Kyo Maclear considers isolation, community and the power of song in a post-COVID world
Singing in December is an essay by the 2023 Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction winner
Singing in December is an original personal essay by Kyo Maclear. It is part of Identity, a special series of new, original writing featuring work by the English-language winners of the 2023 Governor General's Literary Awards, presented in partnership with the Canada Council for the Arts.
"Looking around, the idea of a world built on soloists — on isolation and competition over community feels increasingly toxic. I wrote this essay in December, wondering what identity and narrative shifts would be required to open us onto a more humane, collective world," Maclear told CBC Books.
"So many questions... Is it possible to shift our idea of success away from the conservative and individual? Can we find ways of flourishing that tap communal energies rather than individual mission-driven ones? The singing group felt like an antidote to narrow individualism and a place to think about the choral as a model for the future."
CBC's IDEAS will host an episode featuring participants from this original series.
Maclear's book Unearthing won the 2023 Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction.
You can read more works from the Identity series here.
Singing in December
David sings. For the 25 years we have been together, his passions have been singing and socializing. This is interesting to me because my passions are writing and tunneling into myself. I spend most of my time inside my house or inside the house in my head.
David sings beautifully and for the 25 years we have been together, music has been the "feeling tone" of our lives. He counts on music and I count on him. Be careful what you count on, I guess. In late 2022, he began experiencing chronic breathing problems, which made sleeping difficult and solo singing impossible. After several months of tests, the doctors determined post-COVID lung scarring might be the culprit; time would be the best cure. David cancelled performances and, increasingly depressed, began tunneling into himself.
David sings beautifully and for the 25 years we have been together, music has been the 'feeling tone' of our lives. He counts on music and I count on him. Be careful what you count on, I guess.
Thankfully, depression and introversion are not his talents, so he tunneled his way back into the world, and made a decision. In early 2023, still unable to solo-sing, David re-started a Thursday morning singing group he had been running in an east end shelter before the pandemic for unhoused men facing addiction challenges.
In December, I went with him and a musical accompanist to join the singing group. It seemed a good time to go. I had been in my head more than usual; encased in my thoughts when I wasn't out in the streets joining the movement to end a terrible war and occupation.
•••
Shortly after we arrived, shelter residents began trickling into the "singing room" where chairs had been arranged in a semi-circle. A man in a New York Yankees cap walked in tentatively, choosing a seat away from the others. Another man in his early 20s stepped in and out, in and out, before finally committing to a lounge chair. Outwardly, it did not appear to be a group eager for "social bonding experiences."
Shortly after we arrived, shelter residents began trickling into the 'singing room' where chairs had been arranged in a semi-circle.
Eventually a group of seven men settled. David opened by telling a few corny dad jokes ("What do you call a fake dad? a faux pa!"), explaining he wanted us to warm up with a little ho-ho-ha-ha to loosen our diaphragms. The man in the Yankees cap looked ready to leave. David kept talking, inviting everyone to back him on Lean on Me, sidling up to the group — friendly but not overzealous.
Then the singing started in earnest. The notes assembled. We sang songs that were new to us, comfortingly familiar songs, and other songs that those recovering from addiction should maybe not go around singing like Margaritaville, but the men were invited to select the repertoire and who could refuse a song full of old feeling.
The sound wasn't top notch or even always good, definitely more duck than songbird, but there were a few moments when the voices grew closer and closer — singing Let it Be, for example — that I felt a little swell in my chest and when I looked around others seemed to have caught the swell too.
•••
The singing program involves a revolving cast of participants. Some weeks, depending on the shelter's intake, there might be 20 or more people. It's not a steady, tight-knit group. But David is dedicated to that space and has managed, through the power of music and his goofy charm, to create an affable container. People walk in with their baggage — their cool boundaries, their trust issues, their heads that live in the wounded past — and, for an hour, those isolating constraints melt away.
Every soloist has down days. We all do. We all occasionally experience burnout or a loss of hope.- Kyo Maclear
There is a science to all of this. Neurochemistry says singing boosts endorphin levels. It's a lung exerciser, a mood elevator. But in December it was the group part of group singing that felt helpful.
Every soloist has down days. We all do. We all occasionally experience burnout or a loss of hope. In a culture built on individualism, there is something to be said for communality even if it's not second nature or, frankly, 100 per cent enjoyable. To persist and let yourself be lifted. To refuse relation-lessness. To show up for something bigger than yourself and, for an hour, ride with a wild and off-key ensemble. As someone who is happily group-avoidant most of the time, I am possibly the last person to cheerlead feelings of communality. But I am a loner, not a nihilist. And to paraphrase my wise friend Mike, a fellow loner: sometimes it's important to walk around like a weird wild duck and sometimes it's important to aim for collective lift off, however wobbly that might be.
About Kyo Maclear
Kyo Maclear is an essayist, novelist and children's author. Her recent book Unearthing won the 2023 Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction. Her books have been translated into 18 languages, won a Governor General's Literary Award and been nominated for the TD Canadian Children's Literature Award, among others. Her memoir Birds Art Life was a finalist for the 2017 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction and won the 2018 Trillium Book Award.
About the series Identity
The English-language books that won the 2023 Governor General's Literary Awards in many respects reflect on the idea of changing or shifting identity.
CBC Books asked the 2023 Governor General's Literary Awards winners to reflect further on the theme of identity in original works. The special series explores the complex ways we maintain, construct and subvert who we are and what we represent in the outside world. Singing in December was Kyo Maclear's contribution to the series.
