Fragments #4
old songs | joining in | network states | symbols | snowmen | mystery
Thanks for reading Field Notes, which explores interdependence, human and non-human nature, history, inner life, poetry, creativity, spirituality, community, civic belonging, and the ways we make a life. This instalment is Fragments; a gathering of my week’s underlinings, links, and the things I’m turning over in my mind. I also write a longer form Village View instalment, roughly every two weeks.
Hello,
Recently we went to watch the Exmoor Carolers at the village hall. They sing old versions of the well-known Christmas carols, and unearth forgotten songs. They were dressed in muted shawls and neckerchiefs, sturdy boots and waistcoats; as if they had stepped out of another era. Stars and strings of lights draped around their music stands. One man played a hurdy-gurdy. Between songs they told origin stories — how a song came to be, or how they had discovered it. I learned that carols were banned under puritan rule, and that ‘While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks’ was the first song permitted to be sung in the church after this ban. I learned that ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ in its current version was found by Cecil Sharp, collector of old folk songs, but that the song dates in some form back to at least medieval times, reflecting an old association between holly and Christmas.
Our daughter sat mesmerised for half of the concert. Then, cake-fuelled, she spent the second half dancing at the front. Afterwards, a few of the carolers asked if we’d been at the concert the year before. They remembered our girl, who had back then been enjoying the new freedom that comes with walking: she would totter to the front, the lights dancing in her eyes, she dancing in the singers’ eyes.
I asked some of the carolers why they sing. A woman called Liz spoke about the connection it brings her after her Dad died, and how the group and their songs are the things that gets her through winter. The hardy-gurdy-playing man, Geoff, told me, “I could never write songs, but I can join in”.
His words lingered. In a time in which we are — at least in some fields and on some platforms — encouraged to be known for something; to be easy to remember by choosing a niche and a brand, which suggests a crowd we need to stand out from, it reminded me that the ability to join in and support others is essential. We need leaders and pioneers and initiators, but we also need communality and community, and thoughtful following, and life-giving support. Not always feeling the need to stand out, but instead, finding a peace and deep connection through joining in.
The carolers were discovering songs and keeping stories alive through their collective chorus. I wonder what else we might unearth and discover — collectively, individually — by showing up and joining in, and by leaning on others as we face the darkness of advent and winter.
Links and reading:
🗺️ From nation states to network states:
I read a thought-provoking piece in Unheard: ‘The tragedy of Keir Starmer’s Substack It yearns for an illusory world’.
The piece starts by highlighting UK Prime Minister’s new Substack, and how his opening post reaches for an illusory “all of us” that no longer exists. It goes on to explore the relationship between media and politics and nationhood.
I do not agree with everything in the piece — or many things that its author, Mary Harrington, believes — but it got me thinking about how the media we take for granted shapes political thinking and collective identity. Some excerpts:
European nation-states, as the historian Carlton Hayes showed, were never tight-knit tribes but instead “agglomerations of peoples with diverse languages and dialects”. These emerged out of a medieval plurality of sometimes tiny polities….. Wherever printing centres took root, from 1450 onward, the dialect in that particular area would become gradually more widespread, fixed and culturally dominant. These print-powered dialects morphed over time into the “official” languages of much larger polities, while other dialects lost status or disappeared. The circulation of printed books and newspapers in these newly standardised vernacular languages in turn forged “nations” into self-conscious political units: the print historian Elizabeth Eisenstein shows how the idea of a “public” as such derives from “publishing”, offering a new, printed mirror within which these publics saw themselves reflected, for the first time, as “imagined communities”.
…it’s not a coincidence that elites around the world began dreaming bigger than nations or even empires, just as new broadcast media emerged to challenge print for the public’s attention. You don’t have to be Marshall McLuhan to wonder whether being able to beam TV images around the world might, in time, affect who we imagine our “communities” to be, and how widely we cast that net.
…print created the idea of a “public”, and forged language-communities into geographic and political ones. In other words: it massively affected political form. Broadcast allowed us to dream of uniting the world as one giant community. Another massive effect. It stands to reason the internet might change things again….. [Harrington points to] a vision for a new kind of digital-age political entity, not defined by geography but shared vision and values, and beginning as internet-only entities.
…the hardest challenge to the tech-bro model for new countries is the oldest: where does your cohesion come from?
🎨 Old frescoes / new symbols:
A 3rd century tomb has been uncovered in Turkey, containing a fresco depicting Jesus as the ‘good shepherd’.
“The Good Shepherd motif was a crucial symbol of protection and salvation for early Christians during a period of widespread persecution, predating the widespread adoption of the cross.”
The tomb’s frescoes show “a transition from late paganism to early Christianity, depicting the deceased being sent off to the afterlife in a positive and fitting manner.”
I read the piece, wondering how things might be different if Christianity was still known for its empire-subverting love, and its good-shepherding care.
(Related — if you’re interested in this stuff, my husband is doing a talk this weekend called ‘The Word Made Paint’ — he’ll talk through six artworks that show sides of faith we rarely hear about).
⛄️ The Snowman
Rewatching this classic animation — and its sequel — with my young daughter brought a visceral reconnection with my childhood. Such quiet and wondrous beauty!
Underlinings
“Advent: the time to listen for footsteps. You can’t hear footsteps when you’re running yourself” — Bill McKibben
“The lack of mystery in our modern life is our downfall and our poverty…. We retain the child in us to the extent that we honor the mystery. Therefore, children have open, wide-awake eyes, because they know that they are surrounded by the mystery. They are not yet finished with this world; they still don’t know how to struggle along and avoid the mystery, as we do. We destroy the mystery because we sense that here we reach the boundary of our being, because we want to be lord over everything and have it at our disposal, and that’s just what we cannot do with the mystery…. Living without mystery means knowing nothing of the mystery of our own life, nothing of the mystery of another person, nothing of the mystery of the world; it means passing over our own hidden qualities and those of others and the world. It means remaining on the surface, taking the world seriously only to the extent that it can be calculated and exploited, and not going beyond the world of calculation and exploitation. Living without mystery means not seeing the crucial processes of life at all and even denying them.” ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Elizabeth x
Thank you for slowing me down for a few precious, reflective moments. Love to you, Partner, & Small in these dark & meaningful days. x