Tweet - Break it Down

The inauguration was AWESOME.

I sat in the boardroom with all of my colleagues for an hour, laughing and signing and crying and applauding. It was AWESOME.

I loathe the inclusion of an invocation/benediction in a secular service,

As an actively non-religious person striving to be the best *human being* I can be and working to make this world which contains all of the value and beauty I conceive of or hope for, to constantly hear religious leaders belittle that with statements to the effect of "everything we see and create and are belongs to a being we can't see or hear or touch and is yet more powerful than us and therefore is deserving of our worship above and beyond all else" is incredibly offensive. To hear it at a celebration of the best that we have collectively striven for is more of a slap in the face to humanity than the selection of an exclusionary bigot to deliver the message could ever be to me as a moderately liberal gay woman. (As I said to Becca over New Years, inclusion of the religious stuff at all bothers me more than prominently featuring the asshole responsible for spreading so much hate of LGBT people.)

but whatever.

I'm never going to win this - I get that. But for the record, having religious garbage shoved in my face at Constitutionally inappropriate times makes me less willing to put up with any religious sentiment, ever, from anyone.

Music + Poetry = LOVE.

Writing a single piece of music for clarinet, cello, piano, and violin (read: fiddle) that includes solos, rounds, call-and-response, and the typical John Williams emotionally swelling conclusion is among the most brilliant works of homage to the fact that we have broken a major barrier of socio-polictical change by electing a black man as President. Tributes to jazz, swing, blues, soul, and traditional American folk music, all wrapped up in a classical concert piece that celebrates a conversational rise and fall amid the lilting laughter of children. Wow, what a piece for this President.

Love Elizabeth Alexander, too, and am thrilled by Obama's inclusion of poetry, but I go back to what I said in college about poetry readings: a great poem is a great poem. A great poem read poorly, even with the best intentions, is difficult to fall in love with. I kept getting tripped up by her over-enunciation and strange pauses/breaks that made no grammatical sense and broke the rhythm of cadence. But, I loved the work enough that I'll read it myself, in order to fall in love with it on my own.

First published at TheNines