Our world overflows with confusion – the what and why  and the who and the flooded field of being in an (un)real world – and in that confusion, it feels almost useless to hold onto any thready lines of hope. In the face of this darkness, this is exactly the thing we must do; all the parts of our soul are built by rivers of hope. This is /all/ that rebuilds the world (and all that ever has). 

It’s mid-January in 2026 and we’ve already lived through a year’s worth of destruction events in these few too-short weeks. Others can write better and more cogently about this, but much of what is good about humanity is under attack, and in this attack, the very concept of being human challenged ongoingly. I find myself thinking about what we can do to make bulwarks around our souls, to build moats around the whos and whats of our selves, to identify and recognize the ways in which we can survive. 

We tangle, all of us. The self – and the self-soul – reside as much in the other as the brain/body that governs the what of us. What I’m trying to say is no single person can be considered in isolation and any defenses we build require the other; the self-soul is part of the world-soul and the more we recognize being a part of something, the more we can be human again. We are the willows, we are the wind, we are the wheatgrass, we are the warblers, we are the waxworms, we are that which is outside and inside; we are the lovers, we are the heartbroken, we are the herons and the fish, we are the oppressed and the oppressors. 

Nearly everything that happens to us happens in the dark of our bodies or the invisible (a different kind of dark) linkages. Though we may glow imperceptibly, the blood that runs through you does so underground, the microbes that feed in your gut feed in the black; the roots underground twine with microbes and mycelial systems to carry our existence to us. We are lifeless with the dark work of the planet’s soul. What I think I mean by this is that we need to connect to the world – which includes us – to be ensouled at all. The moment we conceive of ourselves as individuals, we desoul ourselves. 

– – – – 

I am always looking for a way to connect to the shared soul. 

For my fortieth birthday, the love of my life bought me tickets to see Hiss Golden Messenger play with the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra in Greensboro, North Carolina, a city eighty or so miles outside Raleigh. I’ve written more about M.C. Taylor’s songs than any other artist – and in many ways, I’ve grown into the person I am alongside the music – so this is/was the most perfect gift she could ever have given me. 

For the uninitiated, Taylor tells stories that travel down long roads without much end, exploring the surrealty of feeling and being human, confined to the context of songs built into a place of and for revelation, and yet still grounded in the day-to-day of having a life. He sings about family and hope and grace and pain and love and doubt and faith. His is an aged sweet-tea voice that’s been left on the counter just long enough that the bitterness swirls with the sugar and the darkness isn’t lost in a sweet fog. Paired with steady rhythms and a band that knows him, Hiss’s themes – of redemption gained and lost, of hope in the darkness, of faith without religion, of loving despite it all – have soundtracked the last decade-plus of my listening life.

This is soul music; what I mean by that is that this is mycelial music with roots in the earth and the blood and it can and will be that bulwark for some of us. This is music that reminds you you’re not some disconnected thing, you’re not just-you. 

Check out the official video for “Sanctuary” by Hiss Golden Messenger:

We made it by a minute, walking into the theater as the lights flickered in warning and the orchestra sat onstage. Jess wore a dress, I wore a blazer; she squeezed my thigh in excitement as Taylor and his band walked out. 

I don’t have the words, but I’ll try. Revelation is a thread and wonder unrolls as endlessly as the highways of your neurons unfurled into a single line of starlight. You and I are made of seven octillion oscillating atoms and when a room of octillions sing together, we bring dead stars to life. 

We don’t know the where and when of rivers’ beginnings, but I think we can find the flood. I’m going to go through the setlist now, maybe one by one. The band started with “My Wing” – “no retreat / no surrender / make it tender / make it lasting / make it faithful” –  and when the symphony kicked into the song, that was the leak that augured the river. 

The groove deepened with “Passing Clouds”, hastened with “Biloxi”, widened with the impossibly perfect “Caledonia My Love” – my god, my god, the bigness of this song, the swell as Taylor sang “and all the baddest of the angels / sit and cry for nothing  then some die in the rushes” followed by an extended orchestral interlude that swelled into the emotionally incomprehensible – and then, 

then the flow eroded us canyon-wide as “Blue Country Mystic” caromed off the walls. I don’t even what the fuck to say about this moment. I think I said “wow” a half-dozen times and came close to happy-crying. Poor Moon is the first Hiss record I ever loved and “Blue Country Mystic” is its first song, so it’s music deeper than the blood in my bones; I’ve heard it at least 15 times in person, but this, this was revelation of a new kind. The band and the symphony traded (or maybe dueled?) solos, and when the song demanded they reenter the groove, Taylor and the director – Christopher Dragon – glanced at each other with uncontainable joy and jumped back into the song with their whole hearts. It might be the most joy-filled version of M.C. Taylor I’ve ever seen onstage. 

