What We Do For Love

(Note: This is a piece I wrote for another publication several years ago. Since it was written for a magazine, it's considerably longer than the average blog post.)

A mixture of apprehension and anticipation swirls though the green room as members of my music ensemble, Vancouver Madrigal Singers, adjust costumes, work out last-minute glitches in our pieces or tune a recalcitrant instrument. We specialize in 16th and 17th century English madrigals for most of the year but during the holiday season we mix Medieval and Renaissance fare with modern interpretations of traditional carols, sometimes to accompaniment on period instruments. We’re only one of countless groups performing at the Grotto, a Catholic center that puts on a regionally famous month-long Christmas event called The Festival of Lights every December. Performing at the Grotto is a high point for many groups during the holiday season – hundreds come to listen, and the acoustics in the high-vaulted stone sanctuary are unsurpassed.

We’re on in five minutes. Even those of us who worked all day, arriving here feeling exhausted and scattered, are getting our second winds. It’s been a long and sometimes challenging journey from our first practice for the winter holiday season way back in September to this moment, and none of us wants to miss it by not being fully present.

During the first few rehearsals for Christmas performances, most of our time is taken up by combing through previous years’ repertoires, deciding which pieces to keep, and looking over new material. Then we sight-read the new pieces and decide which ones will work, given the particular mixture of voices available that season. This always involves a certain amount of wrangling. One member wants to keep a personal favorite while another claims she can’t bear to sing it yet another year. Someone wants to try more experimental material while someone else thinks we should stay closer to our roots in traditional music. As usual, a number of our pieces are in Latin and a few in German, Italian or Spanish, but I hear a few soft groans when a song in 14th Century English is proposed. As a democratically-run group, we make our decisions via a motley mixture of voice votes, debate and sometimes default.

Then we pick our way through sight-reading the new pieces. By this time it’s early October and with only 7-8 weekly rehearsals until the first performance, each of us has to negotiate a steep learning curve. Nearly every member of the group has had extensive choral singing experience – high school, college, community choirs – before arriving here. Some have also performed in musicals or light opera, played instruments or directed church choirs. Nonetheless, the sheer volume of material to be learned, along with the complexity of certain pieces make this a challenge for even our most accomplished musicians.

Rehearsals are for combining and blending; we’re expected to work out the particulars of our parts on our own. This means blocking out time at home (and for many of us, also finding space apart from kids, spouses and household demands) to work through the parts with the help of piano or our practice MP3 files. When we take a new piece home at the end of one practice, we’re prepared to work with it all week so that when we meet the next week, we can focus on bringing the parts together. With 2-4 people per part, there’s no hiding behind another voice – if someone doesn’t know their part, it shows.

As the season progresses, we add instrumentation, rearrange pieces, try solos or small group combinations. Then we string it all together in an order that lets the pieces complement each other. When November rolls around, we’re adding sectionals, small group practices and other additional rehearsals to the schedule. Typically as we head towards Christmas, we may spend several hours a week practicing alone at home or in the car, 3-4 hours in our regular Sunday afternoon rehearsal plus another 2 hours in additional practices. During this season, some members are also juggling extra commitments in church music or community choral productions. I joke with my husband about his annual stint as a music widower but in fact, he and I sometimes go for weeks without being in the same room for more than a few minutes.

Then when December hits, the group typically has 2-3 performances of approximately an hour on Saturdays and Sundays, with an occasional weekday evening gig as well. Often by this time, one or two members have come down with the seasonal scourge known as the Common Cold, so they either battle fatigue in order to make performances or the rest of us make do with reduced ranks. For a few of us in customer service positions (and our one church choir director), job activity in December reaches a feverish pitch. The parents among us have to factor in kids’ holiday programs and parties.

Sometimes the whole experience feels like being run through the spin cycle in a heavy-duty washing machine. It would be so much easier to just come home, plop down on the couch and spend the evening watching TV and eating potato chips.

Why, then, do we go through all this effort?

As one of my fellow members put it, “Because I can’t not sing.” For some, the drive to make music is so strong that neither snow nor rain, Hell or high water, overtime or illness or bad report cards can stop them.

Some of us have a different primary reason: without our Other Life, we’d be reduced to working at work and working at home, and probably burning out in both places.

Having an avocation (practitioners call it a passion, hobby, interest or “real” work, depending on the intensity involved) can function as a safety valve that lets us exercise abilities and indulge interests that don’t have an outlet in the workplace or home. When things aren’t going well on the job or with family, it reminds us that we aren’t just the world’s meanest mom or an anonymous cog in the company machine – we’re also artists and co-creators. Sometimes for me, this role often seems more real than the others. It’s a place to go when other things are going down the drain, a way of not putting all one’s eggs in one or two baskets.

