My father always used to say that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing poorly, which is to say that if you’re going to hold off doing something until you can get it perfect, it’s not ever going to happen, and that would be a tragic loss for you, and perhaps (likely) others too.
Musicians spend a lifetime learning and relearning this lesson. We are conditioned and trained from the day we pick up an instrument to become perfectionists. Nothing less will do. In “the old days,” this conditioning did not paralyze the way it does today… if you wanted music, you had to make it yourself, or get some folks together and pull off what you could. Now, in a world that has become hopelessly infatuated with its machines and its “devices,” music, perfect music, is just a click away. When you have the whole world at your fingertips, why bother with your neighbor? Or your own halting efforts as a musician for that matter?
Here’s why. Quite by contrast to the “virtual” world that holds us captive, our life takes place inside of bodies, inside the passage of time, in neighborhoods where the neighbors include all kinds of critters and rocks and trees and other marvels — each miraculously unique and distinct from all others.
Those who are followers of Christ know this as incarnation… that the experience of life itself is one deeply embodied, and that even our very Source and Summit (God) comes to share in this experience — in the messiness and the miracle of creation. The Christmas story sets us free from our perfectionist selves, from any notion that life is merely “virtual.”
The Christmas story draws us back to our origins — to the gift of our own embodied life, here, in this time and in this place, with neighbors that are more than just an idea. And so, come to find out that music is a whole lot more fun and more meaningful when we get to do it ourselves and in community — live, in the midst of a whole lot of bodies gathered together.
A hundred or so of those bodies have been rehearsing for weeks now (and having a whole lot of fun in the process) for an annual concert in Cook County that goes back some seven decades: the Christmas concerts of the Borealis Chorale and Orchestra. Our efforts, this year like every year, will be embodied in time and place — joined with those who come to hear us in an encounter with one another that cannot happen if we don’t come together. And even though we are not the St. Olaf choir, or the New York Philharmonic, or anything even close, our music-making will have certain energy and magic that envelops us because of the miracle of incarnation, and, indeed, if that ain’t worth singin’ about, I don’t know what is!
The Borealis Chorale and Orchestra will perform this Sunday and Monday evening, 7 p.m., at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Grand Marais. A special offering this year is the world premiere of a new composition by Minnesota composer Craig Carnahan and poet Julia Klatt Singer entitled the Lingering Light of Day. A free-will offering at the door will help defray the expenses of producing this concert.
Leave a Reply