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[Smash cut: my son on stage playing in front of pretend groupies]

My son is learning to play the guitar at School of Rock. One cool aspect about the School of Rock program is that you go from knowing nothing to performing a rock show in ~4 months after signing up. Recitals are nothing new when learning an instrument or a performing art, but those in my experience tend to be on longer annual timescales. School of Rock throws you in the deep end and that rock show commitment adds a lot of positive pressure to learn your instrument.

[Smash cut: me journaling in a coffee shop in my twenties]

These coinciding events got me thinking about church, music, and the relationship there of improving your craft through regular opportunities to perform. I thought about my past, my friends’ pasts, and my son’s potential future and I realized something that one thing faith-based communities do well is that they offer an endless series of opportunities for people to improve and show-off their talents.

At the heart of that is a not-so-secret ladder system. Nearly every faith community I’ve been apart of has had a buffet of special interest groups to rope newcomers in and get them involved at a level that matches their skill. They ask you about your interests and then encourage you¹ to use those in service of the community.

• Play music? You can play for a small group. Prove yourself and move onto the Wednesday service. Ready for the big Sunday show? Start as the fifth guitar. Then the third. Then lead.
• Artistic? You do art with kids in Sunday school. Move on to making artsy b-roll videos. Your art in front of everyone in the big church: a painting, a solo, a poem, an interpretive dance!
• Make websites or graphics? You can manage the WordPress, make the PowerPoints legible, make the weekly pamphlets, improve the signage, and spruce up the walls.
• Like to talk in front of people? Go to a small group. Lead a small group. Lead a mission trip. Get on stage during the Sunday service. Lead the Sunday service when the pastor is out.
• Have a knack for organizing people? Join a special interest group and invite friends. Encourage people to volunteer for the local Habitat for Humanity outreach. Be the greeter who connects people to special interest groups.
• A closeted queer kid that loves theater? There’s the big Christmas show –sometimes with live animals!– that happens every year. Churches and youth groups love skits (for some weird reason). And the technical queers can run the soundboard or manage the lights. You may even get a headset.
• Know a lot about a particular topic (bible, finance, history)? Lead a Sunday school class about it. Host a weekend seminar. A whole week seminar.
• Handy? Join the church cleanup. Volunteer to fix that leaking window. Fix the broken A/C. Organize a shed or barn raising. Run the Habitat for Humanity group. Be the knowledgeable one on the mission trip.

There’s no shortage of jobs in a thriving community. And while some jobs skew business (the treasurer), administrative (the secretary), or mechanical (the maintenance crew); the bulk of jobs fall under the umbrella of the performing and visual arts. I find this curious in a world where getting a degree in fine arts is often chided or joked about as being non-contributing.

I assume other religions across the world have different flavors of these ladders of opportunity. And I assume secular volunteer organizations might have these kinds of ladders, but I imagine they have way less acoustic guitars. The “speaker circuit” in tech sort of functions like this; local meetup, to regional conference, to national, to international, to keynote speaker, to giving a TED Talk ladder is familiar.

Why would a church provide this service? What is this platform for the performing and visual arts worth? Well I can tell you we pay ~$400/month for School of Rock, so it’s somewhere in that ballpark. It’s possible this social apparatus does return dividends in the offering plate, but I think the key benefit this provides is a place of belonging. A place to exercise talents publicly and regularly that might otherwise remain dormant. Creating that ladder of opportunity is effective at keeping “involvement” –a community’s most important metric by which it lives and dies– at an all time high and engagement keeps the machine turning.

[Smash cut: an announcement board with a hand-drawn thermometer that’s half-filled and renderings of a new building mounted with poster putty]

In most of my experiences at a certain point (when money exchanges hands) and at a certain scale (over ~150 people), the church ladder begins to posture itself towards being another capitalistic corporate ladder with patriarchal undertones. The eternal growth model and the innate desire to build ever larger buildings replace vision and connection. The work becomes about managing real estate and optimizing to keep the pews full. Efficiency rises, the arts and music morph into a Live, Laugh, Love poster with mass appeal.

