Strange Things: My Reaction to the Song
Sunday, October 22, 2023
I drafted this little paragraph after I listened to a song by Abigail Washburn & The Sparrow Quartet. The song is called Strange Things and it lives on an eponymously titled album.
Abigail Washburn is a clawhammer banjo playing singer songwriter. She plays bluegrass, speaks and sings in Mandarin, is married to Béla Fleck, and has a very short, but very powerful and memorable TED talk about the importance of music and the power it has to connect people and cultures (Building US-China Relations … by Banjo).
Strange Things created such a strong physical reaction in me, and evoked such terrifying and frantic and vivid, essential imagery, that right away I wanted to tell friends about it. Driven, I tried to capture in words the experience of what I was hearing and seeing and feeling.
Here’s what I came up with.
It’s been a very, very long time since a song has provoked such a strong physical response from me as this one has. My heart speeds up like mad by the end. I breathe heavier. So heavy I notice it. I get goosebumps on my arms when she wails at the end. It’s like I’m there excavating with her. Digging and driving, shoveling and blowing up the tops of mountains for more, screaming a warning, yelling a whisper, conspiring with a twisted prophet, amplifying propaganda and prophecy. This song digs so deep into the soil it scrapes core. Blood soaked Appalachian prayers and hymns from a worn out book.
I know I sound nuts but holy cow this is a wild 5 minute ride. You must listen some time.
xo