Gearing Up for Considering Matthew Shepard, Part III

So already,* it's time for the next installment of that Considering Matthew Shepard  talk that my fellow singer Stephen Tooker and I developed together, and that I shared at Linden Ponds last week. As some of you already know, my two choral groups, the Broad Cove Chorale and the Unicorn Singers, will be presenting Craig Hella Johnson's passion oratorio twice during the last weekend of March.

Before I proceed, though, just to let you know that within the text of the talk, I'll be linking you to a full performance of CMS by the Western Illinois University Singers (you may want to listen to the whole thing at some point) and telling you at what minute you can hear several pieces of music that I mention in the talk--certainly the ones that the I played during the talk last week.

So here's the second installment of the talk.

People’s Reservations about Singing/Hearing Considering Matthew Shepard

So in talking about Matt’s flaws as an Icon and person, we're moving right into the second part of today’s talk—the reasons that people sometimes have for being a little reluctant to sing or hear Considering Matthew Shepard.

• So yes, some people would rather not sing or hear a piece of music that is extraordinarily sympathetic to someone whose character they question.

• Other people fear that a piece of music that tells the story of a brutal murder and a protested funeral—especially a full-length oratorio--will be unrelentingly depressing and disturbing. 

• And, yet other people would rather not sing or hear a piece of music that contains hate speech—and there is some in CMS. It’s not easy to hear that speech. And it’s definitely not easy to sing it. It’s not easy to feel it come out of your own mouth and to realize that its bound to land painfully even though you’re not hurling it at someone and you’re actually saying it so no one forgets how powerful, and incendiary it can be.

The best way I can think of to talk people through these reservations is to share some of the thinking and experience of Craig Hella Johnson, the composer.

When Johnson, who’s a gay man, first learned of Matthew Shepard’s brutal death, he was touched by the story so profoundly and viscerally that he knew almost immediately that he would need to respond to it, probably musically. At first, obviously, he was troubled by Matt’s murder and funeral; later he was troubled by the fact that Matt had become an icon and poster boy: he felt that deprived Matt of his individuality and personhood.

In a Colorado Public Radio interview, Johnson said he wanted to rescue Matt from the Matthew Shepard iconography and to give him back his voice and humanity. In terms of visual imagery, he said he didn’t want to leave Matt at the fence, forever a victim. As he got to know Matt’s parents, Judy and Dennis, he became increasingly committed to evoking Matt’s life and his legacy.

Ultimately, the question that most guided him was, In the face of such “confounding darkness’, how do we find our way back to love and the fullness of life? 

Johnson’s solution was to write a “passion oratorio.” I’m guessing that those two words may have musical or religious associations for some of you—or even both, and that they may create certain expectations in your mind about what you’re going to hear.

So before I say another word about them—and just to be transparent, we’re now transitioning to the third part of today’s talk--I’d like to play you the first few minutes of the first movement of this passion oratorio. And then to ask you to do a simple activity.

Here are the directions. Please listen to the piece, knowing that afterwards you’re going to choose one of these four questions and come up with your personal answer to it. After you hear the piece, I’ll give you a minute or two to gather your thoughts about one of these:

• What did you hear, and what did it make you think?
• What did you hear, and what did it make you wonder?
• What did you hear, and how did you feel about it?  
• How was what you heard like and unlike what you thought you’d hear?

Cattle, Horses, Sky, and Grass (First Four Minutes)

All.

Yoodle—ooh, yoodle-ooh-hoo, so sings a lone cowboy,

Who with the wild roses wants you to be free.

Cattle, Horses, Sky and Grass

Cattle, horses, sky and grass

These are the things that sway and pass

Before our eyes and through our dreams

Through shiny, sparkly, golden gleams

Within our psyche that find and know

The value of this special glow

That only gleams for those who bleed

Their soul and heart and utter need

Into the mighty, throbbing Earth

From which springs life and death and birth. 

So now here’s that minute to choose a question and develop your answer—you can do that by yourself, or talk to someone near you about what you’re thinking.

Are there 5 or 6 people who’d be willing to share their questions and answers, maybe something about the thinking behind them?

Well thank you for sharing your reactions with all of us. There’s one more reaction I’d like to share with you: it’s Stephen’s reaction. I love the way he talked about this in some of our email correspondence about this piece:

“. . . CMS begins by quoting Bach’s C Major Prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier, a simple piece, well-known to generations of piano students. CHJ says he chose this beginning for its simplicity and familiarity, but being Bach, it signals importance. He also wanted C major, the harmonic key in which CMS begins and ends. Do you remember C major? No sharps or flats. Is there a more accessible and welcoming key? The C major Prelude transitions into five glorious chords for the chorus, each setting the simple, monosyllabic word “All.” A big little word. Could the first word of the oratorio be more inclusive? These chords transition in turn to a simple yodeling cowboy tune evoking the yearning to be free, long associated with the American West. Simplicity, accessibility, inclusivity are all hallmarks of CMS.”