They moved fluidly into “Sanctuary” – truly a desperately needed song – which started sweetly with the symphony before Taylor added his guitar and it became a psalm sung loud. I’ll never forgive Taylor for making us all feel so deeply in a public place, but I’ll also never be able to thank him enough for it. They closed the first half of the set with “Standing in the Doorway” (yes babe / i’m still dreaming / in the doorway of honor”). 

– – – – 

The self is eroded by time into what it becomes. Every one of us starts as some kind of slab of stone and if we’re lucky, we get to become some other thing. Sometimes, I imagine that I’m a fossil slipping into sand until the golden ammonite inside unfolds; other times, I imagine I’m a slab of hematite and that iron-red streak is my blood and proof I’m alive. 

– – – – 

The intermission could have been the end and I’d have left happy. And still, nothing could have ever prepared me for the depth of emotions I’d experience during the second half. 

I’m not going to write too pretty right now (I started to), but I might slip into some words by accident. This was the best version of “Cat’s Eye Blue” – one of my favorite songs in all of existence, one of Taylor’s most poetic and in so many ways, driven by concision – that I’ve heard. They made it massive and long, doubling its length, and just after Taylor sang, “Let the light of the world open your eyes”, the band and symphony joined together to build a tsunami of sound. 

They had the audacity to follow “Cat’s Eye Blue” with “Heart Like a Levee”, by which I mean Thank you for this wound. Guys, I cracked hard between these two songs; the iron in me softened. After this, the heartburning and always timely “Bright Direction (You’re A Dark Star Now)” broke down into a series of old-school jams built to feature every musician onstage. After the first instance of Taylor singing “did you cross that line?” with Sonyia Turner (who is apparently on almost every single Hiss album but has almost never played live with him!!) on harmonies, Rhett Huffman held court on a proper piano for nearly a minute; After, the second Chris Boerner unleashed a(n) (un)holy wall of sound guitar solo that deserves a shrine. Throughout the song and the night, Cameron Ralston – the best bassist on the east coast and Taylor’s collaborator in Revelators Sound System – kept the needle to the groove alongside Matt McCaughan (drums) and Michael Libramento (percussion). 

And of course, the Greensboro Symphony did things that make a beggar of my language. 

The show continued to unfold with “Glory Strums”, which I’ve considered an emotional cousin to “Bright Direction”. Then “As the Crow Flies” soared, a storm, and I smiled so widely as my wife shone and sang along with as much of her chest as the setting allowed. The symphony announced “Highland Grace” as the penultimate song; everywhere we go, my wife and I squeeze each others’ hands to say “I love you” (three times) and “I love you most” (four times) silently as we go through the world or the world goes through us, and so we squeezed again and again and again, and so when Taylor sang “Oh loving her was easy / the easiest thing in the world” to a sea of strings, we watered our eyes. 

They ended the night with “I Need a Teacher”. I think Taylor is a political songwriter, but I don’t think he writes political songs. They gifted the audience some final flourishes as he sang about “beauty in the broken American moment”, and then we all went to whatever home was for the night. An actually perfect show. 

Check out Hiss Golden Messenger’s newest release, Jump for Joy:

Here’s the thing. We can never experience the world exactly the same; even your green, my blue, your red, my yellow – how I see colors is an approximation of how you see colors! – but it’s the most important thing in the world to share together. Whatever it is that I felt is incommunicable, and the more I have felt, the more incommunicable it becomes. This is the very essence of self, but it is also the very essence of human-self to try to communicate anyway. 

I don’t know many people will read this (or even if any of you get to this point), but I hope with all that I am that you got to see the world with as close to the same color as me. 

Lastly, I want you to take away just one simple thing this show reminded me: you are starstuff, and together, we make ‘em. 

The setlist included:
(All with Greensboro Symphony)

My Wing
Passing Clouds
Biloxi
Caledonia, My Love
Blue Country Mystic
Sanctuary
Standing in the Doorway

Set 2:
Cat’s Eye Blue
Heart Like a Levee
Bright Direction (You’re a Dark Star Now)
Glory Strums (Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner)
As the Crow Flies
Highland Grace
I Need a Teacher

Lede photo copyright Matt Ruppert.