Imaging the Sacred Art of Chant

I was asked a few months ago if I would be willing to curate an online art exhibit called Imaging the Sacred Art of Chant. I have never done any such thing, nor had I ever given it a moment's thought before being asked. First thought: 'Hell no". Then I remembered all the beautiful art people have shared with me over the years; art created while listening to chant. I thought of Rachel, Mel, Robin, and Christina, and conversations I've had with each of them, and said I would do it, even though I had no idea how it worked. I decided the least I could do was ask "How Can I Help?", but before I could ask, I was told precisely what was needed, and was promised that someone would walk along with me throughout the process. Another lesson learned: One never knows what one might learn by staying open, but try to remember to do it anyway.

The first order of business was to write a call for submissions. I share it here, because art, chant, and these quotes have enriched my life, and they might enrich yours, too. To offer a submission, go to Episcopal Church and Visual Arts. The deadline for submissions has been extended until November 8, 2011. Please share it with your artist friends:

"Only that day dawns to which we are awake." - Henry David Thoreau

"Space has a spiritual equivalent and heals what is divided and
burdensome in us." - Gretel Erhlich

"At the beginning of God's creating of the heavens and the earth,
when the dark was wild and waste, darkness over the face of the ocean,
rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters -
God said: Let there be light!; and there was light.
God saw the light: that it was good. God separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light: Day! And the darkness he called: Night!
There was setting, there was dawning: one day."

- Genesis 1:1-5 (from The Five Books of Moses, by Everett Fox)

God speaks the light into being. Day! Night! As a musician, I put great stock in the tools of the trade; listening, practicing, singing and playing alone, or with others. Many of my artist friends have told me that they listen to music, specifically chant, while they work. I can't imagine such a thing, because although God might be able to create the earth while the wind is sweeping over the face of the waters, I need quiet in order to hear a new chant into being. However, I see the possibilities, in the chants I sing repeatedly year after year, when I look through the lens of my camera and glimpse what I think the composition wants to be, where the parts might come together to create consonance, or dissonance, or when I really see the colors of a particular vista at a certain time of day.

In his book "Music and Imagination," Aaron Copland says, "This never ending flow of music forces us to use our imaginations, for music is in a continual state of becoming." So are we in a continual state of becoming, and I use chanting to help me to become the most loving and compassionate person I am capable of becoming.

The pianist Glenn Gould put it a little differently: "The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline, but is, rather, the lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity." When I look at the masters of Chinese brush painting and see the skill with which one line can be rendered, in addition to the brevity (which I admire), I see healing, spirit, wonder, and serenity — I think of it as a melody, like the ones I'm sure have been with us since the first setting and dawning.

Chanting is to me what I imagine a well-executed brush stroke must be for a painter: a line we return to our entire life, always the same yet never the same, by turns supple, solid, rendered in haste or patience, best when we pay enough attention to honor the energy of the material, alive when we don't over think it. It's as if we find our voice and become who we are meant to be line-by-line, tune-by-tune. This process of becoming and knowing ourselves may take us over familiar ground, but we are never the same person we were when first we began.

I invite you to select a chant, in whole or in part, and with line or camera or collage, bring us a construction of "wonder and serenity" or passion or peace. To begin this construction, I offer a chant called "Om Namah Shivaya" (I honor the divine within). To hear this chant, click on the "Imaging the Sacred Art of Chant" title above.

Ana Hernandez, Musician
Curator, Imaging the Sacred Art of Chant

On Being Saved by a Poem

Poetry and I are old friends. When I had to move home for a year in college, poetry was the one thing that kept me sane (except for Robert Lowell). If you're not big on poetry, watch how poetry kept Kim Rosen sane. Trust me, me and Kim aren't the only ones poetry has kept sane. Over the years, bits of poetry have leapt off the page and rescued me from any number of close calls. Some have even thrown themselves into songs or chants so I couldn't help but sing them. Mostly though, poems don't require music, and it would be ruinous to try to arrange a marriage. Some poems need to be memorized, so you can carry them with you always. I once thought it might be nice to memorize T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets so I'd have something besides music to keep me company on that proverbial desert island. If I start now, maybe I can manage One Quartet before I move to the other side of the grass. My friends Cally and Ellen memorize Shakespearean sonnets, so I know there's still hope. I have memorized lots of shorter poems, serious and silly, the silliest being Thomas Merton's Never call a baysitter in a thunderstorm, which, for good or ill, has lodged itself in the bank of my memory (which pays precious little interest, FYI). I love me some poems like a serial monogamist, and last month, I was in love with Mary Oliver again (some people are worth falling in love with over and again - early Adrienne Rich and Audre Lord come to mind). Wendell Berry's The Wild Geese is almost finished being burned into my psyche (What we need is here...). Through the years I've been in love with so many poems, and one poet. Like that poet, the good poems are hard to keep out of my head, and will be forever lodged in my heart.

