My folks sent me this; they are prone to sending the "Someone special sent me this and wanted me to send it to you, so if you don't send it to twelve special people in the next five minutes you're a loser" forwards, but this one was really interesting...

******


..something to think about...

Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.
4 minutes later:
the violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.
6 minutes:
A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes:
A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.
45 minutes:
The musician played continuously.  Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace.  The man collected a total of $32.
1 hour:
He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.



 

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities. The questions raised: in a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

(EDIT: Here's a link to a much more comprehensive Washington Post article about the experiment:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html )

I got to give two workshops, timed at the most bummer-ish times of the whole convention, and needed extra chairs for both...

I got to conduct 3000 musicians for an hour, beneath the envious glances of a goodly number of educated cathedrally men who probably thought they could have done it better...

I got to hear a wonderful priest--a wonderfully wise and gifted black man from Washington D.C.--give a superb talk about how God loves diversity, and do it in a way that honored everyone--he addressed race, gender, orientation, disability, and a few more isms with pointedness and strength and made me cry and feel like there might be just a little hope, he sang in Greek and he sang in Hebrew and he sang because he was happy and invited us all to sing because we were happy, because we were free...he even made the uptight white male organists relax and laugh a bit. (No small feat. ) He called us out, he called all of us out--but he did it with love. (I think that's what started my tears...for the past few months, I've been reading and hearing all this calling out for all kinds of reasons on all sides, at me, around me, having nothing to do with me, whatever...and most of that calling has been in anger. Righteous, justified anger. This man, a man with as much right to anger as anyone, called us in love, without pity or compromise or any intent to do anything other than speak the truth...but he spoke it in love.) (And he also pointed out that Jesus was most likely a brown guy. Which most people with brain cells know, but it's good to be reminded every once in a while.)

I got to meet friends I'd never met in person before because our relationships to that point had only existed in cyberspace.

I got to hear a convention hall full of people sing my psalm setting, got to hear the cantor part sung by a Spanish-speaker who understands cantillation and instinctively "got" what I had in mind...

I got to conduct 3000 people. (Did I mention that? Okay, I'll say it again) I got to hear and feel them about to pull apart, and I was able to bring them back into unity. And I wasn't afraid. I had the tools in my arsenal, and whenever there was a problem I knew which tool to pull out and use, and how to use it to get the job done.  I got to conduct Gregorian chant, and contemporary Gospel music, and elegant choral anthems, and a lovely bolero piece at Communion time, and a couple of massive and noisy hymn concertatos. I got to stand in the middle of all those voices singing in a big strong joyous forte on the fourth verse, as they decided without consulting with each other but knowing it was just right that they would dial it up to 11 for verse 5...

God, it was amazing.

And I'm tired.
--J

I'm probably going to go somewhat incommunicado for the next week or so; the big national pastoral music convention that's been sucking up my time and energy and life-force begins Sunday afternoon and goes until the following Friday, and I have multiple hats to wear, so there will be little time to blog (let alone sleep or think.)

So I go off to sing and play and smile and schmooze (lots of schmoozing!) and listen thoughtfully and tell people they are amazing (usually quite truthfully) and spend money and make money and conduct and run around like a crazy person...and hopefully I'll survive and be back in good spirits and health when all is said and done.

Have a great week, everyone!
--J

It was strange.  Two sort of unusual and very different music experiences the same weekend, which crystallized a lot for me...

Saturday night, the choral festival.  I had the enviable position of being the "guest conductor" for this big group of maybe 75 singers, 4 separate smaller choirs that rehearse on their own, each preparing 2 individual songs and 2 all in common.  My job was to direct the group in the 2 big mass-choir songs.  Other directors got the fun job of banging out individual notes and making sure their singers knew their parts, I just got to come in and spend a total of maybe 40 minutes trying to give it some shape and musicality.  Someone else does all the grunt work, I get to have the fun. (If I'd had 80 minutes instead of 40, hell, even 60, I could have fixed a lot of the little twitchy things, but I didn't have it, so I could just do what I could do. Wonderful exercise in making every moment count.)  The performance itself was pure joy--the tempo was a little sluggish, the too -loud tenors were still too loud and the tone-deaf basses behaved themselves slightly better, but it was FUN. I had fun, the choir had fun, the audience had fun. It was fairly awesome. And I was in my element and comfortable, in command of my toolbox of skills and knowing which iron to use when (to deliberately befuddle a metaphor).  It was fun.

Sunday night, party to celebrate the 25th anniversary of ordination of a priest friend.  Very nice party in very nice restaurant. Cash bar; a glass of wine was $9. (Al and I looked at each other incredulous--when we buy wine, a $9 bottle is considered an extravagance!) (Okay, slight exaggeration, but you can get a lot of good $6.99 wine from Trader Joe's.)  The guest of honor had asked a number of his friends to sing during dessert, and somehow I got bumped to the final number.  He's a big former actor type, so all of his drama friends did cool splashy numbers, totally in their element.  And I have to then sing this very low poppy song (my husband said it sounded like I was channelling my inner Melissa Manchester. He knows me very well--not on a conscious level, but that's EXACTLY what I was doing) that's not really in my range, with allergies and a cough, after all these theater pro types.

I did fine.  I didn't screw anything up, I didn't run out of air, I managed to keep the audible frogs at bay until I had a few beats of rest to clear them.  I'm a Bach mezzo, but I can pull off Melissa Manchester when I need to.  It was a decent performance. But. I was not in my element, my tool box was very limited, and I didn't have much fun at all; I spent the whole song doing a running commentary in my head of what was and wasn't working, making sure I didn't disgrace myself or Father (who was sitting there with leaky eyes the whole time; he's such a softie! :-) , getting the job done, disgrace-free I think. But I didn't much enjoy doing it.

I have my sing in front of the mirror moments; I belt along with "I wanna go oooooo----UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUt tonight" with Mimi on the Rent CD in the car, I enjoy the occasional karaoke.  But I'm not a performer.  Weird at age 40 to finally realize and come to terms with that. I am not a performer. Not a solo one anyway; I'm a community performer, who'd rather have fun in the doing and involve everyone in the process. But standing up there doing something so others can watch? Nope. Not me.

I sort of knew this all along, I guess.  But accepting it fully has taken a while.  And I really don't feel bad about it at all. I thought I would; I really don't.

An interesting weekend.
peace,
J
who has not had time to get on lj at ALL in the past few days....oy!

(background, from 2002--they are for real!)

ESCRAVOS, Nigeria (AP) -- Unarmed village women holding 700 ChevronTexaco workers inside a southeast Nigeria oil terminal let 200 of the men go Sunday but threatened a traditional and powerful shaming gesture if the others try to leave -- removing their own clothes.

"Our weapon is our nakedness," said Helen Odeworitse, a representative for the villagers in the extraordinary week-old protest for jobs, electricity and development in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta.

Most Nigerian tribes consider unwanted displays of nudity by wives, mothers or grandmothers as an extremely damning protest measure that can inspire a collective source of shame for those at whom the action is directed.

About 600 women from two nearby communities are holding ChevronTexaco's giant Escravos terminal. They range in age from 30 to 90 -- with the core group being married women aged 40 or older.

(from http://threehegemons.tripod.com/threehegemonsblog/id112.html)

 Below is the original version of an assignment I was asked to complete for an online course in "shaping places for worship"--let it serve as a lesson to me to check the word count of an assignment before actually plunging in and inevitably running over at the mouth...er...keyboard.  On the other hand, it allowed me to process some thoughts about my new work space that I had not considered before, so I'm posting it here before editing it for class...