The Life So Short, the Craft So Long to Learn. . .

This is where I am at: choir practice is over for the night.  A glass of wine, Columbia Crest-Two Vines Shiraz pairs well with a bowl of popcorn--and I am heading up to practice.  Need to practice.

Bill has been in Atlanta since Sunday afternoon.  I am a single parent, until tomorrow night at midnight.  I have written checks for school photos, practiced piano with two of my children, driven to gymnastics, taught 21 kids piano, planned food for church this weekend, bought groceries, dropped Bill's shirts off at the cleaners and triple booked October 8.  That is the date we scheduled masterclasses for Suzuki Piano Teacher's Guild at my house.  I thought Pastor Jim's retirement service was on the 9th.  It is on the 8th.  Choir is playing an epic piece.  Oops.  Also, as the first faux pas of my SPTG presidency, I scheduled these masterclasses on Yom Kippur, that same October 8, ensuring that our Jewish students would not be able to participate.

Heavy sigh.  Some live and learn.  Some just live.

Actually, I am inspired tonight to be a lifetime learner.  I am inspired by Kris Henry, our choir director, who hammered out this epic piece in eight part counterpoint while listening to the choir to actually hear who was "getting" their part.  My brain just doesn't quite function that way.

My husband Bill, who is an amazing tenor sax player adds--that he plays one line--really well. Good for him.

But I'm gonna keep on working.  My goal this year: to master reading the transposed tenor part.  In an open score.  This has GOT to be the equivalent brain power to learning a foreign language.

Lest I sound dissatisfied, I'm not.
I'm not a virtuoso pianist.  I can't read eight parts at once.  But I can play the accompaniment with beauty and meaning, and that is what I am going to do.  No matter how many hours it takes me to learn it. I am what God made me, but I'm gonna keep working--my whole life--to make the best of it.  To be my very best self.

"The life so brief, the art so long in the learning, the attempt so hard, the conquest so sharp, the fearful joy that ever slips away so quickly--by all this I mean love, which so sorely astounds my feeling with its wondrous operation that  when I think upon it I scarce know whether I wake or sleep."  Geoffrey Chaucer