WTE: What I learned singing in the community choir

Last night I was blessed to sing in Evanston’s annual Christmas concert. Volunteer musicians from all walks of life rehearsed for months. They came from as far as an hour away for the pure joy of making music together.

In a world of individualism, live music requires togetherness. Sheet music is only paper and ink until real people in real space and in real time bring it to life. In the beginning, it’s not pretty.

Sour notes, missed cues, nasal tones and a thousand other personal sins muddle the music in the early going. Every singer makes more than his or her share of mistakes. “No one is righteous. No, not one.” Practice makes it better, but not as quickly as you might think.

We submit to correction and cajoling from the director and from one another. Rarely do tempers flare. Mostly the flubs are acknowledged with self-deprecating humor. We are striving for excellence, but happiness does not depend on it. Joy is found in the striving.

I think that we all start rehearsals hoping that our mistakes will be hidden in the general cacophony. But the closer we get to the performance, the more we realize that there is no place to hide. To enjoy the chorus means that we each take full responsibility for our own part in it.

What started as pressure from the director turns to an internal desire to learn the music. Once that shift occurs, people roll up their sleeves and do the hard work behind the scenes. That’s when the community chorus begins to gel, and real music begins to happen.

What is true of a chorus is true of every community. It may start off with rules and regulations. But unless the desire to work together comes from each individual member, it will never gel as a community and “make music.”

In a community, just as in a chorus, every member will make plenty of mistakes. As a result, we all need both to bear with the mistakes of others gracefully and to help lift them up with gentleness and love. Most of all, each member of the community is responsible to work behind the scenes at developing habits of the heart that come out when we come together.

This kind of community-building cannot come from coercive rules. Laws can only set boundaries that provide a framework. Community depends on a personal willingness to do what cannot be enforced. It also comes with a dawning realization that there is no place to hide.

As in the community chorus, we may start off thinking that our own sins will be hidden by the background noise of everybody else’s sins. With this mindset, our only motivation is to be mediocre. We tell ourselves, “Don’t do anything stupid that will make you stick out of the crowd.” This is easily accomplished by doing nothing at all.

But eventually you come to realize that if you want to contribute to the chorus, you must risk blurting out a wrong note. If nobody is willing to take that risk, we will mumble through life without ever having the joy of making actual music.

The truth is that all the world’s a stage. There is no place to hide. Every person matters. Your voice and your actions impact everyone around you. Silence speaks as loudly as a scream. Inactivity does just as much as action. You are on the stage by virtue of your birth. You can play your part or not, but either way you remain on the stage.

As each member of the community learns this lesson for himself, he comes to enjoy the unique note that he is given to contribute. As he confidently sounds it out while blending it with the other notes around him, he contributes to the living harmony.

Ever since the advent of recording technology, we have been tempted to skip live performances in favor or perfect recordings experienced privately. Yet, such sessions can never deliver the same impact. A live concert touches the heart like nothing else can.

That’s because at the human heart is the heart of music. Music is not about the perfect arrangement of sound waves, but about human beings working in harmony.

Every day we are saturated with recordings of people we don’t know. They fill our minds with disembodied thoughts that churn away and distract us from the actual people in our lives. These recordings do not create community, they fragment and frustrate it.

But an old-fashioned community concert gives an opportunity to witness human hearts in harmony. It creates a sound that reaches not just your ears but your very heart. And it draws you into the harmony.

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle on December 20, 2019.