Sojourn Worship Songwriting Community, pt. 3

I had tried to visit Woody (Guthrie) regularly ... Woody had been confined to Greystone Hospital in Morristown, New Jersey, and I would usually take the bus there from the Port Authority terminal, make the hour-and-a-half ride and then walk the rest of the half mile up the hill to the hospital, a gloomy and threatening granite building .... Usually I'd play him his songs during the afternoon. Sometimes he'd ask for specific ones -- "Rangers Command," "Do Re Me," "Dust Bowl Blues," "Pretty Boy Floyd," "Tom Joad," the song he'd written after seeing the movie "The Grapes of Wrath." I knew all those songs and many more.
Bob Dylan, Chronicles, vol. 1

The image of a young, pre-celebrity Bob Dylan traveling 90 minutes one way to trudge up a hill and play a few songs for his dying hero, in an asylum, is worthy of consideration. Dylan is wrongly held by many to be an archetype of the modern, unBiblical model of the artist as a recluse, a lone rebel, in need of no one, understood by no one. The truth is that not only did Dylan feel an extreme debt and amount of gratitude toward his musical forebears and mentors, but he constantly surrounded himself with others in his set, trading notes, swapping tales, helping with gigs.

After establishing the Biblical basis for creative community, stemming from the eternal trinity and existing throughout both testaments, Michael Card writes, in "Scribbling In The Sand":

Historically, the greatest periods of creativity have been the result of community. The Renaissance, that great flowering of creativity, faith, and imagination, was largely the result of the coming together of communities or schools of artists. Da Vinci, Michelangelo and practically every other artist of name was a product of a creative community or "school." In the context of such a "school," which usually centered around a single "master," the young artist would be apprenticed for a period of months or years.
In such early schools creative input was given within the context of community, that is, within a context of respect and trust. The community encouraged excellence and an aesthetic accountability. The freedom to experiment and even to fail was a vital part of the experience of every young apprentice. The image of the lonely, tormented artist came largely with the modern era.

These are the kinds of things I meditated on from the time I joined Sojourn up until the creation, this past September, of the monthly songwriting workshops. These are the kinds of things I'd been thinking about for many years previous, too, but I had no one to turn to -- no local Christian songwriting mentors or peers, really.

Several of the songwriters at Sojourn have told me similar stories -- Chad Lewis, for one. Chad has a clear, powerful dulcet voice and a minstrel's flair for telling stories through his songs. He's been writing alone now for awhile, and, like me, is glad to have fellow Christian songwriters to bounce ideas off of. I'll tell you more about a collaboration between he and I in a later edition of this series.

Jay Eubanks is another one. Jay is "Bonofied." What I mean by that is, well -- here's a tidbit from a story Dylan tells about having dinner with Bono, the lead singer of U2, in "Chronicles, vol. 1":

Spending time with Bono was like eating dinner on a train -- feels like you're moving, going somewhere. Bono's got the soul of an ancient poet ....

That's what it feels like to talk to Bonofied Jay Eubanks -- you're going somewhere. You can feel the movement, the heart of the sojourn you're taking together, the discoveries you're making and the trail-markings you're leaving together so that those who come this way later will have an easier time sticking to the path.

Anyway, Jay and I were talking recently about a great song of his that we workshopped at the last monthly group meeting. He told me how much he prefered to create in community, and to get the feedback. It's interesting to me that a good, experienced writer like Jay, who is capable of creating in a vacuum if need be, is so high on community, while lesser artists I've known cannot divest themselves of their own pride and over-protectiveness, insisting that no one can really judge their work because no one "understands" them. Such a notion does not come from a Biblical framework, it comes from pride and insecurity. The team that has assembled at Sojourn understands this.

Enough can't be said about the importance of apprenticeship. From Card:

Apprenticeship reminds us once again that creativity does not occur in a vacuum; it requires a community. From apprenticeship the community acquires new artists, artists who have been spared innumerable dead ends because a "master" has taken them in hand and passed on a wealth of experience...
Apprenticeship is discouraged in the industrial world for two reasons. First, the commercial system is based on individualism (celebrityism). Second, production schedules rarely afford the time required for someone to be nurtured in his or her craft. In the absence of community, the artist experiences a sense of aloneness and defeat.


We have a diverse crew -- folkies, rockers. Theologians, poets. Amateur hymnologists and praise chorus afficionados. Everyone brings something different to the table. We also have varying degrees of experience -- "Masters" and "pupils," you might say, but I'd argue that everyone acts in both capacities on occasion. I have learned a lot from the others. In turn, many of them have asked me to help them with various compositions, and I think I have provided good food for thought on occassion. We have writers who have been at this for years, and some who are just starting, but there is a good level of respect across the board.


I don't mean to imply that we have "arrived" though. The whole thing is still on the ground floor. And that's where I was getting to in the last installment of this series, before I took this lengthy aside to tell you some of my thoughts -- why I think creative community is so important to the church (and the Church).

Part Four will pick up chronologically with the birth of the monthly songwriting workshops, the core of our songwriting community.