The Gospel According to Music Cables
hearing the least of these
What’s good everyone,
I missed you last week while on vacation. I hope you were able to find some rest yourself.
Yesterday I was the guest speaker in a fascinating sacred music class at SMU where I will be serving this weekend with Notes of Rest and Circle of Trust (see below for more details). On that Zoom call, the professor, Dr. Marcell Silva Steuernagel, confessed that he missed the physicality of his professional music days of yore, where he hauled around gear and rolled up cables. I sat up a bit straighter when he said that. Rarely do I hear of musicians deriving enjoyment from anything related to cables (or gear in general for that matter). Cables are merely means to an end. Amps and instruments we relish, but the cables are just the go-between that we make sure to wrap correctly afterwards and keep separate from the venue’s stash.
But Dr. Steuernagel’s nostalgia offered a different perspective. He saw handling cables as a healthy practice of embodiment; that ritualistic act was an invitation to be present to our bodies and to the tangible worlds we inhabit. I received as grace this call to attend to cables as the “least amongst us” onstage.
His remark reminded me of a gig I had a few months ago with The JuJu Exchange at BlkRoom, a dope new haven for creatives on Chicago’s beloved West Side (which I call home). While we were setting up, somebody made a comment about cables. That then launched Camille – the co-owner – and I into a playful conversation about cables as metaphor for the downtrodden. Cables, like poor folk or women or the earth, are often stepped on, regarded as mere means to an end, improperly laid to rest, never regarded the star of the show, are thrown around, left to be entangled with each other, and are rarely salvaged when their shortcomings are revealed.
There’s a word from the Lord for us from the cables that carry the music. Any music that requires electricity of any kind (be it for amplification or recording purposes) is going to require the use of cables. Similarly, the poor, the earth, and women are instrumental to the life of this country and the world. Are the invisible worth our care?
Preaching to myself, how might the necessity of cables be an invitation to a deeper way of seeing God? What if instead of seeing cables as a mere hassle to tolerate I could see cables for (a) the gift of embodiment they are, and (b) as a reminder of the intrinsic value of the invisible humans and earth who make my performance of life possible?
There is always a temptation to treat people as means to an end, as worth stepping on when necessary. But doing so short circuits the beauty God has for all creation. I give thanks that Jesus came to us to be a stepped-on, disregarded cable so that we might hear the music of heaven more fully than ever before.
May cables help us hear the least of these. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy. Amen.
abundantly,
Julian
What’s Next
September 14 Notes of Rest at Southern Methodist University (Dallas)
September 14 Julian Davis Reid & Circle of Trust at Southern Methodist University (Dallas)
September 20-21 Julian Davis Reid & Circle of Trust at Andy’s (Chicago)
September 26 Isaiah Collier & The Chosen Few at Constellation LAST SHOW (Chicago)
Sept 30 Notes of Rest Fellowship Working Group (Online for Subscribers Only)
Oct 4 Jazz Institute of Chicago’s Next Generation (Chicago)
Oct 7-8 Notes of Rest at UMC Missouri Annual Conference Boundaries Training (Columbia, MO)
Oct 8 Emma Dayhuff at The Jazz Showcase (Chicago)
Oct 12 Notes of Rest at Lawndale Christian Health Center Retreat (Williams Bay, Wisconsin)
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Save the Dates
The Last Days of Cabrini Green Audible Originals Podcast (I scored the soundtrack) (Nov 14)
Feb 22-23 Black Contemplative Prayer Summit - Notes of Rest on Feb 23 (Virtual)
First-ever Notes of Rest Overnight Retreat - May 30-31, 2025 (Oregon, IL)
“Giving greater honour to the parts that we think are less honourable” (paraphrased) oh, how I take care to roll up the cables well because I don’t want one of them to fail. In that way, I guess I take greater care of them…