Archetypal Wedding
Night. Caitlin already sort of knew the melody, though, since it's
stolen from the tune to which, on the playground, we all sang "Sammy''s
got a girlfriend."
Baby John was
a little frightened by the movement about how our children are really
huge spirits in small forms, travelers who shelter briefly at our
firesides. The image for the music is the Fellowship of the Ring
crossing the treacherous wild between the Shire and Rivendell, and
it was a little dark for John, but he got over it. Or maybe it was
the African percussion that took him by surprise. Oddly, he quite
likes the only movement that's really scary, the one about what
happens to the earth if the hearts of the Archetypal Fathers and
Archetypal Children fail to turn to each other.
This whole thing
began back in 1995 in the living room of Roger and Melanie Hoffman,
with whom Steve and I invented such odd scenarios as three kids
and their dog gathering in a treehouse to act out the scriptures
for each other, and I was catapulted into the most rewarding role
I've ever played, Boo Dog. (It's a little sobering to have to go
outside your species to discover how the plan of salvation works.)
We were sitting around wondering how to teach children about the
brand-new proclamation, and I took a few moments to translate it
into kid talk. As follows.
PROCLAMATION,
KID TRANSLATION The way to be happy and strong forever is learn
how to be good to my family. Someday I''ll marry somebody I love
and be a mom or dad myself! It's what makes us happy and strong,
like God! He planned it that way!
If I'm a boy,
I was always a boy. That's important, because I get the chance to
grow up and be like my Heavenly Father! If I'm a girl, I was always
a girl. That's important, because I get the chance to grow up and
be like my Heavenly Mother! I lived with my Heavenly Parents before
I came to this world! I knew them and loved them! I wanted to get
a body like they had, and learn how to use it to love people and
make things, like they do! In holy temples, my family can promise
to do the happy things God asks us to do, and He will promise to
keep us together forever! I want to have babies, just like God told
Grandfather Adam and Grandmother Eve to do. The power to have babies
comes from God. I only want to use that power with the friend that
I marry. I must take good care of the person I marry, and take good
care of the children that God sends to live with us. We'll learn
to help our whole world to be happy! Every child should get to have
a mom and a dad who love each other enough to be married to each
other and love each other the most, and not be in love with anybody
else. Our family will be happiest if we do what Jesus teaches us
to do. We must have faith and pray, repent and forgive each other,
respect and love each other, and feel sad for people in our family
if their feelings or their bodies get hurt, and try to help them
feel better. Jesus wants us to have fun working together and playing
together! If I'm the dad, I'm in charge of getting money to pay
for food and clothes and a place for us to live. And I need to try
to keep us safe from harmful things and unkind people. If I'm the
mom, I'm in charge of teaching and feeding our children, and helping
them to know that we love them. But we should help each other in
all these things, because we're both just as important in our family.
Sometimes if one of us gets sick or dies, we have to change those
jobs around. Our grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles and
cousins should help us, if we need it. People who don't keep their
promises to God and to their families will have to tell God someday
why they didn't do it. If we let our families not love each other
and fall apart, the whole world will be a mess, and a really unhappy
place. All the people who are in charge of towns and countries should
help families obey and be happy, because families are more important
than any town or country could ever be. Besides, if families are
happy and good, then the towns and countries will be happy and good!
(It will be noted that children speak a lot of exclamation points.)
Hugh Nibley once said that if you can't explain something to a five-year-old,
you probably don't understand it yourself. We wanted to find out
if we understood it. Once we discovered that we probably did, we
became dangerous. We began to see applications and implications.
Applications
are always welcome and safe, implications are a little harder to
control. Being artists, who are characterized (archetypically) as
being hard to control, we were set afire by the stuff in the proclamation
that's as familiar as home cooking to the saints, but that the world
would find quite radical. That first flame shrank to a slow smolder,
embers that we blew on for a couple of hours every few weeks for
six years or so, then suddenly flared up about eight months ago
and refused to be quenched.
There is a journal
keeping connection here, beyond the whole "turning the hearts of
the children to the fathers and vice-versa" aspect (which I think
is the main function of journals). That "huge spirits in small forms
idea" I wrote about earlier is only in our project because when
my fourth son Joshua was born, his mother said he was a great spirit
in a tiny body. The glow of that notion has warmed my view of babies
ever since. I think I remember it because I wrote it in my journal,
because Joshua is now twenty-four.
My lyric about
seeing the sister in someone you love is there because of my friendship
with the lady who is singing the part of Mother of Joy for us (you
guessed it, Heavenly Mother). It's a lesson I learned ten years
ago, but there it is in my journal (also in Solomon's Song, if you
have a private corner where you can risk sneaking a peek). There's
a movement about the flame, grace, and tenderness between parents
that I have written about in my journal a lot, and about which I
hope our little children will someday write in theirs. (What they
do now is simply rush to join any hug that begins with their mother
and me.) I hope my testimony of the Savior in this piece resounds
beyond the borders of my journal, but the image in the lines "And
in the darkest night, beyond my reach, but not my sight, there burns
His guiding star at last" sprang full-blown from the pages of that
book. I could go on, but then you might think you don't have to
buy the CD (which you can do, incidentally, right now, before it's
even done [!] at stevenkappperry.com--be careful not to type in
the wrong number of ""p""s). There, I not only worked in this column's
raison d'etre, but a commercial message as well.
I don't know
if the Brethren who authored that sublime document ever imagined
that it might someday be celebrated chorally in Latin and Cajun,
accentuated by a Muslim call to prayer and punctuated by Swahili
chants, but hey, it's a proclamation to the world! And we're having
a blast.
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Visit
marvinpayne.com!
"...come
unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift..." (from
the last page of the Book of Mormon)
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