Helices

Movement

3

spiral detail - binda m2

provocation

In her Movement 2, Binda delved into the details of the creative and evolving helix structure

response

Jenny

Switch to Binda
Although we’d only just started Helices, I was already noticing how I liked to play. At our biweekly meeting, our Cross, Binda and I would each present our response from the previous Movement. During that meeting, something about Binda’s response would ping me: some kernel of image or text or idea that I could already tell would become the heart of my own next Movement. This time, it was a fragment of text on Binda’s drawing — the crossbar in the DNA structure — that talked about “staying with the trouble.”
m2-binda Staying with the trouble spiral detail
m2-binda Staying with the trouble crossbar

Something else was happening in my week… my friend Dale Rawlinson was texting me (as he texts many other friends) photos of his daily fire. (You’ll soon be able to read more about Dale and his fires here.)

Dale fire 1
Dale fire 2
Dale fire 4
Dale fire 5
Dale fire 3

Dale also likes to sing in the car, and he was sending me occasional snippets of his hearty singalongs of old classics. One morning he sent me a recording of “Man of Constant Sorrow,” and it was so delightful and full of gusto that I overdubbed my own goofy harmonies and sent it back to him. 

A few days later, I picked up my guitar and found myself giving voice to the concept of “Staying With the Trouble”:

I’m staying with the trouble

I’m staying with the trouble

Staying with my grief

Even though I feel like running

I’m staying with these feelings

that are touching me with their fingertips

I’m staying with the trouble

I’m staying here with you

I usually play my song ideas for Luc, my husband, first; he’s a superb songwriter himself, with an impeccable ear, and I can often tell from his response if I’ve got something special or just decent. This time, though, I felt compelled to send it to Dale first. Not long after, Dale sent a recording back to me — he’d echoed just what I’d done, even mirroring my own little vocal ticks and breaths.

Moved by Dale’s pure and loving attention, I decided that I wanted to write him a song of his own, in praise and thanks. Over the next few days, I worked on “Every Face in Firelight”:

In the meantime, I kept working on “Staying With the Trouble.” I was trying to figure out what kind a verse would go with the chorus. I tried things like this:

And this:

I find that one pretty boring, but an occasional lyric is okay:

October days must be made to break your heart

The colors of the leaves are killing me

So much beauty as the landscape falls apart

I wanna fall like that —

figure out how to age into glory

Had a story I could fix my life

But now I think it’s perfect broken…

I don’t like “so much beauty” but I do like “age into glory.”

None of these experiments felt true to the feeling of “Staying With the Trouble.” Version 2 seemed to have potential as a song of its own, though. It turned out to be one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written:

At some point over the course of this two weeks I played “Every Face in Firelight” for my husband. He said it was beautiful — and then he said, “Should I be jealous?” It’s true that writing a song (at least, a certain kind of song) for someone else is a major compliment. I reassured Luc that he needn’t be jealous of Dale… and then I thought, I should write Luc a song, too.

Beautiful Evidence book

That one came in super-fast. I looked over at my bookshelf, caught sight of the title Beautiful Evidence by Edward Tufte, and had the whole song written in about an hour. Another one I’m really glad I wrote. (Luc and I have a great version worked up with drums and bass that I’ll get around to recording one of these days.)

I was really helixing during this movement. Everything I touched struck a new song in me, just like one of Dale’s fires. I wanted to write a song about that, about the fact that we depend on each other to keep going. Enter “Contraption”:

As for “Staying With the Trouble”… I realized that it didn’t need a verse. The fact that Dale had been able to sing it back to me right away seemed like the most important thing. It was the simple refrain itself that mattered — a refrain that could be adapted to any situation.

I sang a version for a friend of mine who’d told me about some of the challenges (and some of the guides and allies) she’d been going through. The chorus is enough for this song. Sometimes, the chorus is all we need:

This response becomes the provocation for Binda’s Movement 4