For your consideration from Liberal Street Fighter:
GADJI BERI BIMBA CLANDRIDI
LAULI LONNI CADORI GADJAM
A BIM BERI GLASSALA GLANDRIDE
E GLASSALA TUFFM I ZIMBRABIM BLASSA GALASSASA ZIMBRABIM
BLASSA GLALLASSASA ZIMBRABIMA BIM BERI GLASSALA GRANDRID
E GLASSALA TUFFM I ZIMBRAGADJI BERI BIMBA GLANDRIDI
LAULI LONNI CADORA GADJAM
A BIM BERI GLASSASA GLANDRID
E GLASSALA TUFFM I ZIMBRA
It is a little silly to narrow down the development of a worldview to one particular moment, to a particular song or place or kiss or sunset. It’s probably better to say that “I Zimbra”, performed live by Talking Heads at Poplar Creek, on the tour immortalized by Stop Making Sense, was a transcendent moment for me, an epiphany. If I were Saul standing on my seat, then “I Zimbra” was the lightning bolt that helped me make the final leap on a journey I’d already been on for much of my young life.
I’d been looking for transcendent moments from a very young age. My grandmother gave me my first Bible, one of those multivolume picture Bibles, when I was very young. Third grade, maybe. I loved the stories, the pictures. They really are great stories. I loved big stories, heroic stories, Bibles and comic books and Jesus Christ Superstar and Star Wars.
I was a contemplative kid in a lot of ways, had a habit of hiding somewhere with a book off by myself, pondering Big Questions when I should have been running around. My little GE black-and-silver-plastic 9 volt AM radio would be chittering away by my ear, the way music has shouted into my ears through a succession of wonderful magic devices over the years. I was looking around for connections.
Through those years, various relatives and friends would bring me to church, different churches, different denominations. My parents didn’t take us to church. We would all go together when we were visiting church-going relatives at holidays, or for funerals and weddings, but other than those occasions they didn’t go. My father felt that you needed the Golden Rule, and the rest of it you had to work out for yourself. I think he was right.
In any event, something in me was curious. People seemed so happy, at least the ones not gossiping, and I wanted in on the secret. When the service would get going, when those buzzing little fingers of connection would start to seize hold of me, I would sense what people would call the Holy Spirit, or the Lord, or whatever name they gave that frisson of connection. It would feel good, at first, then I’d draw back, unwilling to surrender my core, my self, to this new intrusion, no matter how seductive it felt. Feeling it focused through some man shouting, or whispering even, a bunch of words, felt wrong somehow. I couldn’t say why, but it did. This upset me, because so many people obtained meaning from this connection, this thrill, and I feared I was unwilling to accept it for myself.
This brings us back to the Talking Heads, one warm summer when I turned 20, a steamy night and a great crowd. I was having a blast with some friends. We were surrounded by hot, sweaty fans, people singing along to this strange band that was slowly filling the stage before us. The show had started with just David Byrne, the Big White Suit, a boombox, stool and guitar. With each number, more and more musicians filled the stage, until the whole complement was there and they launched into I Zimbra.
We were all dancing, all swaying, all chanting along with these wonderfully chewy lyrics so full of meaning yet not part of any language. The whole crowd, as one, together, a feeling of joy, of connection, of the warmth of humanity and music and rhythm and sex and Mother Nature’s warm breezes wicking away the salty water off of our sweaty faces. It was THAT FEELING, that same wonderful feeling that had felt wrong in all the churches where I’d previously felt it.
THE … SAME … FEELING.
It wasn’t the words, or the creeds, or the man up in front of us with the suit. IT WAS US. People, focusing their hopes and dreams and bodies and energies all in the same direction. The rhythm of the music had helped us to focus, as any member of a Drum Circle or Qawwalis group or Gospel choir could tell you, but the power, the energy, the feeling of hope and optimism came from US.
I Zimbra saved me from dry words and lifeless creeds. Power, life, redemption and love and forgiveness and meaning came from PEOPLE. WE create it. WE give life meaning. HUMANITY. Not one take on it, but ALL the different songs and illuminated texts and rituals and buildings built for gods or spirits are all just reflections on the energies we have in us. There’s nothing supernatural about it. Human beings create the world around you, the meanings they impart on that world. We remake ourselves and our very environments just by being human. For some reason this scares us, we seek to avoid it and move that power outside, embody it in some talisman or book or symbol or atmospheric phenomenon. Yet when we all get together we can channel enormous forces.
I think this is why the fundamentalists of all stripes are so afraid of popular culture and non-approved art and music and dancing and so very many other things. Everytime you stumble across the connection in some place, doing some thing, other than church is a threat to their power over you. It’s a threat that you may learn that YOU HAVE THE POWER.
Now, this is no great insight that no one has had before, but it is an insight we all have to have for ourselves. We might find it in the elegant equations of physics or between the thighs of a lover, but the power is ours, the connections are ours. In fact, the very words of the various prophets, gods and saviors haved used across multiple cultures have made the same observation, time and again. I think this is one reason why the actual beatitudes are so seldom quoted. I think this is why religions so often focus on rules and rituals instead of the actual meanings. The collection plates would go unfilled, their cozy bank accounts unfattened, their adoring flocks no longer at beck and call.
One hot summer night, a short lifetime of searching and a weird geeky art-punk band all came together for me. Now I can find it in the songs of so many, in paintings and books and in sunrises. It’s within our power to start taking care of each other. All we have to do is accept the responsibility, and the joy, that comes from making that decision.