Anyways, if you were trying to build a new community (or replace religion with something more compassionate)… I would think about building these kinds of ladders. I have no doubt you’ve encountered someone who has developed their gifts or skills in an incubator like this. You may even be reading a person-like-that’s blog right now.

It’s fascinating how we naturally respond in certain situations. Often it’s a great thing, like blinking or throwing up a hand if something unexpected comes toward us.

Other times it’s neither good nor bad. For example when someone yawns on the subway and others follow without even thinking about it.

But sometimes it can be a hindrance. It can stop us from making progress. It can keep a lid on the creative force inside of us.

Since this is a blog post, let’s take blogging as an example. One of my favorite bloggers is Annie Mueller. I will never be able to write like her. That’s a fact.

If I compared each of my drafts to her posts or any of my other favorite bloggers, I would hardly publish anything at all. It would all be “not good enough, not quirky enough, not personal enough...”

That’s what happens when we have fixed ideas about what blogging “should look like”. It’s silly and it turns into a creative nightmare.

I hope I never write like Annie, Tiramisu, Jedda, or any of the other fantastic bloggers I admire for what they do.

And I hope that you who reads this never blogs like me or any other blogger. I want to read what you feel the need to write. Pure and unfiltered, straight from the heart.

If you haven’t already, I hope you go ahead and press that publish button. I’d love to read what you write.

 

I never expected to see Akiko Yano play live, let alone meet her and get an album signed. In case you don’t know, she’s “the Japanese Kate Bush” who predates Kate Bush. She released her debut in 1976, toured the world with Yellow Magic Orchestra, and married Ryuichi Sakamoto. She’s a legend.

It was our good fortune to discover that the closing night of the London Jazz Festival was happening at The Barbican the day after the Radiohead gig, so we extended our stay in London.

My two fave Akiko Yano studio albums are Ai Ga Nakuchane (recorded in London with the band Japan) and Iroha Ni Kompeito. I also adore her joyous 1979 live album 7 O’Clock in Tokyo, recorded with an all-star band including all three members of YMO and City Pop king Tatsuro Yamashita. It perfectly encapsulates the togetherness of the late 1970s Japanese music scene.

Akiko shuffled her Barbican setlist around, starting with YMO’s Tong Poo and also playing Harusaki Kobeni, Rose Garden, Gohan Ga Dekitayo, Hitotsudake and How Can I Be Sure. I occasionally closed my eyes and listened to her sing and play, and with the auditorium reverb it felt almost like being transported back in time to the 7 O’Clock shows.

Her set was followed by a fierce headline quintet made up of tenor sax legend Kosuke Mine, pianist Fumio Itabashi, drummer Takeo Moriyama, bassist Takashi Sugawa and the alto sax of Miyuki Moriya. We bought the reissue of Kosuke Mine’s First a few years ago, and it was exciting to hear a couple of tracks from that alongside other raucous jazz freakouts. Top night.

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My memory of him is so complicated. His anger and addiction. His love of fishing. His great sense of humor. His rage and fear over his failing health. His delight in Darcy, for the brief time he had with her. The time he cheered so hard for the Hoosiers he turned the chair over. The times he hit my mom. That time I stared him down, refusing to let it happen again.

This memory of him writing poetry comes back to me out of deep time. Standing there in that room reading that poem, written in his distinctive handwriting, guilt washing over me. Him explaining that he loved giving me things and that he never meant to make me feel that way. Me, crying, resolving never to want again.

That angry, addicted man, who loved to joke, who loved children, who loved me. The cause of great suffering as a man, who as a boy was willing—rifle in hand—to defend his own mother from his own father. Recording himself singing, so hesitatingly, “Amazing Grace.” Writing poetry.