While “Cattle, Horses, Sky, and Grass” said nothing specific about Matthew Shepard, rest assured that CMS will do what passion oratorios do; tell a story of suffering and death, and provide some commentary, in the form of arias and choruses, to help us heal and grow from it.  

In the foreword to the choral score, music scholar Daniel Bara characterizes both Bach and Johnson as writers of contemporary passion oratorios: “And just as Bach structured his passion oratorios using multiple text sources and a blend of contemporary and “ancient” musical styles, so has Craig fashioned a new work, the breadth and diversity of whose textual and musical language, creates a tent vast enough to welcome the broadest of audiences.” 

Much as I like it when Bara reminds us that at some point, Bach was a contemporary composer, I do suspect that for some of you, the idea that the passion of Matt and the passion of Jesus Christ somehow equate in significance might be something you push back against. You should know that neither Johnson nor Matt’s parents ever intended to make Matt be seen as a Christ figure—but that didn’t stop some people from seeing crucifixion symbolism in Matt’s suffering on the fence. Especially, though, as Easter draws near, I did want to acknowledge what some of you might be feeling about this connection. 

Overall Structure 
So now that you’ve had a taste of the CMS’s first section, let’s talk about its overall structure.

CMS is divided into three major parts: a Prologue, the Passion, and an Epilogue. You heard the very beginning of the Prologue. “Ordinary Boy” (at 7:30) the second piece, is the one Johnson wrote to transform the icon Matt into the human being Matt. The third section (at 14:30) is about why we tell stories. After a soloist sings, the chorus vows to be open to the story about to be told.

The Passion is the story that’s told, and it’s the longest section of the piece. 

Actually, there are 32 numbered sections in CMS; #33 is a reprise of #1, so the whole piece ultimately circles back to its beginning. You can also see that there are ten numbered recitations—all of them in the Passion: they’re spoken by various people, rather than sung by one person, as they would be in Bach, and they provide most of the narration. 

Much, but not all, of the sung text comes from Leslea Newman’s poetry cycle called October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard. I recommend her book to you—and also Dennis Michael Browne’s Voices, another source of the CMS text.

The piece that dramatizes the protest of the Westboro Baptist Church at Matt’s funeral is #9, and it’s called “A Protestor” (at 27:56). I’m not going to play it for you today—frankly, I think it’s important for you to hear it in the context of the whole piece, which you’ll be able to do on March 16. But I would like to say a few things about it. 

First of all, it alludes to, literally quotes, from two other choral works. The first is Benjamin Britten’s “This Little Babe” from Ceremony of Carols—Jesus is an infant warrior in that piece. And the second is one of the choruses in Bach’s St. John Passion. If you look at this music here, you can see “kreuzige,” the German word for “crucify,” is sung to one eighth note and 2 sixteenth notes: this is the exact same rhythm that the women sing these words in CMS. "Kreuzige, Kreuzige, Kreuzige, Kreuzige." Against the women’s soft yet persistent, insistent kreuzige, kreuzige accompaniment, the men sing the really hateful things said by the Westboro Baptist Church—and then laugh Matt to scorn. The piece then becomes calm, but not exactly gentle: #9 ends with the women of the Westboro Baptist Church putting their children to bed with a really chilling lullaby. 

I’m Jewish, and I have a sort of Jewish theory about why Johnson chose the St. John text: that part of the Gospel of St. John is often quoted by people who still believe that the Jews killed Jesus, and that was 26% of Americans in 2017, according to an Anti-Defamation League poll. I think that Johnson used this text to make sure CMS was about more than the power and danger of anti-gay hate only— I think he wanted it to be about the power and danger of all varieties of hate and hate crime. There’s so much significant layering in this piece, all in the name of making sure everyone is seen, acknowledged, and included.

So back to the CMS big picture. One thing that’s really interesting about CMS is that all the events that people don’t look forward to singing or hearing about happen relatively early in the piece. So if the ugliest, most violent parts of the story are over in the first third of the piece, what is the rest of the piece about? Just the resulting anger and pain?

* Photo to the left by Debi Milligan; part of her collection called "Laramie, Wyoming." Photo of statue below also by Debi Milligan, part of same collection.

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.