Kim Rosen's book Saved By a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words is a fine reminder of the importance of memorizing poetry and speaking it out loud. I read it in early summer and have been memorizing and re-memorizing poems since then. Poetry is powerful medicine, and as good as a song when it's time to try a little tenderness. The great poems in Saved by a Poem (and the CD included in the book) will inspire you to great feats of memorization, and possibly even compassion. Buy it now so you can get started. You won't be sorry.


Since forever, stray lines from some poem or other will pop into my head, almost like a mantra, and the last few weeks it's been "It is the three strange angels. Admit them, admit them." I've been keeping an eye on the Occupy Wall Street movement, along with the rest of you, watching new connections being made across the country. It's been a beautiful sight to behold the sweetness of the people, the peacefulness, and the emerging clarity. It's felt like a fresh breeze blowing through our civic discourse, which is good, because Congress has been doing next to nothing since January. I absently wondered if the three strange angels had anything to do with anything, and it's taken me until now to find it. Turns out I'd last read it in Saved by a Poem.


Song of a Man Who Has Come Through - by D.H. Lawrence

Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!
If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!
If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed
By the fine, fine wind that takes its course through the chaos
of the world
Like a fine, an exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted;
If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge
Driven by invisible blows,
The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find
the Hesperides.

Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,
I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,
Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Admit them, admit them.

At the border of stupid, cranky, and prayerful

Hold My Hope led by Ana Hernandez from All Saints Company on Vimeo.

I spent a couple of weeks in San Francisco in August co-leading workshops, playing drums, practicing sitting meditation at the feet of a beautiful Kuan Yin statue, eating home cooked dinners with great people, walking around, riding a bicycle on a roof deck overlooking Alcatraz (as close as I wanna get), seeing old friends, making new ones, and generally having a good time. One new friend took me on a whirlwind tour of Sonoma, where the wine is good, and the poached egg cups are adorable and made of silicon. It was almost like a vacation, except that I worked a lot and tried to behave myself. Who could ask for more?

As it turned out, I should have asked myself at least one thing more. When I travel there's often one thing I forget. On this trip, I was supposed to fly from San Francisco to Ottawa for a workshop. The afternoon before I was to leave, it dawned on me: my passport was sitting at home on my dresser. As Geoffrey Rush said in The King's Speech: "F***F***F***"! After a couple of phone calls and much more profanity, it was clear that I would have to fly home to NY and drive to Ottawa if I was to have any hope of making it to the next gig. So, I woke up with the birds and caught a 5:30 AM flight from San Francisco to Detroit, waited around for four hours and boarded a flight home. I arrived at 8:30 PM EDT, repacked my suitcase, packed the car, and went to sleep about 11:30. I set the alarm for 2 AM so I could get to the gig as close to 9:30 AM as possible, and headed north about 2:30 AM. It was very dark, and I was feeling substantially reduced, which is to say: pretty stupid, forgetful and small.

Luckily, the drive from my house to Ottawa is one of the most beautiful drives in the country, across I-84, up Route 17 to I-81, to the Thousand Islands, and into Canada. The dawn was stunning, I thought about old friends as I passed the Finger Lakes, then the Seneca and Onondaga Res in Nedrow. The sun came up over a lake just as I drove by, and the sky was an amazing blue that only happens in upstate NY in August. I drank coffee and sang the entire way to stay awake. I was feeling revitalized when I approached the Canadian border at 8:30 AM, at the Thousand Islands border crossing, one of the most beautiful places on the planet (I kid you not). That's when it dawned on me - I had to cross the border (begin singing either "Dragnet" or "Homicide" theme song here).

