Before I offer my review of “Beautiful World,” Eliza Gilkyson’s new CD on Red House Records, two disclaimers up front.
First, this really isn’t a music review because I don’t know anything about music. I’m the guy they put in the back row of the choir with instructions to mouth the words as quietly as possible. I learned three guitar chords once; I remember two of them.
Second, while I’m not a big fan of the rules of so-called “objective journalism” in the corporate-commercial news media, this is really a not-objective review — the singer/songwriter is my partner, in community organizing projects in Austin and in our personal lives.
With those disclaimers, let me say without hesitation that you absolutely can trust me on this one: If you are concerned with the state of U.S. society and the health of the planet, listen to Gilkyson’s new record. I have been writing about similar subjects in journalistic form in recent years, but these songs do what I can’t do in prose — they help us let down our guard, if only for a few moments, so that we may ponder honestly the cascading crises we face. Gilkyson opens up not only an intellectual but also an emotional space for dealing with reality.
To be at our best politically, we need to be able to stare
down that reality without giving in to either sophomoric cynicism or
silly sentiment. We need a harsh critique, but one grounded in the
recognition of the beauty that remains all around us. Given the serious
nature of these crises — political and social, economic and ecological
— it’s not surprising that people often are reluctant to face these
realities. Gilkyson’s invocation of our world’s beauty makes it easier
to do.
The core of the record is four songs that address our relationship to
the larger ecosystem. “The Party’s Over” reminds us the energy-orgy
lifestyle of recent decades is almost finished. “The Great Correction”
suggests that a readjustment is coming in the not-too-distant future, a
moment when we’ll be forced to recognize our interconnectedness because
“we’ll all be burning in the same big sun/when the great correction
comes.” “Runaway Train” asks us to think about the reckless nature of
First-World affluence, reminding us that whatever our personal position
in U.S. society, we are all riding on the same train. And the record’s
final cut, “Unsustainable,” argues that we need to go “back to the
drawing board/start all over again,” delivers a difficult message in a
slow, jazzy style.
OK, that sounds a bit grim, and it would be if Gilkyson left it at
that. But as the tragedy of our arrogance plays out all around us, she
reminds us that it plays out in a truly beautiful world, “circling
infinitely/fragment of sun marbled in blue/turning in time and tuned
like a symphony.” That beauty can be found, for example, in Austin in
Barton Springs (thinly disguised in the song “Wildewood Springs”),
“where the wild birds sing/where the water’s clean” a place where we go
when we “long for revival.” If we open ourselves up, that beauty — and
the joy that comes from it — can be found all around us. And from that
comes the strength to continue political struggles. The game isn’t over
yet.
Woven in among the more overtly political songs are reminders that in
our personal relationships we struggle to find the same beauty within
ourselves and each other, sometimes successfully (“Clever Disguise”)
and sometimes not (“Rare Bird”). Gilkyson reminds us that even in our
failures, there is the hope that “we’ll go on from here unbound/meet
again on higher ground/some uncloudy day.” The personal is political is
planetary; we live in a web of relationships — to self, others, and the
non-human world. Learning to attend to all of them is at the core of
our struggle to be fully human in a
mass-mediated/mass-marketed/mass-medicated world.
A number of these songs were first performed at a series of “Last
Sunday” community gatherings in Austin in 2006-07, when we invited
people to talk about their fears and hopes for the future. The Rev. Jim
Rigby, Gilkyson, and I were the primary organizers, but Gilkyson’s
music was the emotional center of the events. Rigby and I always knew
that more people probably came to hear her music than to listen to us,
but that never bothered us. Rigby’s prophetic preaching and my
political analysis were important, but we all desperately yearned for
the art that can confront and nurture.
“Beautiful World” provides that kind of challenge and comfort, offering
not definitive answers but, in Gilkyson’s words, “just a little prayer
from me.”
For more information on “Beautiful World,” released by Red House Records, go to
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at
Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center.
His latest book is Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007).
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