{"id":298,"date":"2021-07-20T19:00:57","date_gmt":"2021-07-20T19:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/katiekring.com\/new\/?post_type=product&#038;p=298"},"modified":"2026-04-11T15:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T15:34:10","slug":"i-am-happy","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/katiekring.com\/new\/product\/i-am-happy\/","title":{"rendered":"I Am Happy"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">Listen &amp; Peruse<\/h3>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sAL8sGhC2f8?controls=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/center><center><a href=\"https:\/\/katiekring.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Forgotten-Voices-I-am-Happy_watermark.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><button>Perusal Score<\/button><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"border: 1px solid #666; padding: 10px; background-color: #eee;\">\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">I am Happy<\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>based on the responses of the Springfield Street Choir to the prompt &#8220;I am ___&#8221;\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"324\">I am grateful, I am learning,<br \/>\nI\u2019m a child of God<br \/>\nI am kind and I\u2019m outgoing<br \/>\nI\u2019m a child of God<br \/>\nI am strong and I\u2019m brave<br \/>\nI\u2019m a survivor<br \/>\nI\u2019m a good person<br \/>\nI\u2019m a member of the choir<br \/>\nAnd I am happy<br \/>\nA child of God<br \/>\nHappy<\/td>\n<td width=\"300\">I am awesome and I\u2019m blessed<br \/>\nA child of God<br \/>\nI am confident and capable<br \/>\nA child of God<br \/>\nI am alive<br \/>\nI am a warrior<br \/>\nI am forgiven<br \/>\nI am beautiful<br \/>\nAnd I am happy<br \/>\nA child of God<br \/>\nHappy<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&#8220;<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This song was very much a surprise to me. After a Street Choir rehearsal in December of 2019, I asked all our singers to turn over their attendance slips and write \u201cI am\u2026\u201d and then finish the sentence however they liked. I gave them no prompts or coaching, encouraged them to write whatever they wanted, didn\u2019t explain why I was asking, nothing that would bias the responses. And when I looked through the papers, I have to confess, I was shocked. Winter is a hard time to be homeless, tempers are short, everyone\u2019s tired and cranky. And I really expected a lot of answers along the lines of \u201cI am forgotten\u201d or something like that. I got one: \u201cI am sad and depressed.\u201d Instead, they were overwhelmingly positive. (There were also a few that were hilarious, like one that said \u201cI am Ralph\u201d&#8230; from a guy named Mike.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I do not wish for anyone to overgeneralize from this song that homelessness is a bucket of laughs. It is not. It is crushingly traumatic in almost every aspect. But the awful baseline of day to day homeless life renders good experiences borderline-euphoric. And far be it for me to censor their honest responses because they were too positive for my agenda. I asked, they answered. After all, our friends had just done one of their very favorite things &#8212; singing in the choir, in a place where they felt safe and loved. Thus, they indeed told the truth. In that moment, they were happy.<\/span><span style=\"font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;\">&#8221; \u2013 Katie Kring<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I am Happy&#8221; is a joyful, boisterous setting of the responses generated when the homeless members of the Springfield Street Choir were asked to fill in the blank, &#8220;I am ___.&#8221; The responses are unexpected, poignant, and moving, and the lively musical setting makes this a favorite among the choir.<\/p>\n<p>This piece is part of the Forgotten Voices song cycle, and can be purchased as a stand-alone piece, or with the song cycle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":282,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[69,55,38],"product_tag":[91,90,87,89,88,82,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-298","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-choir","7":"product_cat-forgotten-voices","8":"product_cat-choir-satb","9":"product_tag-a-capella","10":"product_tag-happy","11":"product_tag-homeless","12":"product_tag-positive","13":"product_tag-social-justice","14":"product_tag-up-tempo","15":"product_tag-uptempo","17":"first","18":"instock","19":"downloadable","20":"taxable","21":"shipping-taxable","22":"purchasable","23":"product-type-simple"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/katiekring.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/katiekring.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/katiekring.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katiekring.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katiekring.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/katiekring.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katiekring.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=298"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katiekring.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=298"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katiekring.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}