by Gary Powell

The lyric “Suavis Unitas Ne Discedas” translates from Latin to English as “Sweet oneness, depart not.” This lyric sets the tone for the ballet, “Rhapsody of the Soul.” The stage is set. This opening scene is bathed in the fog of serenity, sweetness and peacefulness. The music begins by supporting this place of idyllic contentment and then slowly invites soul to become substance. Voices from the other side are wrapped within a distant web of wonderment. Although beginning as an invitation, the distant voices become more present – more populated, moving quickly past seduction toward the adjuratory commitment to life for our first gasp for air.
Though the rupture of primary unity is a necessary loss, it remains “an incurable wound which afflicts the destiny of the whole human race.” – Judith Viorst, “Necessary Losses”

The journey of “Rhapsody of the Soul” is musically punctuated by what was and what will be – our birth, our lives, and our death. These life parts, from our glorious oneness to our eventual separation, are each represented as musical themes throughout the ballet and are all first quoted in this opening piece, “Suavis Unitas Ne Discedas.”

Life is not static. We are all under constant change. Sometimes change is incipiently slow and dangerous in that we don’t feel it happening. Sometimes change is like stepping off a cliff. Birth is the latter. Moving from the womb, where safety, contentment, nourishment and peace transition to the shockingly violent birth canal must rank highly as one of the most ungracious transitions a human will ever experience. This is the moment when the vase of everlasting unity is broken and the individual is slapped into human experience. This is a grand, a traumatizing, and an unsettling entrance to the life that we all share!

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Chris Martin – Alto
Amy Atchley – Soprano
Gary Powell – Tenor
Billy Henry, Joe York, Scotty Roberts, Gary Powell, Male Chorus
Will Weaver, Katie Pyle, Devin MacDonald – Children’s Chorus
Katy Pyle – Newborn Child
Illustrations: Antonio Muñoz

by Gary Powell

With less than $400 in liquid assets, which were already spoken for, I mounted my Honda Goldwing motorcycle in Austin and headed toward Colorado. There was no plan or even a timetable, but I was armed with a wallet full of credit cards. Leaving Austin felt frighteningly necessary. I remember weeping through the first 100 miles westward wondering what I was doing and where I was going. This pilgrimage, and that’s stretching how I felt, was in the middle of two years of the deepest grief only found within the extremes of personal exploration and revelation. Purpose is hard to divine when renting a room in this place. I was not depressed – just feeling that the time for rebirth had come in order to forge a conscious and mindful future.
Grief is not a process of forgetting, it is a process of learning to cope while we remember. – Doug Manning, “The Gift of Significance”

Near Hereford, Texas, I stopped at a west Texas Dairy Queen. It was August, 16th, 1992 and a break from the oppressive west Texas heat was needed. I sat down to enjoy a root beer float and found myself engaged in conversation with a tall, lean man named Doug Manning who was on his way home to Hereford with his wife. In Texas, especially rural Texas, we’ll strike up a conversation with anyone about anything. Even a flat tire can produce an afternoon of story-swapping. A lifted finger to point outside to my maroon Goldwing, a couple of sentences about the heat, and I was quickly engaged with Doug Manning at a place much more pertinent than the weather. These were all natural and cultural reflexes of my Texas upbringing. We were both at home.

Doug says, “I was a preacher for the first 30 years of my life and I realized that I was not helping people who needed to grieve. Therefore, I began listening and studying and writing books about grieving.” Doug started In-Sight Books a year later in 1993. I talked with him about my own grieving in that air-conditioned DQ, and began a friendship that continues today. Within three hours of leaving Austin, in the blistering west Texas heat, I had re-centered myself in the most unlikely of places for introspection and healing.
Growing up means letting go of the dearest megalomaniacal dreams of our childhood. Growing up means knowing they can’t be fulfilled. Growing up means gaining the wisdom and skills to get what we want within the limitations imposed by reality – a reality which consists of diminished powers, restricted freedoms and, with the people we love, imperfect connections. – Judith Viorst, “Necessary Losses”

This is the story of being lost in one’s own grieving and how the grace of healing can find a toe-hold. Drinking an ice-cold root beer float and meeting Doug Manning transformed my wanderlust into a map of infinite points and directions. Such as it is, when grace invades our personal space of despair. Just a few years later, I found myself writing lyrics and having them translated into Latin for “Rhapsody of the Soul.” Go figure!

