but I guess not. So, this is the reaction I had last summer to the Bonnie Raitt concert my husband got me for my birthday. Tickets to the concert, I mean; he didn't get me a personal, one-on-one with Bonnie. In fact, I shared her--and her opening act--with a fascinating bunch of Culture Warriors.
Last night was Bonnie Raitt under the stars. Got a pic somewhere in a decrepit Blackberry Imma upload sometime: a fuzzy but beautiful western sunset, and a fuzzy yet exciting-looking stage, all lit up, with a barely-discernible fuzzy redhead. What is lost in the fuzz of my photography skillz, pushed even further to hell by my mad fan-girl enthusiasm, is the feeling of relief that the redhead had taken the stage. Taken it away from someone who was making almost the entire audience squirm is strange cognitive dissonance and vaguely religious-based awkwardness.
You see, opening for Bonnie, rowdy, twangy, dripping-with-talent firebrand Chicago-style blues singer Bonnie, was the incomparable (Don't you EVEN try to compare her to anybody!) Mavis Staples--you know, from the Staples family? The Gospel singers? With the dad, and the hallelujah and the put your hands together, everybody and can I have an AY-men? It was an incredible performance. She even had Bonnie come out to the stage for a couple of numbers with her, and talked a lot about how she had considered Bonnie a little sister in the Staples family, and it was great, right? Right?
Actually, it was hilarious and fascinating. Imagine if you will, the Culture Wars. Those forty-to-fifty-year-long ideological battles over lifestyles, attitudes, social mores and expectations, privacy rights versus the public good, libertarian freedoms and liberal licenses, conservationist issues and conservative principles, yeah, alla that, ALL of that. Now imagine a place where it has concentrated. Distill the fermentation of it from, say, a lite strawberry wine cooler mix-in to, oh, gin. Or Everclear. Concentrate the vitriol of BOTH sides: imagine the righteousness of the right-wingsters grown to pathological apotheotic narcissism, the righteousness of the leftsters morphed all the way to Olympic Yoga and Competitive Veganism; imagine them with all the humor, flavor, and possibilities for kindness permissible to each, boiled right the hell OFF, in a swirling fog-filled basin of high-pressure/low pressure inversions that is the Great Salt Lake Valley.
This is what poor Mavis was up against; triangulate with me, as it were: she is an African American Protestant, from that glorious tradition of loud, rowdy, joyful Jesus-as-rockstar fan-worship; her father and family were a phenomenon to break out into the mainstream of popular American music at about the same time MoTown was becoming a thing, and from the same area of the country, too. Her music, with its jazz and Chicago blues influence as well as its heavily Baptist and Pentecostal source material, and her religion, with all of its amazingly rich heritage of slavery and liberation theology, are pretty much inseparable. She was doing the thing that she does, she was singing her Jesus-loving heart out . . . for an audience of the following demographic weirdness:
1. Mostly non-Mormons, including especially former Mormons, in all their varieties: lapsed Mormons, Jack-Mormons, Ex-Mormons "No-mo-Mos," Mormons Who Drink, and not a few of the burnt-over ones, the bitterly, bitterly antagonistic anti-Mormons, the ones who partition actual skin space for tattoos digging at the Church and its most defensive, sensitive bits; the ones who own bookstores devoted generally to atheism but specifically to Mormon-bashing, the ones who have "I Am Already Against the Next War" bumper stickers right next to the "Joseph's Myth" bumper stickers. Got that? You can't live in Utah and not be aware of Mormons, but you also can't live here long and not be aware of the pathologic virulence of some dissenters. Yes, their loathing is special when it comes to Mormons and Mormonism, but it leaks out and over; is an ecumenical loathing: they are generous with their disgust and extend it to all religious enthusiasm that may (or may not necessarily) be perceived to be consciously or unconsciously hypocritical, which basically means all of it. These isolated front-lines cultural warriors behind the Zion Curtain just simply LOVE 'em some rare, breath-of-fresh-air, real life RACIAL MINORITIES!!! YAY!!! But wait, she's--eew. She's preaching. Eew. But wait, she's so good at this! and she IS Black, and we want to be welcoming and kind and--eeew. Jesus, again?! *heads explode*
2. Some self-conscious Mormons, including the defensive "I'm liberal BECAUSE of my faith, not in spite of it" Mormons whose families generally refer to them as the ones who read too much, but not enough of it by Ezra Taft Benson. These Mormons are fringier than typical Mormons, and probably walked in the Pride Parade last month--or at least knew someone who did--and they feel a sort of conflicted solidarity with some aspects of the non-to-anti-Mormon culture, but not enough of it to be antagonistic themselves. They love Mormonism, and even though they see it as culturally restrictive, and flawed, and damaged, like a person, still, like a person, they choose to stick it out warts and all. They use phrases like "warts and all" a lot. And "baby with the bathwater." And "feast or famine." They like metaphors. They still go to church with their Mormon neighbors, most of whom are far, far more politically and culturally conservative than they are, but they all still get along as a congregation. BUT a congregation that belongs to a larger church with an almost theologically important emphasis on Reverence. Reverence as a tenet, reverence as a litmus test, reverence as a requirement for salvation, reverence as a way of behaving toward sacred topics and sacred places that emphasizes silence, hushed tones, more silence, respectful, very soft, chuckles ONLY if someone with a lot of Spiritual Clout utters something vaguely amusing--think Garrison Keillor's Lutherans, without the benefit of coffee to wake them up to the Lutheran state of rowdy. QUIET is REVERENT. WE DO. NOT. SPEAK. OUT. LOUD. ABOUT. JESUS. EVVVVVVVER. These people are very devoted to Jesus--but not MAVIS's Jesus, not the Jesus she is prancing around, <gasp> CELEBRATING.
But it's Jesus.
We love Jesus.
Quietly, REVERENTLY, DAMMIT--oops!!! Sorry Jesus; DARNIT, we meant DARNIT!!!!!!
But she's shouting.
But it's about JESUS.
But it's SHOUTING and WHOOPING AND CLAPPING.
*heads explode*
3. A very, very few people who are not interested in the slightest in the culture wars. Who see Mavis Staples as a lovely person, amazing voice, maybe a little too Jesusy, but for the moment, ah, why not? Glad they were there to clean up. Because everywhere you looked: exploding heads.
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