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“How Can I Keep from Singing?”
- Stephanie Zajchowski, PhD
- Jun 21
- 6 min read
Holding a hymnal, standing in a pew, and singing with a congregation is often where I find myself in times of deep loss, uncertainty, or desolation. Not necessarily to change anything or feel comforted by those standing with me, but to sing collectively, to feel the music flow through me, to reach for something greater than myself for solace.
Initiation arrives in many forms, quite often entailing suffering. Life brings us to our knees at times. Moments that mark a before and an after. In these junctures, when the ringing in my ears fades, I hear Enya’s ethereal voice shrouding me with "How Can I Keep from Singing?”
An older hymn sometimes entitled “My Life Flows On in Endless Song,” Enya’s version captures the feeling of singing it in a congregation. Her haunting rendering stirs something deeply within, like a choir reverberating in a cathedral. The first line, “my life goes on in endless song, above earth’s lamentations,” envelops me into the flow of a lifeforce which somehow weaves my suffering into part of something eternal, and then “I hear the real, though far-off hymn, that hails a new creation,” reminding me that change is woven into the fabric of human life. The hymn continues, “through all the tumult and the strife, I hear its music ringing, it sounds an echo in my soul. How can I keep from singing?” The otherworldly music seems to connect me to a mysterious, universal song. I let go and allow it to move through and then beyond me, as I feel compelled to sing along.
Weaving mystery into song
In Greek mythology, where there is song, there is Orpheus. His father, Apollo, gave him the gift of music, and Orpheus uses his abilities to weave the mysteries into living poetry. His song calms the wild beasts. The trees still, and the rocks lean in to hear. Even the deities of the underworld are compelled to grant him entrance upon hearing his music.
The Orpheus myth reveals music’s deep communion with soul, an animism recognized by all who experience the Orphic song. As if Orpheus is playing the sheet music of the universe, the mysteries emanate from his lyre, leaving us in rapt aesthetic arrest. Music holds the power to blur boundaries.
The rapture of Orpheus’s music is forged through his connection to Dionysus, the Greek god of the irrational vivifying principle of life. Dionysus’s myth embodies life’s chaotic and uncontrolled aspects. Passionate destruction in service to life. When logic fails, Dionysus walks us to the brink of the fathomless abyss and beckons us to gaze into its depths. Orpheus sang the mysteries of Dionysus, and thus his myth grants access to the terror and wonder of the abyss.
Orpheus connects Apollo’s form giving power with Dionysus’s destructive dissolution. Holding the tension of these two mythic figures allows his music to tap into the life-giving power of the divine without destroying us with its force. The depth found in the abyss enchants Orpheus’s music, and through the gift of his lyre, we are allowed to join the chorus.
Tragically, Dionysus’s maenads dismembered Orpheus, but his myth doesn’t end there. His decapitated head sings even as it floats down the river to the shores of Lesbos. The song continues after death. Orpheus cannot keep himself from singing.
The myth speaks to time’s giving and taking, and to the inevitable transformation of the world. In Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem Sonnets to Orpheus, “Part I, Sonnet 5,” he writes of Orpheus:
Raise no monument. But let the roses
blossom every summer for his sake.
For this is Orpheus. His metamorphosis
into this one and that one. We need not worry
about all those other names. Once and for all,
if there is singing, there is Orpheus.
The Orphic song sings of life's ephemerality, even as it reverberates with the mysteries of eternity. A mythic image that embodies destruction while still singing of the creative energies that vivify. An affirmation showing that the not-knowing, the mystery itself, is most holy.
Saying yes to life
Joseph Campbell addressed the way modern society can sometimes sterilize itself from the mysteries in life (The Masks of God: Creative Mythology, 356). The need to have all the answers suffocates our ability to sit with the questions. Both the myth of Orpheus and Enya’s hymn embrace not-knowing. They offer no answers, and yet, we still join the chorus amid the terror and wonder of it all.
For Campbell, the hero’s journey sought to unite the two kingdoms of life and death. “The idea in the hero adventure is to walk bodily through the door into the world where the dualistic rules don’t apply” (On the Hero’s Journey, 13). Myth connects us to these mysteries, and we choose how we meet them.
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche welcomed life in all its contradictions:
Saying yes to life, even in its most inimical, hardest problems, the will to life delighting even in the offering up of its highest types to its own inexhaustibility — … but beyond terror and pity, to be oneself identified with the everlasting joy of becoming—that joy which includes in itself the joy in destruction as well…(qtd. in Campbell, The Masks of God: Creative Mythology, 356)
So too, Orpheus sings in his own impermanence; Enya’s lyrics promise an endless song that endures beyond death. Both say “yes” to life even in its suffering. As does playing music on the sinking Titanic, singing at a candlelight vigil, or bagpipes haunting the mists of a funeral procession. Sometimes all we can do is sing. Or perhaps music is one of our greatest powers. The hope we feel in harmony is not only hope for ourselves, but also for the world’s collective song. We are singing the myth onward.
Singing the myth onward
Someone once told me that when all the doors before you close, praise God in the hallway. Maybe singing while standing in darkness is an act of faith. No answers, no questions, just being. Allowing the music to carry us beyond our current circumstances.
Or singing may be an act of our very existence. A deep understanding that suffering is part of the game of life, and music carries it all. Our heartbeat joins the rhythm of the universe in song, and we cannot help but lean into its sublime mystery. Even as death greets us in the mirror each day, how can we keep from singing?
MythBlast authored by:
Stephanie Zajchowski, PhD is a mythologist and writer based in Texas. She serves as the Director of Operations for the Joseph Campbell Foundation and is a contributing author of Goddesses: A Skeleton Key Study Guide. Stephanie is also a co-founder of the Fates and Graces, hosting webinars and workshops for mythic readers and writers. Her work focuses on the intersection of mythology, religion, and women’s studies. For more information, visit stephaniezajchowski.com
This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work.
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This Week's Highlights
"[Hermes] stole Apollo’s cattle, and to appease the god gave him the lyre, which Apollo passed to his own son Orpheus. And, as the whole world knows, the sound of that lyre in Orpheus’s hands stilled the animals of the wilderness, moved trees and rocks, and even charmed the lord of the netherworld when the lover descended alive to the abyss to recover Eurydice, his lost bride."
-- Joseph Campbell
