Challenge

Dear Chromatic Solfege:

We live in a prison which doubles as a music school.
And eventually, you're going to become my b****.
Deal with it.

Love,

Rena

Shedding

Winter has come, unseasonably late, to Nova Scotia. This means, through the combination of my eczema, the cold, and the increase of indoor heating, that my skin is dry, peeling, and shedding.

It's uncomfortable, but in a way, I'm glad for it, because as this new semester starts, it reminds me of all the other things that need to be shed.

One such thing is my tenancy to get caught up in things like marks, image, and appearing talented. I sometimes work against myself, shunning awesome opportunities or challenges because I'm scared of looking foolish, making a mistake, or getting a bad mark. I psych myself out at singing auditions and piano exams and consequently perform nowhere near my standard level of ability. Or I simply don't audition for fear of looking foolish. Turning to music scholarship, I go with the paper topic in my comfort zone (opera, oratorio, and masses, little music analysis, and, for God's sake, no Wagner!)

This shall be, I've decided, the semester of shedding my ego. Music is hard, hard work which requires consistent growth - and that doesn't leave room for ego. It leaves room for mistakes and some humbling moments - and, after that, it leaves room for learning and growth and real musicianship. My craft and my scholarship are good - but there's so much room for both to be better. That's not going to happen if I stay in the nice, safe box I've carved out for myself. 

So I'm auditioning for NSYC, I'm playing my piano exam next week with as much heart and soul as I can muster, and I'm going to bid Haydn scholarship adieu for this semester while I jump into Wagner studies.

We'll see what becomes of it.  

She would have us dance and sing

While I was in BC, Joan, the choir director at my parish and a really close family friend, passed away after a long fight with cancer.

I first met Joan when I was 14. I walked into church after a several-month hiatus, and Joan came half-running over to tell me how happy she was that I was back. We started chatting about converting (I wasn't Catholic yet). A week later, I showed up at choir practice, then I started RCIA, and the next thing I knew, I was seeing Joan two or three nights a week, and she became a really, really big part of my life. 

I can never really think of words which express Joan. What I most remember about her was how she loved people. While I've always been a reasonably good kid, I had some very over-dramatic and highly ungraceful moments throughout adolescence. Sometimes I was cranky, sometimes I was rude, sometimes (lots of the time) I thought I knew everything, and sometimes I was just a brat. While Joan would - gently - suggest from time to time that I shift a thought or a behaviour, never once did I wonder if she stopped loving me. She simply accepted my flaws, and loved me in spite of them. I think she pretty much loved everyone that way -  as they were, without conditions, all of the time. 

Joan was an inspired teacher. She could take the most challenging theological concept, and turn it into a story or an action or a prayer, and everyone in the room (which included children aged 5-12, and both teenaged and adult teachers) would take something meaningful away from it. I learned innumerable lessons from Joan, and the fullness of her influence is still revealing itself to me. I hope there's some of her joy in my smile, some of her peace in my prayers, some of her love in my hugs.

I have so many memories. I remember the whispered jokes we used to share over some of the drier homilies at mass throughout the years. I remember watching her sing a psalm once, and being moved to tears by how much of God's compassion she was able to portray in her singing. Or how she always knew to put out extra kleenex for me at funeral masses, even if I didn't know the deceased. Or how once, when her husband was giving me a guitar lesson and tried to explain to me how a given concept was mathematical, she stopped him and said "Jack, Jack, Jack. You don't tell Rena that something is mathematical. You tell her it's the next logical musical progression. Then she'll get it." I remember her baking and her hugs and her prayers.      

Joan loved Canticle of the Sun, a song which praises nature as something which connects humanity to all the different attributes of God. Really, really loved it. To the point that a bunch of the choir members stopped calling it Canticle of the Sun and just called it "Joan's song." As soon as summer approached, without fail, she would walk into choir practice, beaming, and proclaiming "I get to sing my song!" 

The last verse of the song states "Praise to our death, which makes our life real, the knowledge of loss that helps us to feel, the gift of yourself, your presence revealed to lead us home." It's beautiful, and it's true, and it felt right to sing it at her funeral as a goodbye. But as I sat at her funeral (with tears streaming down my face, and no extra kleenex this time), something else hit me.

The world feels a little darker, and a lot emptier without Joan in it. Of course we who knew her are mourning and grieving. It doesn't seem fair...and yet, if Joan could speak to us, I feel like she'd tell us to rejoice with her, because she's home with her Father. 

A three-song set called Today This Spring by composer Libby Larsen makes me think of Joan. One line reads as "she would have us dance and sing to celebrate the day." And through those moments, together with family and friends and a few strangers, in celebration of Joan's life, and in mourning for her death, I couldn't help but feel that while she wouldn't want us to deny our grief, she would, at the same time, want us to dance and sing in celebration as she goes to the Father.

So, welcome home, Joan. I miss you, and I'd give just about anything for another one of your amazing hugs and beautiful smiles. My mind and heart are all too aware that it hurts to be in this world without you. But the deeper, stiller, quiet part of me - that part of me that benefited from all your great teaching! - rejoices with you.

And I love you forever.