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We often explore why we sing (in choir, or at all), but not so often do we think about who we sing for. Is it as important as the why?
Perhaps we need to make sure our who aligns with our why.
Do you sing for others? An audience, your family, passersby, the birds?
Do you sing for yourself? Your body, your cells, your lungs?
Do you sing for me?
Do you sing for the universe?
Tell me, who do you sing for?
Snapshot of some comments on a survey to choir members.
“When can we have choir again?”
I am asked this question frequently these days. I find it a stressful one, and I don’t think I’m alone in that.
Do I want to have everyone back together to sing? Of course I do. But I also can’t be reckless with peoples’ health and safety. There are so many factors and considerations that go far beyond “I miss choir, so let’s get back to it.”
I want to be cautious, but at what point am I being too cautious?
Am I overcorrecting my own impatience?
Am I using the crutch of “let’s wait and see what happens” to justify my own discomfort about trying to balance and mitigate all the various risks and comfort levels of my singers?
If I’m honest, I am scared of making the wrong choice – whether that choice is to start up or to wait.
This pandemic isn’t over, and it isn’t going away anytime soon. But, as it has always done, all it gives us is more questions and no answers.
It’s amazing what you can find when you’re not looking for it. I was reading Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s book The Mushroom at the End of the World, minding my own business and learning about matsutake mushrooms when I came across this:
How does a gathering become a ‘happening,’ that is, greater than a sum of its parts? One answer is contamination. We are contaminated by our encounters; they change who we are as we make way for others. As contamination changes world-making projects, mutual worlds – and new directions – may emerge. (27)
I couldn’t help myself. I started thinking about music making and choir, even though Lowenhaupt Tsing is very explicitly talking about mushrooms, ecology, and precarious economies of mushroom pickers.
I admit, her use of the word ‘contamination’ is an unfortunate one for this exact moment in history - please wash your hands!! - but the sentiment struck me.
“How does a gathering become a happening?” – or in choir terms, how can we go from being a group of people singing in a room together to a Choir? What happens when we take the time to ‘contaminate’ each other with our ideas and creativity? What new worlds and new directions can we open for ourselves as we transform?
A page later, another one:
Collaboration means working across difference, which leads to contamination. Without collaboration, we all die. …
We change through our collaborations both within and across species. The important stuff for life on earth happens in those transformations. (28,29)
How can we bring transformational encounters to our musical lives? How do we foster them in our rehearsals and for our audiences? Who can we collaborate with in new and interesting ways?
How can we encourage transformation in more than the traditional one-way street of conductor to singer, or choir to audience? How can rehearsals and concerts become a two-way street? What do we have to gain from taking the time to consider these things? (I think it’s a lot.)
Perhaps this is our route to survival as artists, organizations, and people in a precarious world that doesn’t always see the value of the arts.
Create “transformation through encounter” (28) with our art and contaminate the world, in the best way!