Beyond that, there’s the rush a person gets from mastering a skill and practicing it in the company of like-minded people. Psychologists call it being “in the flow.” In theater and music circles it’s known as the performer’s high – after a really great rehearsal or gig, it can take several hours to come down from the pinnacle.

There’s no feeling like it. Currents of it run through the room as we line up to go onstage. We hear applause coming from the auditorium upstairs, a signal that the previous choir is done, and we’re on next. The Grotto volunteer working the green room tonight flashes a “five” with her hand – five minutes. We breathe, take final stretches, and yawn out kinks in the jaw as we get ourselves in order. The volunteer nods, and we silently file out the side door, up the outside steps where gusts of cold air greet us, through the stage door and into the spotlights.

It’s nearly impossible to make out any faces in the audience. Whoever is out there, we hope that somehow our music will give them something magical to take home, and that even audience members who’ve never sung a note in their lives will somehow be able to grasp the love and sweat leading up to this moment. The emcee gives a brief introduction. Our director quietly sounds her pitch pipe and raises her hand. Now!

Moments like these – giving one’s personal best to those who appreciate it, reaching a state of entrainment with the rest of the group or team, getting into flow – are why millions of people all over the country give up relaxing evenings and cozy comfort zones in order to sing, act in community theater, write stories, play soccer, practice a martial art, tango, chair neighborhood revitalization efforts, work for political campaigns, run for civic office, counsel troubled kids, care for shelter animals or engage some other passion.

Our country runs on volunteer efforts. Countless schools, bands and theaters, community services, neighborhood associations and local arts groups would not exist if it weren’t for people who do what they do for love, not money. A very select few may someday make a living doing what they love, but most of us are content with learning how to harness the energy we derive from practicing our art and channel it into other areas of our lives such as the job. Our art will at various times provide shelter and comfort during rocky periods, opportunities for challenge and growth when we’re static, a group of kindred spirits when we feel isolated, and a sense of contributing to our communities. Maybe along the way the work we do will even change someone’s life.

That’s why we can always manage to make time for doing what we love; it reminds us of all that we are and gives us a taste of who we can be.


