Well, I’m feeling due to write the liner notes now to the recording I made, “Readings from the King James.”
“We should love one another.” Years back I read the King James version of the Bible, cover to cover. I’d wanted to do so since I was a child. I tried a few times, the last time being at age 16. I figured if I read one chapter a night, I would eventually get through it. I even counted the number of chapters in the entire book and calculated it would take then almost 3 and half years (around 3.4 years) to read the entire book. In 2001 one of my sweet aunts leant me her copy of the King James, a version called “The Walk Through.” Basically set up for daily readings as to allow for the book to be read over the course of a year. I started on New Year’s Day and made steady progress until April. Eventually it would take me five years to read it all, but I did read it (I followed up by reading the Koran, and then an introduction book on Buddhism). Deep into the Bible, almost at the end this epistle saying “this ye have known since the beginning, that you should love one another.” I thought it was the most beautiful line I had read in the whole book.
A year ago February 2018 I visited the woman who had been my guardian Mother. After my Mom died, this Guardian and her family had took one of my brothers and me into her family. And now she was dying from cancer. I knew she was having trouble reading, so I offered to read to her, readings from the King James. We started with the First Epistle, danced through some Psalms and essentially worked a touch of Bibliomancy, opening the book and taking the opened passage. “I like the Gospels,” she said. So then, when I began the recording a few weeks later, I included a reading from each of the 4 Gospels. Before we parted, we held hands and recited from our memories The Lord’s Prayer.
The idea to record passages for her arrived immediately. I also knew that I would set each passage to music. The music became an undertaking, a path very personal, specific to me. I would want to share the music with my former Guardian Mother, but also didn’t want to keep her waiting, so the version I first shared with her basically was just my voice. I’m not sure if she ever heard the music version here. The music took 6 months to complete, and I released the recording on my bandcamp page, September 19th, 2018. Serendipity! It happened to be my Guardian’s birthday.
When I read the Bible, I had much more overall connection with the Old Testament. There’s an emphasis on the daily life, this life. No Heaven or Hell, no Devil really (Satan is of course mentioned by name in Job). I don’t always agree with how the daily life is lived in the Old Testament, but I feel the resonance with the assertion, the profound belief in the doing good for the day because it’s good to do so for the day and for one another, as opposed to the idea of doing good in the day as preparation for the afterlife. Heaven, Hell and The Devil don’t arrive until the New testament. I’m not wanting to anger my Christian friends, but there is an idea that Jesus and the Devil are the same being, that the Devil is actually a metaphor for the shadow self of Jesus. (For that mater, Jesus could be a metaphor, too, for the profound sense of loneliness people can feel. The Passion, the suffering of the Christ wasn’t the physical pain, but the despair, the loneliness, the feeling of abandonment by everyone, including God.) I have a certain fluidity for considering these possibilities — please understand I did not grow up going to church. I did not go to church until age 13, when I lived with the guardian family. Not growing up going to church makes it easier to view Christianity as being one of the worlds’ Myths, Legends or Fables. Zeus and Hera, King Arthur, Pele, The Spirit of the Willow Tree, Genies and all sorts of magical beings and creatures all more real to me growing up than the characters of the Bible.
The music creation reflected my difficulties with the New Testament. I pretty much worked on the music in the order of the readings as they are presented, having first created a 12-tone row, an entrance in the work thinking each reading would have its own note as tonal center, with 13th track (I like 13 tracks for an album) being a reprise of track one. Arriving to the reading from Matthew, I had trouble making the music. What was blocking me? I could feel the reading as a gift for my Guardian, but the music as a reflection of my own beliefs, how could I make music for something I don’t believe. Then it arrived! Yes, the Matthew passage has to do with the Resurrection, one of the foundations of the Christian Faith. I finally understood why I am not a Christian — I don’t believe people come back from the Dead. I put the reading into another language and found I could make music for it, adding the line “I cry from the center of my being.”
From then on, I was able to work the music. I had helped myself with the choice of the other 3 Gospel readings, finding resonance and connection in each one: Mark and the new commandment of loving your neighbor, the candle parable of Luke (I like candles) and the story of Nathan in John (a little touch of indulgence).
For the Psalms, 119 contains one of my favorite passages, verse 116: “Uphold me according unto thy word, that I may live, and let me not be ashamed of my hope.” Psalm 40 because of the song “40,” by U2. Psalm 46 because I would soon be turning 46. I like how the story of Ruth is fundamentally a story of one person loving and caring for another. And as in Job, the book speaks to the pain of this life, “call me Mara.” In addition to the “naked came I into the world,” Job contains one of the best explanations of Faith, or Mystery, “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord.” I’m wondering if the Wiccan greeting “Blessed Be” has this passage as its origin.
https://natebeier.bandcamp.com/album/readings-from-the-king-james
I’ve been sitting here for awhile. The explanation is the music. Let’s remember what we know.
Within the reprise is a reprise of the music for the Lord’s Prayer. This prayer was very special to my Guardian Mother. At her Memorial, a recording was played of her saying the prayer. The recording was made just a few days before she died. I’m glad we had reached for each other.
And I hope this album can be of use to the World.
Amen.
natebeiermfa 