In need of a break from ridiculous politics (seriously, why double- and triple-down on the most insane stories??), I found myself once again in the audience of a River City Men’s Chorus concert with best friend Sarah. The opening performance of their 21st season was just what I needed on a drizzly Sunday afternoon.

The music of Craig Courtney was featured. For the uninitated, Courtney, an Indiana native who looks younger than he is (born in 1954, and I swear he looked maybe 55), is a prolific composer of sacred choral music; if you’ve been part of a choir, you’ve likely sung something of his. Courtney was on hand to conduct much of the concert, beginning with the performance, a few songs in, of the premiere of “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” which was commissioned by the chorus in gratitude for its longtime conductor David Glaze (Glaze played piano while Courtney conducted).

Everything was gorgeously done, as usual (Sarah and I always come away thinking it was the best performance they’ve done, and every time they surpass the last), with about 90 minutes of glorious hope and thankfulness filling the sanctuary at St. James United Methodist Church. Between the premiere of the work for Glaze, “Ukrainian Alleluia” (an anthem dedicated to persecuted Ukrainian Christian musicians), “I’ll Fly Away” (more than a few of us were singing along) and “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” it was impossible to be cranky or think about the things outside that sanctuary that bring out the worst in people.

If only life could be like that all the time. But no, we have too many people wrapped up in the politics of division, so much so that they’re literally blind to their own hypocrisy every time they condemn ad hominem attacks while using them themselves (in some cases conveniently changing the definition so that they can claim they’re not guilty of it; ahem, Mozarky from my newspaper’s comment boards, who claims to have been a judge for high school debates), ignore any answers to questions that don’t fit their expectations (seriously, if you ask a question, you get the answers you get, and you’ll have to understand that some of them are giving you the answer you asked for, even if it’s not the one you want), and attack anyone who doesn’t fit neatly into the little boxes they’ve assigned them. God help those of us in the center—from center left all the way through true center to center right—who are alternately smeared as uninformed, radical (really???), and flighty. Yes, there are the uninformed and flighty in the center, but there are at least as many of the same within the parties (those would be the people who can only parrot talking points because they haven’t actually researched issues). And radical … well, I guess when you’re on the fringe, anything to the right or left of you, even dead center, seems radical. Normalcy as radicalism … whoda thunk?

What I feel when I listen to the Men’s Chorus is far from what I feel when just living my life. It’s hard not to feel depressed and hopeless when perusing most social media (Threads is still mostly joyful, as long as you’re careful about what you engage with; if you interact with rage bait, the algorithm will reward you with more), especially when you have dear friends and family sometimes posting things that make you sad for the nation.

It’s gotten to the point where I’ll shortly start snoozing some people on Facebook (I still have a Twitter account, but I never post; I only keep it so that I can do fact-checking when tweets are mentioned in columns and letters I edit) because of the divisive and often just plain untrue things they’re posting, especially as we get closer to the election. It won’t do any good to fact-check them because they’re entrenched and inclined to pooh-pooh evidence that doesn’t come from their preferred news sources (and sometimes their “news” sources aren’t anything more than hyperpartisan pundits who don’t care if what they say is true or not).

But listening to music that celebrates hope and love … it’s hard to top that. Music constantly runs through my head (admittedly, a problem when I try to sleep), and more than a few times I sing along, which would be troublesome if I didn’t mostly work from home or in an office with a door.

I can’t help it. Music gives me life. Queen, Adele, Kansas, PostModern Jukebox, BB King and so many others have provided a soundtrack to my life that brings me happiness, and that’s even before you get into all the Broadway musicals that I worship. Stephen Sondheim and Jonathan Larson are two of the most brilliant Broadway composers ever, and Tim Minchin is rapidly growing on me. (I LOVE “Matilda the Musical”; I haven’t seen or heard all of “Groundhog Day,” so can’t really give an opinion on it, but I heard one of the songs in the car the other day and it cracked me up.)

I was already feeling hopeful heading into the concert thanks to a video Sarah had sent me last week, which I shared on this blog Sunday. Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song” was released in early 2015, and quickly became a favorite for self-empowerment. Another of my friends, who was going through chemotherapy at the time, adopted it as her anthem, and Hillary Clinton used it in her 2016 campaign (Susan’s fight was the more successful of the two).

Platten recently visited PS22 in Staten Island, where she joined the elementary school chorus on singing the song. Gregg Breinberg, the chorus’ director, posted the video earlier this month, and it’s hard not to smile while watching the joy on the faces of those kids as they sing, “This is my fight song/Take back my life song/Prove I’m alright song/My power’s turned on/Starting right now, I’ll be strong/I’ll play my fight song/And I don’t really care if nobody else believes/’Cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me.”

It’s even harder not to play the song over and over on a loop because it’s so joyful.

I’m hoping right now that there are a lot of people out there with a lot of fight left; we’re gonna need as many of them as possible if we hope to dig ourselves out of the mess we made. Yes, WE, since too many of us stood silently by as people with authoritarian bents gained power. Surely that isn’t what most of us want.

But back to the chorus: Ordinarily, I’d tell people living in the Little Rock area to head to the final performance of the Men’s Chorus fall concert, but the performances this week were Sunday, Monday and Tuesday (the third performance is usually Thursday), so all done by the time you would read this.

However, if you’re in the Arkadelphia area, the chorus will be performing at Ouachita Baptist University at 3 p.m. Sunday, and as usual, the concert is free (though please feel free to make a donation). You won’t be blessed with the presence of Craig Courtney there, but I’d say the Men’s Chorus is more than enough blessing.