What We Do for Love
A mixture of apprehension and anticipation swirls though the green room as members of my music ensemble, Vancouver Madrigal Singers, adjust costumes, work out last-minute glitches in our pieces or tune a recalcitrant instrument. We specialize in 16th and 17th century English madrigals for most of the year but during the holiday season we mix Medieval and Renaissance fare with modern interpretations of traditional carols, sometimes to accompaniment on period instruments. We’re only one of countless groups performing at the Grotto, a Catholic center that puts on a regionally famous month-long Christmas event called The Festival of Lights every December. Performing at the Grotto is a high point for many groups during the holiday season – hundreds come to listen, and the acoustics in the high-vaulted stone sanctuary are unsurpassed.
We’re on in five minutes. Even those of us who worked all day, arriving here feeling exhausted and scattered, are getting our second winds. It’s been a long and sometimes challenging journey from our first practice for the winter holiday season way back in September to this moment, and none of us wants to miss it by not being fully present.
During the first few rehearsals for Christmas performances, most of our time is taken up by combing through previous years’ repertoires, deciding which pieces to keep, and looking over new material. Then we sight-read the new pieces and decide which ones will work, given the particular mixture of voices available that season. This always involves a certain amount of wrangling. One member wants to keep a personal favorite while another claims she can’t bear to sing it yet another year. Someone wants to try more experimental material while someone else thinks we should stay closer to our roots in traditional music. As usual, a number of our pieces are in Latin and a few in German, Italian or Spanish, but I hear a few soft groans when a song in 14th Century English is proposed. As a democratically-run group, we make our decisions via a motley mixture of voice votes, debate and sometimes default.
Then we pick our way through sight-reading the new pieces. By this time it’s early October and with only 7-8 weekly rehearsals until the first performance, each of us has to negotiate a steep learning curve. Nearly every member of the group has had extensive choral singing experience – high school, college, community choirs – before arriving here. Some have also performed in musicals or light opera, played instruments or directed church choirs. Nonetheless, the sheer volume of material to be learned, along with the complexity of certain pieces make this a challenge for even our most accomplished musicians.
Rehearsals are for combining and blending; we’re expected to work out the particulars of our parts on our own. This means blocking out time at home (and for many of us, also finding space apart from kids, spouses and household demands) to work through the parts with the help of piano or our practice MP3 files. When we take a new piece home at the end of one practice, we’re prepared to work with it all week so that when we meet the next week, we can focus on bringing the parts together. With 2-4 people per part, there’s no hiding behind another voice – if someone doesn’t know their part, it shows.
As the season progresses, we add instrumentation, rearrange pieces, try solos or small group combinations. Then we string it all together in an order that lets the pieces complement each other. When November rolls around, we’re adding sectionals, small group practices and other additional rehearsals to the schedule. Typically as we head towards Christmas, we may spend several hours a week practicing alone at home or in the car, 3-4 hours in our regular Sunday afternoon rehearsal plus another 2 hours in additional practices. During this season, some members are also juggling extra commitments in church music or community choral productions. I joke with my husband about his annual stint as a music widower but in fact, he and I sometimes go for weeks without being in the same room for more than a few minutes.
Then when December hits, the group typically has 2-3 performances of approximately an hour on Saturdays and Sundays, with an occasional weekday evening gig as well. Often by this time, one or two members have come down with the seasonal scourge known as the Common Cold, so they either battle fatigue in order to make performances or the rest of us make do with reduced ranks. For a few of us in customer service positions (and our one church choir director), job activity in December reaches a feverish pitch. The parents among us have to factor in kids’ holiday programs and parties.
Sometimes the whole experience feels like being run through the spin cycle in a heavy-duty washing machine. It would be so much easier to just come home, plop down on the couch and spend the evening watching TV and eating potato chips.
Why, then, do we go through all this effort?
As one of my fellow members put it, “Because I can’t not sing.” For some, the drive to make music is so strong that neither snow nor rain, Hell or high water, overtime or illness or bad report cards can stop them.
Some of us have a different primary reason: without our Other Life, we’d be reduced to working at work and working at home, and probably burning out in both places.
Having an avocation (practitioners call it a passion, hobby, interest or “real” work, depending on the intensity involved) can function as a safety valve that lets us exercise abilities and indulge interests that don’t have an outlet in the workplace or home. When things aren’t going well on the job or with family, it reminds us that we aren’t just the world’s meanest mom or an anonymous cog in the company machine – we’re also artists and co-creators. Sometimes for me, this role often seems more real than the others. It’s a place to go when other things are going down the drain, a way of not putting all one’s eggs in one or two baskets.
Beyond that, there’s the rush a person gets from mastering a skill and practicing it in the company of like-minded people. Psychologists call it being “in the flow.” In theater and music circles it’s known as the performer’s high – after a really great rehearsal or gig, it can take several hours to come down from the pinnacle.
There’s no feeling like it. Currents of it run through the room as we line up to go onstage. We hear applause coming from the auditorium upstairs, a signal that the previous choir is done, and we’re on next. The Grotto volunteer working the green room tonight flashes a “five” with her hand – five minutes. We breathe, take final stretches, and yawn out kinks in the jaw as we get ourselves in order. The volunteer nods, and we silently file out the side door, up the outside steps where gusts of cold air greet us, through the stage door and into the spotlights.
It’s nearly impossible to make out any faces in the audience. Whoever is out there, we hope that somehow our music will give them something magical to take home, and that even audience members who’ve never sung a note in their lives will somehow be able to grasp the love and sweat leading up to this moment. The emcee gives a brief introduction. Our director quietly sounds her pitch pipe and raises her hand. Now!
Moments like these – giving one’s personal best to those who appreciate it, reaching a state of entrainment with the rest of the group or team, getting into flow – are why millions of people all over the country give up relaxing evenings and cozy comfort zones in order to sing, act in community theater, write stories, play soccer, practice a martial art, tango, chair neighborhood revitalization efforts, work for political campaigns, run for civic office, counsel troubled kids, care for shelter animals or engage some other passion.
Our country runs on volunteer efforts. Countless schools, bands and theaters, community services, neighborhood associations and local arts groups would not exist if it weren’t for people who do what they do for love, not money. A very select few may someday make a living doing what they love, but most of us are content with learning how to harness the energy we derive from practicing our art and channel it into other areas of our lives such as the job. Our art will at various times provide shelter and comfort during rocky periods, opportunities for challenge and growth when we’re static, a group of kindred spirits when we feel isolated, and a sense of contributing to our communities. Maybe along the way the work we do will even change someone’s life.
That’s why we can always manage to make time for doing what we love; it reminds us of all that we are and gives us a taste of who we can be.