We sang this in school. It was one of my favourite choral productions- Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. We sang a lot from there, a show I’d never seen but knew was done by someone extremely famous, Andrew Lloyd Webber. We sang a LOT of his songs in our choir.
My friend told me of how she blacked out this week and got injured. The world no we chronically sick people live in is such a parallel world. We are constantly suffering while everyone rose lives their day hot by hour unconscious of the pain, while the moments that allow the sick one to forget the suffering are minimal. I blacked out once at school. Found myself at the bottom of the steps with my friend extremely concerned and wanting me to go to the sick room. But I didn’t want to miss choir, so given I was feeling ok, I pressed on. I didn’t even think to tell my parents. As always.
This is the same school friend who would tell me I’m walking “like a granny” when what we now know are AS flares started up. The pain in my feet would burn so bad and I’d try curl my toes so they don’t hit the floor hard. My toes and finger so swollen I could barely hold my pen to write and sometimes just listened after showing my teacher why I wasn’t writing. I’d get home and make a mug of cocoa but my fingers couldn’t even curl to hold the handle of the mug.
I don’t know why, but I woke up this morning and as I tried to psyche myself up to get my pain tablets but the pain so bad I didn’t even want to move, I remembered this song. It was sung at the beginning and end of the play. For me, it represented Joseph in prison. Alone and sad. Weeping while the world slept. Forgotten. Sold by those he loved. So alone in his innocence. Just like me when I was a child.
What memories does this little one have hidden behind her smile? Nights of pain. Nights of lying on the bed she shared with her parents rolling around trying to figure out why her legs hurt so much, night after night. Doctors claiming it was growing pains. I’m still waiting to grow, then.🥹The stomach pain bringing her first colonoscopy two years after this photo. The daily burning abdominal pain as she walked to the train station with her daddy after school.
When we were still newly wed and living in Kenya, they had the production going. Joseph and His Amamzing Technicolour Dreamcoat. We’d stopped watching most shows by then but this I just had to see. My husband had also done it at his school, so it would have been nostalgic for both of us.
As I sat and watched, the tears just flowed for so many reasons. Nairobi, Kenya was the first time I knew that Black people (not just a few here and there, but almost an entire cast!) did theatre. It was amazing watching all these Black people singing songs we sang in our very British schools. Just seeing them so energised and hearing those lyrics coming from their lips was emotional. I don’t know how many black people TODAY in South Africa know the works of Webber.
Singing the lyrics as they sang all these songs we’d sung in school, took me back to school. The choir was my safe space. Music always took away emotional and physical pain. It was there too that instead of insults about my looks or body, I was told I could do something well. Very well. So well the choir teacher would tell the first sopranos that I was carrying them and they were flat so I should keep quiet and they must learn to sing the right key. (I can see where I got my absolute distaste of bad singing😩🫣 It’s jarring to my ear. There’s a church that has a very flat woman who leads with a very loud voice. It’s unbearable on top of how many don’t stick to the actual tune which we at our Xhosa churches grew up singing because we sang the notes as they are in the hymn book.) I digress. Beautiful music was my healing place.
I could forget myself and be the person singing the words. I could be Joseph. Betrayed by those who loved him. I could be Joseph, seeing how God allowed the bad to lead to great good. A good better than his past. I could see God better when I sang to Him. Even in normal assembly.
God appears vividly coloured when I sing, just like when I’m reading His word. I can forget the pain I’m in. I can forget that yesterday my ten year old wanted me to go back to bed as the flare began again. I can forget the neck pain, headaches, deep sore in my gum preventing me from eating ok and brushing my teeth (Rinvoq side effects), hip and leg pain when I’m lying here crying over lyrics from decades ago.
I too wish I could have someone “give me my coloured coat, my amazing coloured coat.” (Last line of the song) I just want to be ok. Joseph wanted to be ok. And the God Who eventually led his bones to the promised land, will heal mine one day. But oh, I close my eyes and know the someone far away who is weeping, is me. And maybe Flydah in Kenya, far away. Thank you for reading my heart ramblings and encouraging me.
By the way, I saw THIS version below first when I looked for the song so I could sing along to it. I felt so stupid as I watched. It took me ages to figure out why the lead singer was wearing a colourful ‘dress!’ Ankylosing spondylitis brain fog. Even Ammy quotes “brain fog” at me when the cloud caused by AS messes up by memory or my speech. I love the mix of singers. THIS video is what made me realise how BIG this song is. I truly never knew even though people have acted the entire story. 🤦🏾♀️Maybe the blacking out and falling down the stairs knocked some brain cells out.
They said I should write a book 