Reentry: A Done Deal, Part I

 

After months of arm-resting, recuperating, rehabbing, then more months relearning to play my guitar and ukulele, it wasn’t helpful when thunderstorms threatened to cancel my musical reentry Friday night at the Pantry in Green Mountain Falls. I especially didn’t want all that painful fingertip callous rebuilding to go to waste! So…a relief when the winds calmed and skies cleared during my setting up.

As anyone who’s ever prepared for any kind of performance knows, it takes a certain amount of guts to put your art in front of people, and if compounded with an element of doubt that you might not deliver as you previously have, it has the potential to undermine your ability to demonstrate your craft, even when you’ve rehearsed down to the minutiae. But you know, this crazy journey brought some wisdom to me that I was able to draw from, and it all worked out.

Performance issues can create or bruise a fragile ego. But, if sharing music with people is what one loves to do, the likelihood of exposure to that risk recurs. What happened on the way back around was a reframing: how music can be shared as service to others, rather than a performance to be evaluated. What incredibly good luck to have become involved with Threshold Singing prior to my accident, without any hint that it would be me who would be served. All of the Threshold songs we sing for and with others are sung a cappella, so I had already been experiencing the joy and fascination of blending voices and harmony without accompaniment, before using an instrument was not an option. It isn’t solely the a cappella component; it’s the songs, the kinship we singers build as we sing them, and the comfort and peace they deliver to those willing to receive them. Singing for people who are in hospice beds or those in other life thresholds takes performance out of the picture and puts the gift of music right where it belongs: in all the hearts of those within earshot of it…singer and sing-ee become connected in healing sound waves. No show. This is the real deal.

So, it was that type of experience into which I could lean when stepping in front of a microphone on the evening of June 15. Compared to parting with life–one’s own, or that of a loved one–my reentry was easy. See Part II for the rest of the story of the evening.