Keep Singing Even So

​Hillary Rubesin, PhD, LIMHP, REAT
 
Over Thanksgiving, I was lucky enough to fly to New York City to see Hadestown, a modern-day musical retelling of the tragedy of Orpheus and Euridice. Admittedly, I had never heard the music before the curtains opened. 
 
To say I was blown away would be an understatement. To say I cried for the majority of the second half would be the truth. To say that watching this show three weeks after the presidential election was both gut wrenching and inspiring... well, that’s the point of this article!
 
The final lines of the show hit me hard:
 
“It's a sad song...
We keep singing even so.”
 
As an expressive arts therapist, I use the arts to help my clients express all emotions, many of them painful. There is something deeply grounding knowing that sad songs have most likely been sung since the dawn of humanity. Artistic expression is not only an act of healing. Artistic expression is an act of resistance.
 
One of my teenage clients (and his mother) gave me consent to share a poem and drawing he created a few days after the election. I’d invite you to take some time to reflect on his words and imagery. As he writes so eloquently below, “...the world is not ending / It has simply begun to begin / To sprout, to grow, to flower again.”

Untitled
 
I am skin over fat 
Over muscle over bone 
Over atoms over molecules
And much more, I suppose 
 
So, tell me, which part do you hate?
Which part do you loathe? 
Which part of me deserves all the pain you impose?
 
Is it my heart which longs to be free?
My spirit, my lungs, my mind, all of me? 
Which part makes me not human to you? 
Which part makes you do all that you do? 
Or is it simply the fact that it’s there? 
The fact that it is enough to scare? 
Enough for your logic to be far enough impaired?
 
And I have done nothing 
Nothing I have done 
Should put me on the end of the firing gun 
With my hands high in the sky 
Please, before you end it, at least let me try 
To have a future before you stamp it out 
To develop a life that I might defend 
I stand by my body until the very end 
 
And that I might 
Put up enough of a fight
To outlive you and make it alright 
So, with my body, or all that is left 
I listen to the drum banging in my chest 
And I push, harder than you ever could 
Cause evil pales to the power of good 
 
So one day I’ll dance on your grave 
I’ll uproot all the poisoned plants that you made 
So for now we go on to simply just go 
We keep going and going and the next thing you know 
We’ll be there, there where we’re free 
Where you no longer have power over me 
 
So the world is not ending
It has simply begun to begin 
To sprout, to grow, to flower again 
There’s no telling what we might make 
So please, for tomorrow, live through today

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