Personal History: "I Need You To Survive"

I'm a big believer in the need to examine culture, particularly popular culture, critically: to my mind, culture is the place where we figure out who we are and where we stand. It's where we spend our money, it's what we escape to, it's often what we use to define vital moments in our lives. But as a critic, I also acknowledge that there are certain pieces of art that I can't approach in a rational way. They're too deeply associated with certain emotional experiences, certain points of transition in my life, they're too personal for me to assess dispassionately. And I want to talk about those songs, and movies, and paintings, etc., occasionally because I think they're a way I can understand and explain what's important to me when I look at culture. Today, I want to start with "I Need You To Survive" as performed by Hezekiah Walker and the Love Fellowship Choir:

I freely acknowledge that "I Need You to Survive" doesn't have any of the major characteristics I normally look for in a song. It's an extremely simply lyrical structure and progression. The production and backing music are uncomplicated: it's basically a piano. There is nothing clever, or arch, or whatever about this song. And yet for me, this is a song that makes the skies open up, that makes whatever moment I'm in when I hear it better.

I credit that at least in part to the initial circumstances in which I heard the song. When I was in college, I went to services at Varick A.M.E. Zion occasionally. The church had a fairly small choir and worship team, but they absolutely rocked "I Need You To Survive," which they performed during the welcome section of services. The congregation would circulate, shaking hands as happens in no white church I've ever attended, really sincerely greeting each other, and singing snatches along with the choir, which didn't stop until everyone felt throughly embraced and ready to pray together. I'm more Judeo than Christian, and my spirituality was kind of ambiguous at that point, but the warmth of the song never left me, and at some point, I made sure I had a rendition of it on my iPod.

What gets me about Hezekiah Walker and Co.'s rendition about it is two things: the progression and the clarity of intent. To address the latter issue first, there's no attempt to disguise Walker's instructions to the choir. There is a direction he's taking them in, and his guidance makes it obvious to the singers to us where that destination is. But it's the build in the song that really gets me. It starts quiet and peaceful, but by the time the choir is shouting the lyrics without backing music (around 6:05 in the song, and believe you me, Hezekiah tells you when it's going to happen), the song is the clearest, most powerful expression of fellowship I know. The lyrics are nominally Christian, but they're a statement about human need and human behavior. They're a promise ("I won't harm you with words from my mouth.") an explanation ("It is His will that every need be supplied.") and a statement of intense vulnerability ("I need you to survive.").

I've relied on "I Need You to Survive" at less specific moments in my life: a walk towards Dupont Circle on a bad day, a walk home from U Street on a night when the sky was full of dramatically backlit clouds and a downpour seemed imminent late at night. It's one of a few songs that works on me on a level entirely beyond the rational, one of a few pieces of music I can entirely surrender to. I've never had the bride gene. Other than playing the role for Halloween one year when I was maybe 6, it never really stuck. But the only thing I know for sure about my wedding should I ever be so lucky to get married is this: when I walk towards the person I plan to spend the rest of my life with, the people who are gathered there to bear witness for us, and to gather us up into a community, will be singing "I Need You to Survive" every step of the way.