Channeling Art

In Dark Night of the Soul, Thomas Moore writes, "It helps to know who is living through you at any given moment" (253). A similar thinker has stated that we don't so much live as we are lived. Such thinking is in keeping with the idea of the decentered subject. There may be no such thing as the individual, and even if there is her existence is much more than ego and activity.

Psychoanalysts obviously deal in dreams and suggest that people consider their dreams almost daily. I have been playing closer attention to my dreams in the last year or so. An irritating large number of them are reoccurring, constant themes being houses--which I have taken to symbolize order, stability, structure, and inheritance or family. In these house dreams, I am sometimes taking down walls of observing them, going through doors or noticing that they are closed or cracked. Very often I am angry at my newest ancestors, people I knew when they were alive, because they were not good stewards of family property; they hoarded, kept heirlooms from being passed down. The meaning of these dreams seems obvious. But maybe it is; maybe it isn't.

Through genealogical research, or actually through involving students in it, I have seen that the dreamlife can indeed be affected. My students have had unsettling dreams about people they have researched. For a long time, my own dreamlife was not thusly invaded, but about a year ago I dreamed of a man who I took to be a figure I was spending lots of time on. Then there was last night or this morning.

I woke up with a song in my head that I had been singing in my sleep, in my dream. I have titled it "Ridin' to Freedom." It goes like this: "Oh half-a-day. Ridin' to (till) freedom come./Oh half-a-day, half-a-day, ridin' to (till) freedom come." Perhaps this is a published song. Maybe it is even a common folk song or spiritual. However, I am not conscious of having heard it or of having been familiar with it before I sang it in my dream.

I have been thinking a lot about ways the spirit world communicates with the living, and it has become clear that some spirits like to use music. I think for instance that it is my father's preferred form if communication. Whenever I wake up with soul music strongly in my head, I figure Daddy is trying to reach me. This phenomenon is invasive but I don't experience it as such, and usually the song offers a message of comfort. "ou child things are fine get easier/some day we'll walk together in the beautiful sun/some day things will get brighter" was one of the first. My father had a strong belief in reuniting with loved ones in the afterlife.

As for Ridin' to Freedom, it fits perfectly the  life I have been studying, that of hauler or wagoner Cato Govan of Holly Springs, Mississippi. He transported cotton between Holly Springs and Memphis under government contract during the Civil War. One question I have had of his experience and identity is whether he viewed himself as free after the Union army occupied Holly Springs in November 1862. Govan actually states that he was not free until after the war. But now there is this song to consider. I could never prove I think that he sang this song, but it does provide an interesting counter to the idea that African Americans who remained near where they had been enslaved were not free until 1865. This song is intriguing because it suggests both that it's subject rode to freedom and that he also was waiting on freedom, which within a half a day, part of the travel time to Memphis, he would experience. Possibly, his trips to Memphis--it would appear that he made many--let him know that the war would soon be over and freedom would come to all. This feels like a song of celebration and thanks. My gut tells me that by some supernatural, psychic experience I received this song. Perhaps this is how all music comes into being. Again, as Moore writes, it helps to know who is living through you at any given moment.