Gearing Up for Considering Matthew Shepard, Part I

So already, three weeks from tonight, on March 28, the Unicorn Singers and Broad Cove Chorale (BCC-US) will perform Considering Matthew Shepard, Craig Hella Johnson's passion oratorio, in Norwell, Massachusetts. We'll perform the piece again on Sunday afternoon, March 29. It's an amazing piece of music, one that takes singers and listeners on an important journey; it's well worth the drive to Boston's South Shore.

As our concert publicity explains, "Craig Hella Johnson's contemporary passion oratorio, so well-suited to the needs of our times, recounts the brutal slaying of a young, gay Wyoming college student in 1998 and the hate-filled, anti-gay protest staged by members of the Westboro Baptist Church at his funeral several days later. Yes, it tells a deeply disturbing story, often in difficult language, but ultimately it affirms life. Blending varied musical styles and diverse text sources, it accommodates a wide range of listener tastes and sensibilities--and attests to the power of art and music to help people learn, grow, heal, hope, and love."

I've been living and breathing this piece for several months now, and that's been my privilege as a choral singer, a former teacher in a high school with a very diverse student population, an American Jew, a sometimes blogger and poet, and a believer in the power of art (literature, visual art, music) to enlighten--and sometimes even to transform and to heal.*

I also believe that under many circumstances, art can bring people together. Time and time again during my teaching career, I watched how poems, novels, short stories, and plays got my students talking to one another about who they really were, how the world worked (which was not the same for all of them), how the world should work, and how the world, maybe, could work, if ____.

Time and time again, I bore witness to how much all of this mattered to them: whenever I read articles that focused exclusively on the psychological and sociological development of young people, I wanted to scream, "Why aren't you also talking about their spiritual and philosophical development? Why can't you see that they're not just thinking about career paths and personal goals and others' opinions of them; they're wondering what life is about, what it's for. They already sense that they're part of something bigger than just their individual lives and choices; they're already sensing the possibility of a whole other kind of meaning."

Cambridge Rindge and Latin School

The discussions that literature precipitated in my classroom sometimes surfaced our differences,** allowing us to explore them, more often than not respectfully.*** What we had in common invariably surfaced too--not always without some struggle. Usually, we were left with the feeling that we had some "important stuff" in common--enough so that we could experience ourselves as an authentic if slightly tentative "we" who could move forward together toward something positive. When things went well, our "we" strengthened over time.

So why this former teacher digression? All of this came back to me when Broad Cove Chorale-Unicorn Singers conductor Margo Euler began reaching out to singers in both groups last summer to see if we could be on board with singing Considering Matthew Shepard (CMS). It hasn't been our custom, at least during the time I've been singing with the groups, to perform a one-work spring program as heavy in content and as overtly concerned with social justice and spiritual healing as CMS is. Several singers were initially opposed, and many who came on board relatively early on did so with reservations. Over the last couple of months, I've become aware through conversations with my fellow singers of just how many of them belonged to the "singers with reservations" category: lots more than I'd even imagined. And some still do.

As for me, I was on board from the very beginning--not just because when I first listened to the piece I found it moving and beautiful and invitingly singable, but because everything in my own experience had long ago convinced me of the power of art--especially art created by compassionate artists--to support groups and individuals in encountering difficult stories and truths--and in becoming communities that can move forward together. 

Craig Hella Johnson

But let's face it: the members of the Broad Cove Chorale and the Unicorn Singers are singers, not students learning to dialogue and collaborate across difference. And while I'm practically certain--I haven't polled them--that making music is important spiritually to all of us who sing in these groups, we spend our time together learning notes, rhythms, and then the way to sing them with words so that they become music that communicates to others, not talking about how we each are experiencing it emotionally and spiritually. Initially I wondered if we could convincingly sing our audience into becoming the unified "we" that CMS aspires to create when we ourselves were divided. But that was before I understood how much Craig Hella Johnson's vision and composition would actually help us become a "we"--or at least enough of a "we." As I said in the paragraph that began this blog post, the piece is amazing.

Yes, this is a blog post. Yes, it's my habit and pleasure to try to put things into words and to talk about things that I think are important. And yes, I love to write about art that moves me. As a matter of fact, in other years I've written blog posts about poems set to music and whole programs presented by BCC-US that have thoroughly engaged and moved me--and that I believed had so much to offer to others. I'm staying true to that tradition with this blog post--and with the ones that will follow it.

Eager for our performances of Considering Matthew Shepard to have good-sized, enthusiastic audiences, I volunteered to convene a publicity and outreach subcommittee. Those who volunteered to be on it brought with them many different valuable skills and experiences; check out this youtube video advertisement one of them created to capture various singers' thoughts about and impressions of CMS.

