Originally published on Medium.com Sep 27, 2020
A few weeks ago I brought my ukulele to a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Prescott, AZ as I usually do when I go to rallies. This time I was surprised to see a large cadre of mostly men with guns and no masks surrounding the group. Most of the guns were in holsters, but some were semi-automatic rifles. The lack of masks scared me more than the guns because they were actually shooting germs at me. The bullets were still in the guns.
It didn’t occur to me to be scared away. Once I got in the throng, I realized that we were not surrounded but infiltrated. I started singing because it’s what I do. The song I picked is called “Build the Bridges (Take Down the Walls), which I wrote with Meg Bohrman in 2016. By the time I got to the part that goes, “Gonna love everybody even if they don’t think like me,” one of the guys interrupted me and asked if I was talking about THE wall. He thought that we needed more walls. I said that I’m really singing about walls between people. I want to build bridges between people like you and me, for instance. He said it ain’t gonna happen.
I told him that I agree. I feel the same way. The divide is too large. But I’m going to keep trying. Then I realized that we agreed on something. That was more than I expected. So maybe we didn’t build a bridge. But maybe I sent up a flare and the bridge will come later.
Then some of the protesters started singing with me, “All we are saying… is give Black lives a chance,” over and over again. Then a bunch of demonstrators chanted, “Black lives matter!” drowning us out. Then a bunch of gun people shouted, “All lives matter!” drowning THEM out. One guy’s face was red with veins popping. I told him that I agree that all lives matter, but right now we are focusing on Black lives because Black people are being terrorized. He shouted, “@#$% Black lives!”
He reminded me of a toddler having a temper tantrum. If you’ve ever seen a toddler having a temper tantrum, you know that they are in a lot of pain. You also know that when it’s over, so is the pain. In fact, a toddler can move from one extreme emotion to another in an instant. If you’ve ever seen a face transform in seconds from doom to jubilation, you know what I mean. But this guy looked like, sometime in his life, he got stuck on doom and was now in a perpetual temper tantrum. Imagine a toddler with a gun having a temper tantrum. That is scary.
There was a lot of dissonance at this rally. I love dissonance. But human conflict spiraling out of control can lead to tragedy. When I sense that starting to happen, I like to bring in some harmony. Music is a good way to learn about harmony.
If you have a piano keyboard, find middle C, which is the white note just to the left of the most middle two black note pairs. Play that C along with the B above it. You can find the B by playing the musical alphabet from C, which goes up to G before starting over from A. So play C D E F G A B. (If you don’t have a keyboard go HERE.) When you play that C and the B above it together, the sound is pretty dissonant isn’t it? In order to appreciate the potential of dissonance, here is a little background on the biology of harmonics.
Music is alive. Every note has a whole bunch of notes contained inside of it. The makeup of these notes determines the tonal character of the note. These notes are called harmonics. Every note has tons of these notes within notes. In some combinations of notes, these harmonics are shared. C and B pretty much don’t share any harmonics. C and E share a whole bunch, and so do E and B.
So by adding one note to that very dissonant combination of C and B, we’ve created two new intervals with a whole lot of shared harmonics. Suddenly we have what many consider to be the most beautiful chord in the world, a major 7th chord.
When I went down to the square I saw two distinct dissonant notes. I didn’t know which was the B and which was the C, but the people with guns and the Black Lives Matter people were not sharing a lot of harmonics. You can see a clip HERE.
I’d like to think that I was that middle note. I’m not talking about a moderate note. This middle note is radical. To be that middle note you have to tune yourself so that your harmonics line up with the harmonics of both of those dissonant notes. So you have to listen intently. You have to be ready to adjust your note, if necessary. You have to listen to both notes at the same time and appreciate them as they are. Don’t try to change them. Just keep listening and find what your note needs to be.
Be the middle note.
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