Lullabies And Car Rides

Posted by Jakob Gowell, Senior Field Instructor at Evoke Cascades on September 29, 2016

Not long ago I was working in our adolescent girls group as we transitioned from one field area to another. The drive started off stressfully when two group members expressed frustration about seating arrangements. An outsider might have described the two of them as smoldering for about the first 45 minutes of the ride. Then they asked us to check the radio for reception. It did nothing more than crackle, but they perked up slightly all the same. The staff members in the car chatted cordially as the two girls continued to look out the window. Fifteen minutes later or so the girls asked us to check again, and eureka! It worked. Separate two teenagers from popular culture for a few months and, predictably, you’ll get some excited screaming when the radio comes on. The first song was “Drops of Jupiter” by Train, and I think all 5 of us were singing, staff and students alike. I harmonized.

As we drove on, past an expansive mountain meadow, enjoying at one point the sight of a lone coyote, I confided in the girls: I felt self-conscious. Not only some few minutes earlier harmonizing along to the song on the radio, but also most nights in the field when signing lullabies. Songs like “The Boxer” by Simon & Garfunkel, “Angel from Montgomery” by John Prine and Bonnie Raitt, and (a slightly censored) “With a Little Help from My Friends” by The Beatles. I felt (and feel) self-conscious about how I sing, and I do it anyway. Or at least, I have for some time now. It didn’t start that way.

Since I was four I’ve gone on a yearly family camping trip in the Willamette National Forest, and every year a man named Tom brings a guitar and a banjo. He would sing, and invite us to join him. For many years I listened only. In high school I would sit in the fire’s outer circle in the shadows and add my voice in ways I hoped would nonchalantly enhance the music. The community there is loving: one hundred people in the woods for twelve days of merriment. Most nights Tom played, he would end the night with “Sweet Baby James” by James Taylor:

Goodnight moonlight ladies,
Rockabye sweet baby James.
Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose;
Won’t you let me go down in my dreams,
And rockabye sweet baby James.

It was often a demand we made of him, saving that request for last, for the sake of tradition. He sang it at one of our group member’s wedding this summer. Music brings us together, holds us together. The girls in that truck could tell you as much.
No longer glued to their respective windows, they were excited. They heard a new Justin Bieber single released after they came to our program, “Cold Water”. They heard an old, popular Katy Perry song, “Hot and Cold”. They heard a song by Imagine Dragons song called, “Demons”. They sang along with all of them. They were happy, connected with each other, with us, and to memories from friends and earlier times.

I sing lullabies for that very reason. I sing songs I love, sharing them with people in my care. Unlike so many other jobs, we can’t help but bring ourselves to work, passions and wounds. The part of me that wants to sing – despite the anxiety – is a part I want seen. "I am capable, I am powerful,” says Nahko and Medicine for the People in their song “Aloha Ke Akua”, one I use frequently to rouse groups in the morning. I choose the songs I do because they resonate with me, they tell stories I hope to embody, and they allow me to express my care, concern, and optimism.

Those two girls have left our program now, moved on to places where they can listen to all the music they want (at least compared to the wilderness). Thinking of them and all the other hurt humans I’ve worked with, I’m reminded of the last lines of “Ripple” by the Grateful Dead:

You who choose to lead must follow
But if you fall, you fall alone
If you should stand then who's to guide you?
If I knew the way, I would take you home.