Early on, another member of our subcommittee, Stephen Tooker, a longtime Unicorn Singer tenor, began talking about how important it was for us to decide how we wanted to talk about Considering Matthew Shepard. He began thinking and writing, and then he and I began thinking and writing together: what did people need to know about Considering Matthew Shepard in order to decide to come to it? What might hold them back from wanting to come hear it, and what might make them want to come to hear it? Stephen taught English at Massasoit Community College; I taught English at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. We had a really good time reading, writing, and thinking together.

Our joint writing led to an invitation from Margo Euler and Linden Ponds Diversity and Inclusion Committee to give a talk at Linden Ponds, the senior living community where Margo lives and where we will be performing our dress-rehearsal/first performance of CMS just over a week for now. Because Stephen couldn't be at Linden Ponds last Thursday, I gave the talk, which very much reflected the thinking of both of us.

Laramie Photo by Debi Milligan

In the next week or so, I'll be sharing that talk here. Powerpoint slides and all. So if you're on the fence about coming to hear Considering Matthew Shepard or if you'd just plain like to learn more about it. Stay tuned. As I've already said twice, the piece really is amazing! Hope you'll consider a trip down to United Church of Christ Norwell to see and hear it for yourself.

* (I'm still working on the question of the whether you can have healing without transformation, and vice versa.)
** I was part of the group, though I was the teacher. 
*** Making the classroom safe for such talk is always hard work, and it's not always successful hard work.

From My Morning Pages . . . An Experiment

View Out the Back Window of the Orono Public Library

So already, last Friday afternoon, I left the Orono Public Library just before closing. Saturday morning, I wrote morning pages before getting out of bed and beginning to prepare for the drive home after my three-day writing retreat.

Saturday night, back home, I shared a section of my morning pages with my husband Scott. He suggested that I post it here. He wondered how others might respond to my words, which seemed to him more alive than my usual "crafted" writing.

So tonight, with the results of the Iowa caucuses unknown and the President yet to be acquitted, I'm sitting here determined to share that morning pages section. If I had to call it anything, I'd quote Coleridge and call it "Water, Water, Everywhere." Prepare ye to be jerked from sea to shining river--the mind can do that. I will break it into paragraphs and occasionally clarify parts that need it. Here goes.  

"And as I write the date on this page [February 1, 2020], I realize that in addition to crossing a river [which I'll do later this morning], I'm also crossing into a new month, and I'm thinking back to the beginning of January that was so fully consumed by my parents' health issues that I didn't even put up my 2020 calendar until January 6 (or even the 7th): there was just no time even to think about it.

"Epiphany. The epiphany was that it was a new year, a new beginning, and I didn't even have the time to appreciate that I was, theoretically, crossing a new threshold; was, theoretically, standing at the edge of a fresh start; was, theoretically, poised at a kind of new beginning. The epiphany was that I could let a new beginning slip by. Wait: it was that I don't think that I trust new beginnings anymore. 

"I used to really believe in, put a lot of stock in, new beginnings; I used to think that I could capitalize on those borders, thresholds, vantage points that I imbued with symbolism and motivational potential. But if it's one thing I've learned this past year, it's how so many of the symbols I've embraced, in part because I hoped the mindfulness and consciousness of them would inspire me and mark my being more free, were nothing but sandbags against the tide.

Housatonic River flood; Ashley Falls, MA*

"The tide is all the parent-related stuff in my life that just daily sweeps across the flood plain.** We're not always talking tumultuous storms and crashing waves; we're talking that slow-moving broad expanse of water that heaves oh so slightly even on the brightest, sunniest days. That water is always flowing, and there's no avoiding it. The best you can do, or I can do, is to just to put on boots and wade in.

"Because more than anything, it's not about avoiding the water. It's about keeping one's feet and clothing dry, about carrying one's valuables safely across it, about navigating it respectfully, even appreciatively, without drowning in it. . . .

"But there's so much water these days . . . there needs to be an effort to fight back. If I do nothing, I get swallowed up and I drown, but if I try too hard to fight it, I expend all this energy, get exhausted, and drown anyway. No, there has to be some analogy to how you swim when you get carried away by a rip current. You can't swim directly toward the shore; the wisdom is that you swim parallel to the shore, not at it. But what happens then? I'm not sure. . . . But what I do know is . . . that strategy is needed. Endurance is needed. It needs to be a smart effort, because as Lipsha Morrissey says in Love Medicine, "we live on dry land." 

