Gearing Up for Considering Matthew Shepard, Part II

So already, here's the first part of the talk that developed from the thinking that Stephen Tooker and I did about Craig Hella Johnson's Considering Matthew Shepard. We're both members of the Unicorn Singers, and I'm also a member of the Broad Cove Chorale. Both groups will be singing Considering Matthew Shepard on Saturday, March 28 and Sunday, March 29.

Preparing to Hear Considering Matthew Shepard 
A Talk by Joan Soble (and Stephen Tooker)

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to “Preparing to Hear Considering Matthew Shepard.” My name is Joan Soble, and I’m so grateful to the Linden Ponds Diversity and Inclusion Committee for inviting me to be here with you today. I really love Considering Matthew Shepard­—I have since last August when I sat down and listened to the whole piece for the first time—and I really trust in its power to do good in the world.  

I hope that by the end of my talk today, those of you who are already excited about coming to hear it on March 16 will be even more excited, and those of you who’ve been on the fence about coming will decide to get off the fence and join the rest of us here in ten days.

Originally, my fellow Unicorn Singer, Stephen Tooker, and I were going to give this talk together. But unfortunately, he had to bow out—luckily, not before he and I had spent a lot of time talking and thinking together about Considering Matthew Shepard, which we both think is remarkable and very important. So in many places, this talk expresses the thinking both of us.

Here’s the roadmap for today’s talk. 

·     First, I’ll share some facts about Matthew Shepard—his life, his death, and their aftermath.

·    Then I’ll talk a little about some of the concerns that people raise when they think about singing and hearing Considering Matthew Shepard.

·    Then for the rest of the talk—actually, for the bulk of it, I’ll talk about the piece itself. I’m going to talk to you about 

·     why Craig Hella Johnson wrote it, what he hoped to achieve by writing it,

·      how he structured it to fulfill his purposes,

·      and finally, what techniques he used to support those of us singing and hearing it to have a powerful, positive experience. You’ll definitely get to hear parts of CMS—which is how I’ll often refer to Considering Matthew Shepard.

So with that plan in mind, let's get into those facts about Matthew Shepard’s life, death, and legacy.  Thanks to Stephen, I share this chronology with you.

(Spend some time looking at the facts, the timeline.)

This chronology definitely establishes that the life and death of Matthew Shepard were newsworthy in 1998—and that they are still newsworthy.  But what it doesn’t explain is why Matt’s story spread like wildfire across the country and around the world in 1998. 

Maybe the time, the decade, was ripe for the story, as this headline in a 1993 Christian Science Monitor suggests. 

·    Maybe it was because when the media asked Matt’s friends about his murder, they were quick to speculate that Matt had been attacked for being gay. 

·        Maybe it was the graphic, sensational details of Matt’s brutal beating, the image of him on the fence beneath a big, star-filled sky, and the subsequent hateful protest at his funeral. 

·     And maybe it was Matt’s child-like, innocent appearance. Matt was 5’2”, of slight build, wore braces and blond bangs, had a shy smile; his innocent, angelic looks made him, from many people’s points of view, the perfect image of a victim of a heinous crime that would spark outrage against the forces of evil and hate—and spark action against them.

There are always upsides and downsides to giving anti-gay hate crime—or any kind of hate crime--a name and face. 

·    The upside is that when we see the face and hear the name, we’re galvanized to commit or recommit to justice-seeking activism. 

·    The downside is we’re usually bound to discover that the person we’ve made into an icon, into a one-dimensional symbol whom we’ve put on some kind of a pedestal--is actually human—and therefore flawed and imperfect.

Before we talk about how Matt wasn’t perfect, it’s probably good for us to note that from a demographic perspective, Matt was never the most typical victim of anti-gay hate crime—actually, it’s people of color who are disproportionately the victims of gender-related hate crimes. And still, Matt’s whiteness didn’t make him less a victim. Still, it behooves us to be mindful of whose stories get told and whose stories don't, and to pay attention to whose pain, loss, and suffering we’re more inclined to care about or be moved by.

So now for the issue of Matt’s own behavior. There was no doubt that Matt wasn’t perfect. His mother was quick to point out that he smoked too much, drank too much, and skipped too many classes—which made him like many college students. And he definitely made some poor, risky decisions in his young personal life: online you can find any number of books, articles, and news stories that go into these in sordid, gossipy detail.

Stay tuned for the next part of this talk, which will explore all of #2 and part of #3 on the talk roadmap above.