Schroeder to Lucy in a Peanuts comic strip from 1/27/73 (passed along on Facebook yesterday by Jeff Bowles), providing a motto that speaks to me very deeply:
“The joy is in the playing”. As it was once for me (my right hand has long been too disabled for piano-playing). Meanwhile, in Sacred Harp singing, the joy is in the singing, which I can still sort of do, and in the joining with others to sing, which I can now do only remotely, but it’s a great pleasure anyway,
Sacred Harp singing brings with it an explicit ethic of doing for its own sake and of community; the joy truly is in the singing. Which (in our ordinary custom) we do with and for one another, not for an audience (which would provide external appreciation and perhaps a kind of fame) and not for monetary reward.
Now, the complexities. SH singing involves a suite of many skills; even if you are highly skilled in some other tradition or style, you have a lot to learn to become fully a member of the SH community. SH groups are remarkably tolerant of the travails of novices — because every one of us was once a novice, and also because we are all still honing particular skills, becoming acquainted with the considerable treasury (always expanding) of songs, and developing an individual delivery.
Two effortful things here: learning and practice. Schroeder and the customs of SH singing invite us to focus not on the effort, but on the joy of the activities themselves, and to see every engagement with the activities as a satisfying achievement at some level, good enough for the moment (even if you can see room for improvement, can see that a different version might be even more satisfying). That is, learning and practice both afford occasions for feelings of mastery at various levels, and those feelings can be immensely gratifying.
The wider world. Now, in fact, a lot of activities we engage in are frankly performances, directed at an audience, for some purpose — to entertain, emotionally move, inform, convince, instruct, direct, treat, etc. — with the expectation (or at least the hope) of gratifying feedback from the audience, and often as an occupation, with the expectation (or at least the hope) of remuneration. Some level of fame, some level of monetary reward.
This is not the place to rehearse my career, except to note that it’s packed with all kinds of performances (in writing of many kinds, including newspaper reporting, fiction, and poetry; in teaching, again of many kinds; in advancing my ideas and my research in public addresses; in public performances on the piano; and more), All creating a name for myself, almost all of it done for money. But most important, most of it bringing me great joy.
I knew from early experience that teaching one-on-one and in small groups could be immensely gratifying, but until I was impressed into teaching large introductory classes I had no idea that these performances could be so exhilarating. The joy is indeed in the doing.
Now I have cut out the nasty bits of my professional life (including the frequent need to sell myself, something I am no damn good at, and also the more unpleasant parts of dealing with administrators and with students) I do whatever I want on this blog, and do it all for free, so I can experience as much undiluted and uncontaminated joy as possible. Getting as close as I can to the Schroederian ideal.
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