by Sam Payne
Let it suffice to say that for one reason or another, I found myself in Bulgaria a few weeks ago. Together with Mindy Gledhill (the remarkable songwriter whose music you can hear right here at YLDSR.com), I was a musical guest of One Heart Bulgaria, a non-profit foundation organized to benefit Bulgaria’s orphans (visit them at www.oneheart-bg.org). We visited orphanages in cities and towns, and met orphans young and old – charismatic, tough kids who have learned to lean on each other and survive, under circumstances every bit as difficult as you might imagine. It was a rich experience – once-in-a-lifetime.
And while we were deeply thankful for the experience, I found myself wondering (when it came to providing service for orphans with genuine needs) if a couple of musicians were the right folks for the job. I mean, good heavens, it was a pleasure to be there as a musician, but for the same energy it took to get a couple of musicians here, they could have brought a couple of dentists, or surgeons. I wrestled often with that notion during the trip.
But then I’d pull out my guitar, and Mindy and I would strike up a song. Sometimes it would be “I Am a Child of God,” and sometimes it would be Mindy’s lovely ballad, “Child of Light.” Sometimes it would be something so innocuous as Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” (which the orphans all knew, by the way. Go figure). We’d sing for the orphans, and then the orphans would sing for us – Bulgarian patriotic songs, nursery rhymes, or Mediterranean pop tunes.
In those moments, the world became both bigger and smaller – bigger as the world of one’s experience expands to make room for new friends, and smaller as the world shrinks in the face of meeting people that, by all rights, ought to be more different than they suddenly seem.
In those moments, as a musician, I allowed myself to believe that maybe, for a moment, the exercises of fixing teeth, mending bones, and curing disease could be approached in import (not rivaled, perhaps, but at least approached) by the exercise of understanding hearts. In that endeavor, music is a crash-course. In his seminal 1979 address, “The Arts and the Spirit of the Lord, Boyd K. Packer said it this way: “…we are able to feel and learn very quickly through music, through art, through poetry some spiritual things that we would otherwise learn very slowly.” Amen to that. In Bulgaria, as musicians, we were quick learners (also, I think, quick teachers). To a greater degree than I might have thought possible, we get them. And they get us.
I’m naturally wary of a lot of the “art is going to save the world” propaganda that gets tossed around, but I’ve come to believe, at least, that the right music is perhaps the surest way to characterize and communicate the condition of a heart. I’m careful not to extrapolate too much from that belief – I mean, when a bone gets broken, there’s little use in trying to sing it whole again. But when it comes to achieving understanding between two different souls, I say put down the scalpel, and strike up the band.
