When the Rest is Enough and You're Enough, Too

How an old Archie Shepp track shaped my thoughts on peace.

There’s a line at the beginning of Archie Shepp’s 1973 album, The Cry of My People, that I’ve wrestled with for almost two years. “Rest enough,” the singer declares. “Dear traveler, you’ve done your share.” There’s that word staring at me again, the same one emphasized by therapists and loved ones who see the wall coming.

Rest.

Rest before it’s too late. Rest before your body does it for you. Rest because, despite the edict of American capitalism, you don’t have to earn it. Only here does it feel we’ve normalized burnout, that taking your rightful slumber means you’re lazy or uninspired.

I first heard Shepp’s song in August 2023, right after my mother died and the grief prevailed. The theme devastated me: On the track, “Rest Enough (Song to Mother),” Shepp — through gospel vocalists and a big band — dissects inactivity through a different lens. For him, the rest is eternal rest. The traveler is the soul. The share is the life they lived, the effort they put forth to provide and protect. It’s not only an ode to mothers, but to sisters, friends, cousins and aunts who trekked the world — loudly, quietly, with fury, with grace, with passion, with love. Those who didn’t get the credit they deserved, others who did, some who took it by force. The song made me think of my own mother — for she was now the traveler who did the very best she could, and had been summoned to rest.

I’ve always had a complicated relationship with stillness. In kindergarten, I wasn’t satisfied in this reading group, I wanted to be in that one, with the kids who spelled complicated words like “alligator” and examined complex text (as complex as text can be at that age). Later, as a young newspaper reporter being supervised by old-school editors, I was taught — perhaps indirectly — that rest wasn’t a good thing. I was trained to be a bulldog, to distrust, second-guess and verify incessantly, to chase all the stories and answer the phone if it rang at 1 in the morning. My editors grew up watching Richard Nixon as U.S. president and All the President’s Men, the Oscar-winning film about corruption in the White House and the Washington Post reporters who exposed it. These mentors, alongside my own personal ambition, created an unhealthy sense of pursuit. Rest? Nah. I want to be one of the best writers of any discipline on the planet. So it seemed, the only way to achieve this would be to write nonstop, the 10,000 hours as they say. In my early days as a music reporter, my editors would joke that “Marcus does not sleep.” I used to take it as a compliment; now it wouldn’t be funny.

One day in the hospital, at a rare time in which my mother was lucid and eating, she encouraged me to go to a block party at the Black Smithsonian in nearby Washington, D.C. I didn’t want to go; I couldn’t crack a smile with my closest relative stuck in bed watching the Food Network on loop. Yet from that bed, her energy weakened from malnurishment, she insisted that I go have fun. I still remember the way she looked at me, and how clear her eyes were despite the illness ravaging her body. “Son,” she said softly. “I want you to rest yourself.” I guess that’s why Mom was Mom. No matter the situation and how strong I wanted to be, she saw right through it. I’d been going to visit her every day, for several hours each, for almost a month. Yet there she remained in her infinite wisdom telling me to chill out.

When I first started playing Shepp’s song, I couldn’t get through it without crying. I’m not talking a few tears, either. I mean a full-on, face wet, eyes tired type of sobbing. To that end, the entire album had been a tough listen for me. With its overt nods to nostalgic gospel, Cry evokes the same music that my grandmother used to play: hard pews in carpeted rooms with no air conditioning, the sun peeking through colorful stained glass windows, siphoning wisdom from vigorous pastors spreading the good word. But as sorrow turns to reflection, I now listen to the track and the LP with an even deeper sense of gratitude for my mother, grandmothers and aunts, and I find myself focusing on another part of the song title:

Enough.

Because as a creative person navigating the book, journalism and music industries, how much rest can I get? How much rest is enough in a world fueled by urgency? How much of my fatigue is self-inflicted? I suppose the quick answer is to not worry about what others are doing and run my own race. I do that for the most part, yet bad habits arise when the serenity lingers and the ideas emerge. Okay Marcus, you’ve rested enough, get back to it. The old me would burn the midnight oil as a badge of honor; the new me leans into the solace I need. I hear Mom in those moments: Rest. You’ve done enough and you are enough. You’re doing your share.

Not long ago, I had the honor of speaking with the poet aja monet at North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam, where I asked her about rest as resistance. Rest isn’t some political act, she retorted. “Rest is just rest.” The rest informs the work. It recharges the creativity and life itself, and shouldn’t be seen as anything else. So rest enough, dear reader. You’re doing the work like I’m doing the work, like some of your ancestors did the work. Though the to-do list awaits, tranquility beckons.