During the summer of 2017 – a time of significant change in my life – including the rupture of my marriage, an upcoming “milestone” birthday, and a relocation to a quiet rural place with dark skies and an abundance of fauna and flora — I literally heard myself: I had unconsciously begun a meditative practice of singing or humming verses and melodies of sorrow, wonder, gratitude — or simply, of the mundane. They were autonomic and presumably original, lamentations.

then, serendipitously, I retroactively encountered a May 2017 piece published in Yes! magazine about the revival and history of “lament singing” in Finland.

To find that I was unconsciously, but actually, participating in a Finnish tradition that I had never experienced or even heard of — but that was somehow still within in me — in some cellular, trans-generational or ancestral place — felt like a bridge to my lineage — to all my unknown women-kin.

The lyrics and tunes occurred spontaneously over several months, and I often automatically repeated the same one over and over while working, cleaning, cooking, gardening, walking or driving. I sung or hummed them mostly while alone, but sometimes they would emerge aloud in public places — and I didn’t even realize that I was in song or know how long I had been doing it.

People who laugh, cry, sing and talk to themselves aloud in the street are not “crazy” — we are comforting, raging, celebrating, mocking and mourning ourselves, our lives, our experiences and the world.

Continue reading “song[s] of my self: epigenetic lamentations” →