Fellowship history · The laundromat afternoon

Nine songs, one afternoon, a folding table.

Sister Petra Bloom will tell you, if you catch her at the potluck and she has had her decaf, that she did not so much write nine songs that afternoon as take them down, and that the machine did most of the arranging. It was the founding years, long before Anointed was Anointed and before any of us thought of ourselves as a band with records — just a fellowship that sang, and a woman with a heap of laundry, a roll of quarters, and a Tuesday afternoon with nothing else claimed on it. The Camarillo laundromat had a long folding table down the middle, the sort with a scarred laminate lid warm from the dryers, and while her load went around she set a borrowed pen and the back of an envelope on that table and started sorting — socks from towels, and then, without quite deciding to, lines from other lines. By the time the spin cycle wound down she had nine songs, written straight down the envelope and up around the sides, and she has called that table her 'productive heap' ever since, because, she says, you do not have to fold the whole pile before you begin — you begin, and the folding is the prayer. Nine of the eleven songs on Anointed (2019) came off that table in that one afternoon, in about the order the quarters ran out, and we recorded them the way we record everything, in a single weekend and a single key, and we did not edit the heap. We have tried, more than once, to get her to do it again on purpose; it does not work on purpose. The lesson we took away, and keep, is the one she keeps: sit down at the humble table in front of you, load it with care, and let the cycle do the arranging. If you want the whole heap track by track, we wrote the liner notes down as a devotional — read the devotional for Anointed (2019), and bring a roll of quarters.

• ✚A roll of quarters and an ordinary Tuesday — She did not clear her calendar or wait for inspiration to knock; she had laundry to do, and did it, and the songs came while she was busy being faithful to a small and ordinary chore. We have never since found a better condition for writing than a plain task already in your hands and nowhere in particular to be — the quarters counted out, the load in, and an afternoon you had already given away to something humble.
• ✚The folding table was the altar — There was no studio, of course; there never was in those years. There was a scarred laminate table down the middle of a laundromat, warm from the dryers, and the back of an envelope, and a pen she had borrowed from the attendant and forgot to give back for a week. Sister Petra maintains it was the best desk she ever had, and that a fellowship which waits for a proper room to worship in will keep on waiting. You use the table in front of you.
• ✚You do not have to sort the whole pile first — This is the doctrine of the productive heap, and she preaches it more than any song on the record: you are not asked to see the finished, folded pile before you start. You are asked only to begin, and to trust that the sorting is itself the prayer. Nine songs got written that afternoon because she stopped waiting to feel ready and simply started moving socks, and the lines came in behind the sorting the way they mostly do.
• ✚We did not edit the heap — When she brought the envelope to the next fellowship night, nine songs down its front and up its sides, we recorded them the way we record all eight albums — one weekend, one key — and we left them very nearly as they fell. We have always believed that a song written in one honest afternoon carries something a polished one loses, the way a warm load folded straight out of the dryer is softer than one left to sit. Anointed (2019) is that afternoon, mostly unedited, and we are not sorry.
• ✚It does not work on purpose — We have driven her back to that laundromat with a fresh envelope and a full roll of quarters, and it has never once happened on command, and she says of course it hasn't, because you cannot schedule the moment the arranging starts any more than you can schedule the spin cycle to hand you a chorus. You can only be there, at the humble table, with your load already in and your hands already busy. The heap gives what it gives, and our whole trade is to be sitting at it when it does.

A founding-era legend, and the one Sister Petra tells against herself, always at the potluck, always crediting the machine. Fellowship in song since 2007. Find a humble table, load it with care, and let the cycle do the arranging.