Transmission

Thanks for everyone who came out last night to celebrate Epiphany a few days early. The ritual went well, and I wanted to post it in case any readers wanted to mine it for ideas for this coming Sunday, which is the actual day of Epiphany.

The idea for the ritual came from my experiences riding the subway, watching my fellow riders create privacy for themselves by listening to portable music. Music is recorded with artificial reverb, an effect which makes the music sound as if it is taking place in a large space. Different kinds of reverb create different kinds of “virtual space” for the music so that concertos sound like they’re being played in concert halls, arena rocks sounds like it’s being played in an arena, and folk music sounds like it’s being played in an intimate coffee shop. A subway is a public space and during rush hours people are packed into them as tightly as possible with no room for personal space. At the same time, however, each person listening to music bring a virtual space with them, and any given subway car will probably have at least a dozen personal, virtual spaces packed in to it.

Church is another place in which personal space and public space interact in interesting ways, and I thought it would be interesting to see how portable music would affect ritual. Epiphany, a feast day which celebrates a journey, seemed like the perfect opportunity to ritualize my commuting experience.

I set up five stations along a walking route which wound its way through four rooms. Each participant was told to bring a portable music player (i.e. an iPod, a discman, or something comparable). I created five tracks of voiceover layered on top of music and loaded them on to each person’s player, and we began the ritual. Details below:

Station One: A threshold station placed at the entry way. Participants were given the tracks upon arriving, beginning the ritual as they were ready. Music was “This Lost Morning,” a piece I wrote for a choreographer a few years ago containing didjeridu, kalimba, bass, conga, and subway sounds.

Welcome to Epiphany at Transmission. Epiphany is a feast day, celebrated on the day after the 12th Day of Christmas. It is the day on which the Wise Men, the Three Kings, the Magi arrive. It is a day about journeys. It is a day about gifts. Many of us are probably just returning home after a journey visiting our families for the holidays, but the journey with which we are probably more familiar is our daily commute, riding the subways and busses twice a day, packed in with people we don’t know, trying to eek out a bit of privacy and personal space by listening to music on our iPods. Commutes can be stressful, but they can also be relaxing, depending on the person and depending on the day.

Today, I’m hoping to evoke that sense of personal meditation that I sometimes see on the faces of my fellow commuters. This is a slow, introspective ritual. There will be meditations, but there will be also be long periods of music. Feel free to move at your own pace, feel free to skip ahead, and feel free to take your earplugs out and just be in silence for a while, if that’s what moves you. Their are five stations, and each one will have a red number on it corresponding to the audio track. For now, take a moment to center yourself, focus on where you are, and prepare for worship.

Station Two: a table filled with candles. Music is “Star in the East,” an Epiphany hymn from Southern Harmony performed by John McCutcheon.

The magi would never have started their journey if they hadn’t seen a star, blazing in the heavens. They knew star was not their destination, the star merely indicated a direction in which to travel. Do you have a star? Is there something which tells you which direction in which you should be traveling? Is it a career goal? Is it your family? Is it faith? Hope? Art? Daydreams? A friendship? Or are you feeling directionless? Do you feel like there is no light in the sky, no beacon to give you guidance? Light a candle to represent the light you follow or the light you wish you had.

Station Three: in another room, a table filled with a random assortment of items, including books, ballet slippers, candy bars, and yarn. For us, this table is a place where many people leave things they don’t want anymore. The music was Erev Shel Shoshanim, a Hebrew love song which contains references to myrrh and frankincense, performed by John McCutcheon.

As they prepared to leave, the magi chose gifts to take with them. Although they did not know where their destination lay or whom they would be meeting, they believed they would find a great king at the end of their journey, and so they brought items of great value – frankincense, gold, and myrrh. What gifts do you bring with you on your journey? Possessions, assets? Valuable skills? Vision? Passion? Hope? The table in front of you is full of objects for the taking – find something that represents one of your gifts and take it with you.

Station Four: another room including a collection of icons of Mary with the infant Jesus. The music was “Aye” by Martyn Bennett.

Finally, the magi arrived at Bethlehem. I’m sure what they found was not what they had been expecting. They probably expected the new King to be born into wealth. They probably expected that the rich gifts they carried would be token gifts, or even tribute. They probably did not expect to find a poor family who would probably sell their gifts to buy food, but they offered their gifts nonetheless. Say a prayer and offer your gift, knowing that you might not have any idea how it will be used.

Station Five: just outside the final room in which we would be eating dinner and having our post-ritual social time. The music was “Where Do We Go From Here” by Joss Whedon.

The story doesn’t end here. In the next portion of the tale, King Herod tries to kill Jesus by ordering the deaths of every male child under the age of two. Because of this, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus flee down to Egypt. Shortly after being born into poverty, Jesus has become an exile, a refugee, an immigrant. In this coming week after Epiphany, as you find yourself back in the world, take a moment to think about all the exiles, refugees, and immigrants in our world and pray for them.

After the ritual, we had dinner and shared our experiences.

There were a couple of things that happened that surprised me. Even though the ritual was quite linear, the participants were not afraid to create their own experience. I saw one participant stop to dance to the music. Another participant stopped to examine some artwork which was near one of the stations. At one point, three participants formed a line and solemnly processed into the next room, each listening to the same track but out of sync with one another. One participant had her iPod set on shuffle and listened to the tracks out of order.

For the future:

~it would be interesting to do a longer ritual on this model, perhaps leading people through the streets of New York City or through stations in a park.

~it would be interesting to create a ritual in which the participants were intended to listen to the tracks on shuffle, perhaps having ten or twelve stations in a large room with no particular order necessary.

~it would be interesting to write music in two parts, one non-rhythmic ambient track to be played on the PA system and one rhythmic track to be played on the iPods. The two parts would be written to blend with one another. Doing this would make it much less jarring to remove the ear plugs if participants wanted to pause for a while or have a conversation.

Posted by: Isaac | Tags: epiphany, ritual, tunes