step by step, the longest march

I arrived to visit my dad on Friday April 13 in mid-afternoon. After declaring emphatically that he didn’t want to go for a walk (apparently he had refused earlier in the day too), dad eventually consented to go as far as the activity room to read the paper. We sang (My life flows on, and "Kisses sweeter than wine" with lyrics modified to reflect his life with mum, among other things). 

After supper, dad became quite excited about the idea of getting out for a walk (“we can send for those books & photos later”) so I got him dressed and headed (with the walker) down then out towards the driveway entrance off Major St. near College. It took two rest stops outbound and three on the return, as well as an uncounted number of verses of:

Step by step, the longest march

Can be won, can be won.

Many stones can form an arch

Singly none, singly none.

And by union what we will

Can be accomplished still.

Drops of water turn a mill.

Singly none, singly none.

(This is great walking song, which my sister Margie says is attributed to the foreword from a 19th century miners' union constitution according to liner notes from a Pete Seeger album. There is some different history with a great performance by John McCutcheon here).

After our return (the whole excursion to the corner of the driveway and back took about an hour, maybe 40-60 meters total traveled) he wanted to sing more, so we did. After repeating How can I keep from Singing, he remarked “you seem to have recovered pretty well from your experience (long pause) on the boat” – this from someone who an hour earlier had been unable to remember my brother Danny’s name or mine, or even the word “brother” to describe our relationship (“You two, same mother, right?"). Uncharacteristically, I was not wearing any sort of political t-shirt or even a button as a clue, and my boat experience would be neither in his immediate memory, nor in his well-laid-down distant memories, and there are no immediate print cues around either (I later printed this account out for him to read, or have read to him). The song was of course connected to my boat experience for me (but not so much for him), but not very recently -- it had been sung much more recently at mum's memorial).

Dad’s acceptance of a walk (or any activity) seems to be conditioned by luck as well as stubbornness, but as my brother Danny points out, stubbornness helps create opportunities for luck. As luck (¿?) would have it, dad turns out to be related to some stubborn people.

How can I keep from singing?

This song is part of what kept me going while imprisoned in Israel for six days, following the capture at sea of the Tahrir (the Canadian Boat to Gaza) on November 4, 2011.

My life flows on in endless song, above earth's lamentation
I hear that real, though far-off hymn that hails a new creation.
Through all the tumult and the strife, I hear that music ringing.
It sounds an echo in my soul: how can I keep from singing?

What though the tempest round me roar, I hear the truth it liveth.
What though the darkness round me close, songs in the night it giveth.
No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that rock I'm clinging.
Since love is lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?

When men and women conquer fear, with prison doors wide swinging.*
When friends rejoice both far and near, how can I keep from singing?
In prison cell or dungeon vile, our thoughts to them are winging.
When friends by shame are undefiled, how can I keep from singing?

There are a number of versions of this song, originally a Christian hymn, but the one I was familiar with since childhood was as recorded by (among others) Pete Seeger, which downplays religious aspects of the lyrics (How can I keep from singing? is also the title of Seeger's biography by David King Dunaway). However, the line at the beginning of the third verse in that version:

*When tyrants tremble, sick with fear, and hear their death-knell ringing,


has long troubled me, since I oppose the death penalty for anyone, even tyrants. As a teen, I rewrote the line in a sort of half-assed way ( ... and hear those peace bells ringing -- only two words changed, and still leaves the question, why should even tyrants be "sick with fear"?) but only for my own use, and perhaps singing to my kids, in later years.

(As an aside on this point, I entirely concur with Ariel Dorfman, who wrote in an open letter to the bloody-handed ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet following the latter's arrest: I want you to know, General, that I do not believe in capital punishment. What I do believe in is human redemption. ...I highly recommend the full interview, especially Dorfman's poetic "sentence" for Pinochet's crimes... but I digress...).

So when a few years ago I began singing (again) with my dad, who has been suffering from Alzheimer's now for some five years, this song was a natural part of our shared repertoire, and that particular verse of course came up as problematic, for both of us. He told me someone at their church had a better replacement verse for that line, so I asked my friend Becca Whitla, music director at Holy Trinity in downtown Toronto (my parents' congregation and the one I grew up in). She told me about the powerful new line I now use at the beginning of the third verse:


When men and women conquer fear, with prison doors wide swinging,


and she also told me that the person who had penned the substitution was in fact dad (he no longer recalls having composed the change -- only that there is a better verse). At the time, of course, I had no idea how that new line would end up speaking to me.

So all of this added up to a pretty heavy emotional charge for me when I sang this song in prison, mostly as a sort of personal meditation (since I never did get around to learning how to meditate "properly"). I knew that evoking memories of dad (and of my family more generally) would make me cry, and my personal concentration "game" was that I had to sing it through completely, without stumbling, or start over, repeating until I got it right and complete. The somewhat controlled crying response was also, I think, a healthy outlet.

Those last four lines were also the message I sent my family when I had a chance to get a message out of the prison -- a bit cryptic, perhaps, but my hope was that the message would read clearly as one of hope. It prompted another memory from my sister Margaret, who recalled that when Québec trade-unionist and socialist Michel Chartrand was jailed for four months in 1970 (under the War Measures Act), dad wrote to him and sent him this song (with Margaret's translation into French, now sadly lost).

There were other songs I sang while in prison in Israel (perhaps I will write about them too) but this was the one I came back to in order to pull myself together and face whatever we had to face. We prepared for many things during the long lead-up to the voyage of the Tahrir, but I never realised that I would find my way back to these songs. I have very few regrets about the whole experience -- as I have said more than once publicly, I would go again in a heart-beat -- but if I had to do it over, I wish I had begun singing earlier, on the deck of the Tahrir.