So there you have my morning pages passage. No more symbols, no more feel-good but ultimately hollow assignments of meaning to phenomena that parse time and space. Just an acknowledgment of so much water and some wise swimming and waded needed. Just a hope . . .. There are such things as houseboats; there are ways to live on water. And yes, I see that with those houseboats, I'm back to manufacturing metaphors and symbols that just might float my boat.

* https://www.flickr.com/photos/allisonac/2329645640/
** Yes, I know I'm mixing all kinds of water imagery; that happens in morning pages. I probably should have said beach, not flood plain.

On the Fence on a Maine Friday Morning

So already, I'm sitting again in the Orono Public Library, this time on the temporal fence that separates the last day of my three-day Maine writing retreat from the first day of my Massachusetts regular life resumed. Whether or not it should, my mind routinely prepares for what's next, even when it desperately wants to be fully engaged in what's now.

That's why before coming to the library today, I gassed up my car for tomorrow's ride home--and photographed the Stillwater River, which divides Orono into two parts. Rivers, like fences, divide. River water, like time, flows--but sometimes, like time, seems to stand still.

I know that if I lean too far toward tomorrow, I risk squandering today. But if I don't acknowledge the fence, I may miss the chance to make it something other than a divider between a life shaped by others' needs and desires and one shaped by my own. Maine was part of Massachusetts until 1820. It may be that integration and division don't need to be antithetical. The challenge is, after all, to feel creative and free even when I'm in Massachusetts being responsible. Maybe I don't need to "resume" my regular life, as I put it in the first sentence of this blog, exactly. Maybe I can live it in a modified but still responsible way. And actually write something now and again.

Of late, I've been thinking a lot about fences. How could I not be, given that Craig Hella Johnson's Considering Matthew Shepard contains multiple pieces that focus on the fence on which Matthew Shepard was left to die--and even allows it to speak as an "objective witness" of the oratorio's events?*

Actually, it was Leslea Newman in her October Mourning poetry cycle who first gave voice to that iconic fence so often rendered artistically in publicity for performances of the oratorio. 

Yes, there's "objective witness" courtesy of that fence in the oratorio. But in my opinion, there's important emotion, too. Take, for example, "The Fence (one week later)"--meaning one week after the murder. (I hope you'll listen to it at minute 57:30 in this Interlochen Festival Choir performance.) The text of the poem* is preceded by the following epigraph: "'I have seen people come out here with a pocketknife and take a piece of the fence, like a relic, like an icon.' ̶ Rev. Stephen M. Johnson, Unitarian minister."

I keep still

I stand firm

I hold my ground

while they lay down

flowers and photos

prayers and poems

crystals and candles

sticks and stones

they come in herds

they stand and stare

they sit and sigh

they crouch and cry

some of them touch me

in unexpected ways

without asking permission

and then move on

but I don't mind

being a shrine

is better than being

the scene of the crime 

The first part of the poem definitely offers factual witness: the still fence lists curious human behaviors and artifacts associated with them, neither of which it has been used to seeing or experiencing. The transition to the realm of feeling is accomplished by the ambiguous word "touch": we're asked to wonder if the fence feels physically touched, emotionally moved, or both. An assertion of the fence's integrity follows: those who touch it "in unexpected ways" do so "without asking permission"--in other words, without respecting the fence as a sentient player in the drama. Finally, after a somewhat offhand "I don't mind," the fence expresses a preference for being a place of memorial rather than murder. Such a preference must have some basis in feeling.

There's something about the voice of this fence that I love. It conveys a baffled humility and an acceptance in response to human behaviors that are new and not fully comprehensible to it. I think I sometimes hear myself speaking to myself in that voice a few days after my mother has exhibited a new Alzheimer's-related behavior. The shock and sadness of first observing the behavior dissipates over several days, and is followed by a sad but willing acceptance of the new reality. At that moment of acceptance, I can honestly say to myself, "I don't mind; this is where we are now, and it's not the worst place we could be." Sometimes I surprise myself by managing to climb over a fence into a place that I never imagined setting foot in, let alone coming to inhabit.

So no, I'm not going to carve a chunk out of the wooden table where I'm sitting in the Orono Public Library and take it home with me: somebody else is going to need to sit here tomorrow to do what they must do. But I am bringing home the three blog posts I've written while I've been up here in Maine. The words, like that river water, may not look like they're flowing, but they are. I'd better give them a place to gather and speak. There may well be a good road home, but it's going to have to run through places on both sides of the fence.

* Johnson explained this in an interview with Colorado Public Radio.

** The entire libretto of Considering Matthew Shepard can be found here: https://conspirare.org/wp-content/uploads/CMS-Libretto-LA-June-2018.pdf