Reconstruction in real-time
Or, how an ethereal cello absolutely wrecked me this week.
“I don’t know if I’ll know any of the songs,” I said to my husband on our way into a concert this week.
I noted the album covers on the tiny merch table—neither of which I recognized. I scrolled through Spotify and realized how old the albums I did recognize were.
Our church slid into the DMs of a musician I loved, to ask if he’d like to stopover in Raleigh between gig dates. He agreed.
Will Regan is a former worship leader, known most from the group United Pursuit. I knew I wanted to go almost immediately, nostalgia beating out any fears within me, as I had listened to them for years and years.
Sitting in the church that night, though, I gulped. Nostalgia might not be on the table anymore, I feared. Not knowing new music meant risking lyrics that might trigger old wounds. I trust our church, though—progressive, inclusive, more-than-understanding of deconstruction and triggers. They aren’t about to bring in someone whose lyrics they disagree with on some level. Still, I tapped my foot nervously.
Will walked on stage a little bit later, a cellist trailing him.
As soon as the cellist struck their first note, I was flooded. My breath hitched on my tightened ribcage.
Don’t think your usual classical sound, with lengthy, sweeping, smooth chords. Think choppy, ethereal, space-like, vibrato shaking the sound into your soul.
That particular sound unlocked a dormant creature within me. Something I didn’t know was sleeping, waiting to be roused with aural memory.
It’s a sound you’ll hear over and over again in their albums, but particularly “Simple Gospel,” which came out the month before I moved to India in 2015. Interestingly enough, I don’t think we sang a single song from this album, but it’s the one that has impacted me the most—as a secondary catalyst of deconstruction months before the primary, and years before I had that word in my vocabulary.
That catalyst woke up, and reminded me of something I’ve been saying for a few weeks now:
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