The bad news for haters of Hozier and/or puns: “Take Me To Church” was the perfect way to brand what this newsletter is about — music and gathering to talk about it every Sunday.
Why We Gather Here
As I’m certain y’all can relate to, this world tried its damndest to tell me who I am and what I should value growing up.
Whether it was the religious institutions friends and family tried to indoctrinate me into, the boys who I competed with in academics and athletics who were desperate for me to be “less,” or the mentors who wanted me to follow in their footsteps – I resisted who and how I was told to be. Because as a mixed-race kid raised by the “white side” of my family within the multicultural fabric of Southern California, I knew there wasn’t a drumbeat for me to follow.
I had to find my own.
And so I’ve spent a lifetime discovering (and reinventing) the beat to my drum, cycling through all kinds of music and harnessing it as a tool to process my lived experiences.
The “processing power” of music is a term I’ll use to encapsulate all of the healing and spiritual benefits of music that have been well-documented across cultures and time — one of the most poignant examples in America, as a point of reference, being the spirituals that slaves would sing to reclaim (some of) the agency they were otherwise denied.
Which brings me to the goal of Take Me To Church: To make that processing power accessible for anyone who finds themselves sometimes overwhelmed by the overstimulating pace of our modern world.
When The Next Service Is
Supporting subscribers will receive curated music recommendations every Sunday — and all subscribers will receive the final edition of every month.
Each newsletter will focus on recommendations meant to process specific emotions into actual feelings, with the goal of helping this community “complete stress cycles” tied to emotions that we as humans are often prone to ignore until our bodies force us to process them into feelings (see: anytime you’ve burst into tears or a fit of rage for “no reason”).
That means some weeks, recommendations will be tailored to emotions elicited by current events and thus likely shared by many of us at the same time. Otherwise, I’ll be pulling inspiration from my lived experience with emotions I believe “most” of us can relate to and benefit from processing with music (such as frustration or grief).
And since this is intended to be a communal experience — much like an actual church, sans any religious affiliation — subscribers are invited to request recommendations to help process specific emotions by messaging me!
Let’s make this a digital “third place” together.
Cheers.