I'm sure there are many people who have no trouble at all at border, crossings, but I am not one of them. I am always treated to a long delay and a game of twenty questions. Maybe it's just me. Every time I have gone across the border except twice on my way to Mexico (?), I've been questioned about every conceivable subject by the border guards. I wish I knew the magic phrase, but I don't, and I usually get this: "Please pull over there, park your car and go inside. There's an agent waiting for you."
I've always suspected that this is code for "Ana Hernandez is not a white person's name", or, "You don't look normal. - don't forget! We'll do this every time you go anywhere as long as you live, because that's how racial profiling rolls." Of course, it might be me, but (switch to "Get Smart" or "The Wire" theme song here)...

Agent No.1: What is your purpose in coming to Canada today?
Ana: I'm on my way to Ottawa for a workshop on congregational singing.
Agent: Business or pleasure?
Ana: Both (WRONG. So wrong.).
Agent No. 1 looks right through me to Agent X, who is hovering around the back of my car, looking dour.
Agent No. 1: Please pull over to the left, etc...
Ana: dutifully does as she is told (not a normal response, but a handy trick in a pinch).

Agent No. 2: Why are you here?
Fantasy Ana: Because the man in the booth has no sense of humour. (It's hard to keep her quiet, that Fantasy Ana's got some mouth on her)
Actual Ana: I'm going to Ottawa to participate in a workshop on congregational singing.
Agent: "Where in Ottawa? How long will you be in Canada? Who is the sponsor? Where are you staying? How many people will be there? Who hired you? Why did they ask you? Are those CDs in the back of your car? How many do you have? What are they for? How many do you have? What are they for?" It was like talking to a broken record (at which point Actual Ana has to wrestle Fantasy Ana to the ground, or, end up in a Canadian jail).

After many more questions, over the course of an hour, later questions being very similar to early questions, my institutional delay ended abruptly. I guess it took an hour to search the car. I made it to the gig about 10:30 AM; still a little embarrassed, and pretty tired, but so glad to finally be there. I was asked to lead something shortly after my arrival, and the video above is what I did. I was surely not perfect, but the people were great. I noticed I don't smile at all when I'm really tired, so I've made a note of that. I was smiling inside, though.

The tune/prayer is Hold my hope. Hold my trembling. Hold my heart. Teach me to be love.

Come, Come, Whoever You Are

Come Whoever You Are led by Ana Hernandez from All Saints Company on Vimeo.

Greetings of the Autumn, dear ones.
I've been way too busy to write, but here I am again with too much time on my hands. Click on the arrowhead to see and hear this stunning tune by Dale Zola, with text by Rumi (pacing up and down by Ana). I taught this in Ottawa in August at a Music That Makes Community Conference. It was taught without black dots on paper ("the music"), because I've found using the music to be both help and hindrance in teaching this tune. It took longer than what you see here, but every time I teach it with the music (and the readers always beg for it), it goes from being a little insecure, but very musical, to being stiff and lacking in anything resembling musicality or community. All the heads go down, never to be seen or heard from again. What's the use of having strong singers if their heads are buried in a book? Alice Parker once said (or maybe she's said it a thousand times:) 95% of the music is not on the page. What's worse than singing the words "Come, come, whoever you are" than singing it to no one at all and not meaning it? Don't forget to pray the things you're singing, otherwise you're missing a huge piece of the pie.

Now that I mention it, there is one experience I had this year that struck me as the worst musical disconnect I've been a part of in a long time.

I was sitting at a round table with about a dozen people, one of whom was a very famous teacher. He turned on a CD and asked us to listen, learn and sing a chant as a centering meditation. The text was something like "wherever you turn, there is the face of God." I listened, marked, learned and inwardly digested the recording, and then opened my eyes to sing and see the face of God, expecting to be able to play with the people around the table, but not one person opened their eyes to look. This went on for more than five minutes! What is up with that?

Pay attention, people. Life's short. Get out of your heads, Come, Come again! Come! Let the singing move you to action. Build a well, Occupy Wall Street, visit the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked. We can do it all while singing, and the world will be better for it.