Jesus, Jazz, and Buddhism

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Her grandmother checks the condition of her calf muscles when she visits town.  She says that her last name is a phonetic disaster.  Her music has off-kilter melodies with quirky lyrics.  She sings about being stung by bees, and about being a little girl sitting at tables in the presence of bigger kids with hearts much "lovelier" than her own.  She says that we are all locomotives.  We are talking about Thao Nguyen.  You hear her above, with the group she often plays with, Get Down Stay Down.  You'll hear more below.

Some of her music makes you laugh, which is part of its beauty.  Laughter is serious business.  For us laughter contains the quirky wisdom a prophet, or a poet, or a priest.  Sometimes we can’t articulate the feelings in our hearts until we hear someone else say them.  Or sing them.  Or laugh them.   In their humor, their spontaneous freedom, moments of laughter shake the frames of houses inside us and houses built by others.  Frame shaking often begins with tears or laughter.  Both are forms of letting go. 

Music is What Feelings Sound Like

As you listen to Thao Nguyen sing, you will naturally have other emotional responses, too.  You'll hear some pain, some anger, some irony, some hiddenness.  This is natural because, after all, music is what feelings sound like.   At least this is what process philosophers, influenced by the philosopher Whitehead, propose.  Process thinkers say that we humans are not just objects in space, we are concrescing subjects, with subjective thoughts and feelings of our own, which become part of other people, too, when we speak and sing and act.  These thoughts and feelings can be heard in the melodies and rhythms of music.   There are the forms of our bodies, to be sure.  And there are also the forms of our subjectivity.  Whitehead calls them subjective forms.  When we listen to music, we hear these forms with our ears.  Music is the acoustic presentation of feeling.  Our souls are inherently musical, even if we can't sing a note.

Process philosophers add that we are musical in still another way.  We are all music makers even if we can't play any instruments at all.   This is because the aims of music and the aims of life are the same: satisfying harmonies and intensities.  That's the Whiteheadian definition of beauty: harmonious intensity and intense harmony.  Some of the harmonies and intensities we seek emerge introspectively, in the privacy of our hearts.  We are seeking satisfying relations with our pasts and futures. 

You'll hear the rhythms of introspection in Thao Nguyen's music.  But even when introspective, these rhythms bring other people into their orbit, because our introspective moments emerge out of our relations with other people.  They come from our relations with the grandmothers who check our calves, and with their grandmothers, too.  Whitehead says that in every moment of our lives the many people of the past, including those who lived long before we were born, are gathered into the unity of our experience through conscious and unconscious memories.   As we remember them something new is added to the universe, namely our act of remembering: "The many become one and are increased by one."

The Seven Deadly Stings

The process by which the many become one is not always pleasant.  Sometimes the feelings we have in response to our interactions with others are more intense than harmonious.  They are painful.  As Thao Nguyen puts it, we are stung by bees, and we just have to brave them.  She admires people who brave bees.  We do, too.

Consider the feelings people have when they are treated as a things.  We might call it being stung.  Historically women are among those who are most readily reduced to things.  Usually by powerful men, and sometimes even by themselves.  Just look at advertisements; or game shows on television.  And what does it mean to be a thing?  In Sex and Social Justice, Martha Nussbaum outlines seven ways people are treated as things:

1.  They are treated as instruments.
2.  They are treated as if they lacked autonomy.
3.  They are treated as if they could be violated.
4.  They are treated as if they were interchangeable with others.
5.  They are treated as if they could be owned.
6.  They are treated as if they lacked subjectivity.
7.  They are treated as if there were merely inert objects.

Of course these seven deadly stings overlap.  But they can also exist independently, too.  You may be in a relation with someone who knows you have subjectivity (thoughts and feelings) but who also feels that he or she owns you.  You may be fully aware of your own subjectivity, but also feel that it is completely interchangeable with others, neglecting your uniqueness.  And of course you can sting others in these ways, too.  When this happens, lots of deconstructing is required; lots of singing your way out of it and helping others do the same.  

That's one reason we like the music of Thao and her friends, Get Down Stay Down.  Together they form an alternative folk rock band based in San Francisco.  The group has released three full-length album since 2005.  Her decision to become a singer-songwriter in her teenage years was influenced by the same passionate voices she heard at Lilith Fair, a music festival composed of female musical artists.  She pursued music and academics at the same time that she completed dual bachelor degrees in Sociology and Women's Studies.  Her commitments to women’s rights are heard in “We Brave Bees Stings and All,” the lyrics of which we offer below.  Here's what she says about it:  

I picked up the guitar when I was 11 years old. I grew up in a pretty tumultuous home. If I hadn’t picked up music I don’t know where I’d be. I grew up in the suburbs of DC.  But, I grew up in a home where I witnessed the consequences of inequality, the oppression of women, on a personal level within my family....It's my ode to young girls growing up and women performing media roles, our obligation to younger girls, and what we have to do to make it easier for them.

If you want to get to know her a little better, take a look at her singing solo at a "Tiny Desk Concert" in Washington, DC.  And if you want still more, check out her song "Body."  At JJB we believe that all minds are embodied, and that all bodies are enminded.   People are bodies with minds, bees are bodies with minds, lovers are bodies with minds.  Maybe there's some wisdom in her grandmother's love: in checking people's calves to see how their minds are doing.

So let's say that you know someone who feels like just a body in someone's bed.  Let's say that this person wonders if she is more than this.  Let's say that she comes to you and asks you what you think.  

You pull out a book of poetry and read Andrea Dworkin to her:  “It is true, and very much to the point, that women are objects, commodities, some deemed more expensive than others - but it is only by asserting one’s humanness every time, in all situations, that one becomes someone as opposed to something. That, after all, is the core of our struggle.”  

Your friend like Dworkin.  So you pull out a CD of music by Thao Nguyen.  Or call up some videos of her singing with Get Down Stay Down.  Your friend listens, and watches, and laughs.  It's in the moment of laughter, so we believe, that she reclaims her agency.  She's braved many bee stings.  But she's got something inside her -- a spark -- that can laugh back, that can protest, that can sing.  In that protest, in that laughing back, she becomes a new person who can help grandmother others into life.