Craft Is Our Common Language

How do you render brokenness?

I was still new to our church when I noticed our worship pastor, Adam, posting about playing at local songwriting gigs. 

“I’d love to come to your next one,” I told him. (For nine months.)

A few weeks ago, Danny and I finally made it out. We booked a babysitter, jumped in the minivan, and headed downtown to the Cosmic Songwriters Festival at a back alley bar. Adam shared the stage with another guitarist and songwriter, a late twenty-something with a beautiful voice. They took turns sharing original works for about an hour, and sitting there enjoying my bougie hard seltzer, I got to watch a lot more than songwriting on display.

Adam was witnessing. Not a single word about Jesus, but faith on display nonetheless.

Let me tell you about it. But first, let me tell you why it shook me up.

…

I was eleven weeks pregnant with my second child at my first writing residency. Four months prior, I’d tossed my hat in the ring of my top-pick low-residency MFA program, believing I wouldn’t be accepted, but hoping for some feedback so I could try again next time. Three months prior, Dan and I started low-key trying for Baby #2. It had taken nearly a year to become pregnant with our daughter, so we thought we had some time, but (God, you are abundantly kind and hilarious) my name was called into both arenas at once. 

After a full day of travel and a terrible night’s sleep, I settled into our first 13+ hour day of craft talks, workshops, and readings. I remember opening my notebook that morning and rallying myself with an internal monologue: Take notes, focus, you can do this. But the learning, the lectures, even the workshops came easily to me. It was the late night readings by faculty and students that broke me down.

Imagine: Sitting attentively as you listen to a writer compose a world, a character. It is not a book you have browsed for and opened, and so you cannot shut the cover and walk away. You are pulled in, deeper, to 15 or 20 minutes of a scene depicting a rape so minutely it is almost tender. Depicting a young girl walking in on her father hanging from a rafter. Dear Reader, I am sorry to upset you with this recounting, and I will stop with these two examples, but hear me when I say: That was the hardest part.

That, or sitting across from the author at lunch the next day.

…

Our shoes stuck to the floor slightly as Danny and I found a booth in the dim light of the bar. From where we sat, we had a great view of the stage, and could even hear men peeing between sets on the other side of the partition to the bathroom. Classic. 

That Adam was there at all—that he pursued songwriting in addition to ministry work, marriage, and fatherhood—spoke volumes about his commitment to art. That he was having fun, putting joy and lightheartedness on display was brilliant. Sharing the stage, the two songwriters alternated songs for the audience. 

Adam, a country song about persevering in love.

She, a melodic piece, featuring scenes of sadomasochism.

The contrast was a bit jarring, but Adam stepped up to the mic and said: “I have to say, that was a deft move with internal rhyme. Not everyone out here probably pays that close of attention to those kind of things, but man, details like that make the song.”

Back and forth they went, Adam infusing humor and made-up love stories, his stage partner countering him, at one point with a song called “Sin.” 

Here’s the thing, from my experience people who are not connected to a church community (even if they do have a faith practice) don’t typically term their own behaviors as “sin,” so as I was listening to her beautiful voice tell me that “sin is what makes us authentic,” I had to wonder, did she write that one just for Adam? Was the experience of being in a songwriting community with a worship pastor so unsettling to her that she had to process it in song? 

Adam talked about how the emotional tone of the lyrics was matched by the dissonance in her chords. “It made my heart ache,” he said.

(Mine, too.)

…

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:21

…

I don’t believe the writers I learned alongside whose stories glorified violence and sexual trauma were evil, but I did not know how to engage with them afterwards. My own history of trauma was so triggered by the experience that all I wanted to do was hide. After that first residency, I attended the readings selectively, I rehearsed coping strategies with my therapist, and I felt set apart and lonely in my sensitivity. I questioned my commitment to art. I questioned my commitment to evangelism. 

What does it look like to engage with other artists whose creative practice romanticizes exploitation and brokenness?

Adam showed me the way. Craft becomes our common language and a bridge to elevating the discussion. Their art is springing from their own despair, but see how they render it? 

Artist to artist, we have so much to say to one another, but the principal mechanism for overcoming the oil spill of brokenness, reinvigorating our cultural waters with good, is to engage our own craft well. 

After all, as any writer knows, it is not just what you say, but how you say it.

Photo by Sam Moghadam Khamseh on Unsplash