sister gertrude morgan

my friend ruthie was talking a bit ago about something her professor said about artists. or maybe just poets, but i think it can be extended generally too (forgive me if not!). the main idea i got from it though, was that her professor said that artists are often people of obsession that just get really engrossed in one idea and camp there for a large body of work. i think it's totally true, and i believe in obsession and also think it's very fun. i used to be much more obsessed and then got really tired for a while.



anyway, my recent fixation is on sister gertrude morgan, a gospel singer from louisiana. my friend diana got me her cd when she was just visiting (go saints!) and it's pretty much just sister g. singing and playing tambourine. her rhythm is perfect and occasionally irregular but i really like her songs. a lot of them are about scripture, but they're celebratory and awesome. my favorite one is called "way in the middle of the air" and it's about ezekial seeing a wheel within a wheel in the sky.



i can't sister gertrude's recording, but i couldn't remember the wheel within a wheel story to save my life, so i re-read it and found this crazy pic. in case you didn't grow up in church, they're usually aren't magical pictures like this accompanying scripture readings! apparently, ezekial saw 4 seraphim, each with two faces, and four wheels with wheels inside them that had eyes. i've heard lots of interpretations of this from prophecy about Christ's first coming to u.f.o.'s but i love this story so much.

back to sister gertrude, she said she heard the voice of God tell her to be a street evangelist at the age of 38 and left her husband and family and went to new orleans. while there she helped start and orphanage and later felt like she was being told she was a bride of Christ and began dressing in a white habit and painting. i have mixed feelings of this series of events and of what i know of God, but look how rad these paintings are:


i think she talks about Jesus being an airplane a lot. anyway, i couldn't find a recording of her version of the wheel in a wheel song, but i did find this version that a bunch of kids in some church did. it could be better, or at least tie.