Indeed, we must all suffer, and “Veniri Necessi Mihi Pati” sits in this place of absolute despair. However, Doug Manning teaches us that we can all transform our suffering and losses into meaning and significance. This is Doug’s gift to us and the gift to myself in writing “Rhapsody of the Soul.”

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Amy Atchley – Soprano
Chris Martin – Alto
Gary Powell – Tenor
Jeff Hellmer – Piano

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by Gary Powell

In 1981, I was unknowingly preparing myself to write and compose “Rhapsody of the Soul.” Al K. Mustin, the founder and leader of Austin’s Church of Today, spoke on how most of us repeat our mistakes over and over again until we finally wake up, stop the cycle, and transform. I was the churches’ Director of Music. On that day, we pondered over how to musically support this idea of patterned behavior with music within the church service. Then, I suddenly remembered the chorus from the Olivia Newton John song, “Please, Mister, Please.”

Please, Mister, please, don’t play B-17
It was our song, it was his song, but it’s over
Please, Mister, please, if you know what I mean
I don’t ever wanna hear that song again

I’m guessing that in 1981, “Please, Mister, Please,” was not being sung in many churches. Luckily for me, Al Mustin and I shared an appreciation for creative exploration. I sang the song as Al implored, “We keep putting yet another dime in the jukebox, continuing to press B-17, thinking we’ll hear a different song.” Psychologists teach us that sometimes we create patterns of behavior in order to manage a singular traumatic event or chronic trauma from earlier in life. But, at some point, when the difficulties are no longer present, our entrenched behavior begins to work against us. Being stuck in our patterns is another way of losing ourselves: losing our highest and best use. Some fifteen years later, I found myself writing about this same idea – pressing B-17 – but this time in Latin and, more musically deeply interpreted.

There is in human nature a compulsion to repeat. Indeed, it is called the repetition compulsion. It compels us to do again and again what we have done before, to attempt to restore an earlier state of being…..but, until we can mourn and let go of that past, we are doomed to repeat it. – Judith Viorst, Necessary Losses

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Amy Atchley – Soprano
Chris Martin – Alto
Billy Henry, Tenor
Gary Powell – Tenor
Illustrations: Antonio Muñoz

All Content of Gary Powell’s Site is Licensed Under a
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by Gary Powell

Hopefully not before mid-life, we experience first hand the ever-progressing volatile nature of life. What we thought were permanent gifts in our lives; our pets, our childhood friends, our parents, our mates, our closest family members, our business relationships, and our life-long friends have begun to drift away or die. At this point in life we understand that permanence is a lie, and in that awful truth is the inherent presumption and acceptance that we, ourselves, will also die.

Some things we learn too late. Some things we learn too early. Some things we never learn and others we never have to. – Gary Powell, Maybe I’m It – Maybe I’m Not

This inevitable outcome, our ultimate heritage, is the most bitter pill. Making it worse is the knowledge that this inevitableness moves uninvited and indiscriminately within our closest circles. It moves in shadows and know my friends, the music and lyric mourn, while our soulmate pleads, sweet oneness, depart not. Somehow though, we believed this darkness would never come this close to us. Inexplicably, our well-tooled denial is no longer effective. Some separations will be of choice and will be painful. Others will not be of choice and will also be painful.

The mid-life transition activates a man’s concerns with death and destruction. He experiences more fully his own mortality and the actual or impending death of others. He becomes more aware of the many ways in which other persons, even his loved ones, have acted destructively toward him (with malice, or, often, with good intentions). What is perhaps worse, he realizes that he has done irrevocably hurtful things to his parents, lovers, wife, children, friends, rivals (again, with what may have been the worse of the best of intentions). – Daniel Levinson, The Season’s of a Man’s Life

At this point in “Rhapsody of the Soul,” we have crested the final hill of adulthood, shedding our last vestiges of narcissism, and seen a promised land not of our choosing, but nonetheless, inevitable.

Now Available Online for Worldwide Download from These Stores

Gary Powell – Tenor
Chris Martin – Alto
Illustrations: Antonio Muñoz

All Content of Gary Powell’s Site is Licensed Under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License

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