Thread by @TechOfGospel

I Never Knew Peace Like A River Before

1/ I had reservations as to whether I was going to watch #PoseFX last night. My temp mutes had expired and I saw that it was a tearjerker. But I thought to watch it, anyway, since we all missed it last week.

2/ I won't say it was a mistake because it wasn't. But I'd already been on the verge of tears for a couple days for reasons of personal grief, the kind of tears that if you know one falls, it will become a flood.

A flood of half-memories, misremembrances, body memories

3/ Besides, we'd all been missing @PoseOnFX for a whole week. So I re-muted everything and watched.

What was so uncanny/incredible was that I'd already heard "Never Knew Love Like This Before" by Stephanie Mills (#Baptist) while shopping. What struck me, this probably-millionth

@PoseOnFX 4/ time around, what really stood out, was the tambourine arrangement. This happens to me often, as a musician (keys, perc). Some part of the arrangement will stand out. I've gotten used to letting that ear just be.

What I couldn't anticipate was the deep feeling it would

@PoseOnFX 5/ engender in me, ironically enough, during Candy's Refrain.

Last night's ep. didn't leave a dry eye in the place, as churchfolx might say about either a powerful sermon or testimony, because that's what the episode was: a testament; to memory, to reconciliation, to love.

@PoseOnFX 6/ I don't cry at movies or shows. I may well up, but the tears never fall. This was the case last night bc I knew if I started -- somewhat like getting the Spirit -- I would not be able to stop, soon.

When you grow up a #PK in an extended family of clergy, emotion-control is

@PoseOnFX 7/ key to your social survival, and also that of your parents' ministry. Because ppl come after what is perceived the weakest link, to either get at your parents, or simply see what you're made of.

So you learn not to show them. Ever. You put a heat sink around your heart.

@PoseOnFX 8/ That heat sink, that heat shield, however, can act as a shadow, opposite Spirit. Sometimes, it's hard to take it off. Emotions, like too many tears, can be damaging if revealed. Fucking with emotions can also result in damage.

It's a form of The Closet that you learn to

@PoseOnFX 9/ perfect, starting some time when your parents are in seminary.

Closets, like heat shields, in turn act as a form of protection, self-preservation. A kind of emotional and often enough libidinal ghetto.

It's not an ideal situation. And neither is being a #PK. Ppl forget this.

@PoseOnFX 10/ IDK how many funerals and wakes I've been to, let alone how many were presided by my father. I also DK how many times my mother's soaring soprano was the last voice anyone hears, voicing those refrains of "It is well with my soul" before the casket closes for the last time.

@PoseOnFX 11/ But what we observed last night, the phantastic testimony we witnessed, was of memory-reconciliation through death. I've been there, though it wasn't the result of a plague or the existential threat of specific, targeted violence.

And I suspect what had people tearing up

@PoseOnFX 12/ the most was the fact that those reconciliations through death could only happen in phantasy.

I did well up last night. This morning, the tears did fall and not because I allowed it as an act of will. And it wasn't even Candy's Refrain that did it. They were tears

@PoseOnFX 13/ of what never was, for memories that won't ever be made, of events and reconciliations that aren't possible.

Instead, what we've got it all we get.

No, the most striking thing about last night's @PoseOnFX was the credits as they rolled over "When Peace Like A River,"

@PoseOnFX 14/ by Horatio Gates Spafford (1873):

It is well (it is well)
With my soul (with my soul)
It is well, it is well with my soul.

When my mother sang it, she would take the melody into a high note, culminating in that final "well".

Some circumstances don't care if it's well with

@PoseOnFX it = is

@PoseOnFX 15/ with your soul. These sorrows and losses don't ask/can't tell whether your heart is emotionally equipped for them.

Heat shields are designed to protect not just that which it covers, but the immediate vicinity of what's shielded. They come in handy & also get in the way.

@PoseOnFX 16/16 And there are times in which a simple flood of warm tears melts a heat shield right into a puddle.

I've never known any television show like this, before.

#PoseFX
#PoseonFX
#Pose
@PoseOnFX
@angelicaross
#StephanieMills
#Baptist

#ItIsWell

#technologiesofgospel 🏳️‍🌈

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