When my kids were young, I found a sign somewhere that said: "A clean house is the sign of a wasted life", and it presided over my house for several years. Obviously I don't really believe that, and now that I'm a grandmother and the presence of children in my house is much more intermittent, I love having my space tidy and clean. But it's still far from perfect, because the grandchildren do trail in and out most days, and because I'm quite busy and stuff doesn't always get done. And, let's be honest, it's never been my highest priority until people are coming over, at which point a messy house feels like a character defect. But at the time when I had to make tough choices about how to spend my time and energy, and what to care about, the sign reminded me to stand in my values. And maybe it let other people know that if they were judging me, it was their problem not mine. I nearly got there anyway.
We had a stellar, stonking success on Saturday night, an absolute gift of a Christmas concert. It was a beautiful thing to be part of and, I gather, to listen to. I'm told we were expressive, artistic, communicative, and musical, and as a community expressed our values of peace, joy, hope and love, at a time when we're all really needing those messages.
But we made a few messes in there. We conductors mucked up a few times too - no idea if the audience noticed but the choir did, and just kept going anyway. I forgot which song we were up to and gave wrong notes (sorry guys!). I forgot how many counts at the very end of Welcome Table until the altos do their final "Lord!" (fortunately they knew). Megan started something at the wrong tempo and needed to restart the song. I don't know that Steven did anything during the concert, but he was so engrossed in the music that he did a Homer-Simpson-worthy graceful subsidence into the pews minutes before it. A few things were imperfect in the singing here and there...I know I sang some wrong words at one point but I doubt anyone noticed except the sopranos next to me, who must've wondered. And I'm absolutely certain I wasn't the only one.
We talked about it afterwards and decided that we were totally cool with having shown up as being less than perfect. As Megan (TaupÅ choir leader) wisely said, it's what happens when you take risks and start living in the music and loving it, and stop being too careful. It's what we tell our singers to do all the time - be brave, make some mistakes, but bring your heart to it and express something you care about. We still had an amazing concert, and people were moved despite the messes. Or maybe it was because we allowed the messes that we were all able to pour our love into and through the music...and the audience heard it and felt it.
We all know there's a balance - we don't want to turn up to a concert not knowing the music and not having a good plan. But we had all (choir and conductors) done all of that work, to the best of our abilities, and it was time to let it go a little bit. Live performance is messy - it just is. We can't edit out the bits that didn't work. And nothing like Saturday's concert is going to work 100% of the time and still be alive and glorious. We have to let it go, or the anxiety becomes paralysing and in the end will stop us getting out there and offering our work to our audiences.
I know I've quoted this before but I need to be reminded often:
"… Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in…"
- Anthem by Leonard Cohen
There were certainly some cracks on Saturday night, but so much light shining through!
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