I am a lover of words, with few exceptions. As I read my daily fix of news and literature, words find me and may inspire me to think long on them, probably more than is considered normal. I think about how the letters make the word look. I toss them around my mouth and see how they feel. Some I like because of how they sound out of my vocal instrument, and some just find a way of repeating in my mind like a mantra. I might even sing a whole improv song on a word or phrase that feels like it’s already composing music in my head. Some words are products of fun, some make their mark by accident. I love them all. I have a few favorites that find their way into consistent rotation, and I’m sure you do too. “Loquacious.” “Groovy.” “Patience.”
Coffin or chrysalis?
Coffin or chrysalis, coffin or chrysalis…
Those three words have invaded me in the past month, and I’m so grateful. I don’t know their origin. I just woke up sometime over the last few weeks and started thinking and eventually whispering them to myself. Paul McCartney said he woke up singing Yesterday and asked his friends if he had stolen it from someone because it was so organic and fully formed. As is this. I don’t know from whence this phrase came, or if I’m the actual author, but I know for sure what it means.
Whether you’re at home 24/7 or working distantly with a mask, the limbo state of the world right now means so much solitude, so much aloneness, that we’re all trying so hard to prevent loneliness. Most of us are confined to physical locations where we’d rather not be, attempting to make decisions with some authority when we are so lacking in certainty. Many have no option but to work in places they don’t feel safe. Scores of us are wondering how we will make it through the winter, or the next month, or this afternoon. We never know the future, but not knowing the future combined with a pandemic and savage election season, AND keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe both physically and mentally, AND also knowing that the upcoming colder seasons will keep us inside for months away from our circles, we feel trapped. Justifiably. No great options to be had, and sometimes not even good ones.
So if I’m not going to have a normal social life this autumn and winter, if I’m not going to have in-person choir or Church or the Ellenwood Sisters or concerts this calendar year, if I don’t get to hug my friends until 2021, I have to make a decision, and I have to make it often. Am I going to treat this time of solitude from the world like a coffin? Or a chrysalis?
Both are dark places of confinement, and both start with an awesome velar plosive consonant. Whenever I come to a hard part of my day, when I miss someone, or when I pre-mourn the loss of singing another big liturgical season live with my colleagues, I ask myself-- coffin or chrysalis? I can choose whether to box myself into despair, or I can decide to become a pupa and treat this as a temporary portion of my life that is unique in its huge potential to make me stronger on the other side. The answer is always chrysalis. It’s a better word all around, just look at it! I thought this word might have Christological associations, but it’s from the Greek khrusos, or gold, describing the metallic sheen on the protective casing of the developing goo of life. Figuratively, it means an imposed dormancy with growth, investment in the self, choosing to live and thrive and dare I say fly at a later time to be determined not by me. A prison made of gold from which I emerge a better version of me. Chrysalis. I invite you to love this word with me, it’s a good one.
Katie Beyers
Assistant Choirmaster, Alto in CSMSG Choir
