Choral Potpourri/Choral Ethics: Getting Through Tough Times

“Tough times don’t last, tough people do, remember?” Gregory Peck

We’ve made it to February, whoopee! And what a year 2021 has been so far. YIKES! There are days I just try to get through my everyday challenges. And there are other days when I worry for our country and the world and am not able to focus on anything else. I bet you have days like that too. We get through it, don’t we, but how do we do it? For each one of us, there is a different way. Tough times call for tough people but how do we remain tough? How are you coping in this tough time?

I’ve mentioned earlier in the Pandemic, my family and I have been coping by taking some online streaming courses and that’s still true. Right now, one of my sons and I are taking beginning Spanish (plowing through by the skin of our teeth), my spouse is taking Italian and when we are all finished with those, we will take a Latin class together. We’re watching movies, and mysteries too, and giving our minds time to recover and reboot from the Pandemic and difficult news for a short time each day.

For the first time in YEARS, I don’t have concerts or gigs pending and have had time to be around the house much more, so we decided to do some home improvements. The basement re-do is finished and the KITCHEN re-do has begun. The household is in flux, but the upside is we’ve been organizing as we go. This is an unexpected and positive part of our home improvements! I’ve found things I’ve forgotten I had and that’s been a plus, which brings me to what I’d like to write about today. If I had never gone through all the clobber we’ve dumped in our basement in the past few decades, I would never have found them.

Going through files of music in the basement, I found five or six letters stuck in a file from a former choir singer of mine, Edie*. This was before texting and email, so these are a real, tangible record of the time. With emails and texts and other cyber-ways of communicating, it seems unlikely anyone would have a similar experience of finding old letters such as mine in the future.

The letters were sent soon after my departure from a job I loved at the beginning and merely tolerated at the end. In the letters, Edie complained about my replacement. I also found a letter from the choir president, Carl*, who had been on the Search Committee after I had written to him about this particular singer. Almost thirty years ago, I vaguely remember this bruhaha but had forgotten some of the details; and some are still fuzzy.

What really struck me, after the first letter, was she kept trying to suck me back into the situation. There are no copies of my letters—why would there be—and I can only guess what I wrote back. There were also several phone calls from the various involved parties which I have no memory of—but they were mentioned several times, so they must have happened—and seem to have been another way I was being sucked back in. I (must have) told her I had moved on with my life and wasn’t able to help her, while she kept insisting I must.

I was several states away, with my spouse doing a fellowship. And I was doing substitute teaching for the year we would be there. Our kids were adjusting to a new culture—from the Midwest to the South—and it wasn’t always easy for them. I had my hands full, but Edie did NOT care, she wanted me to come back and called me selfish. They had KNOWN I would be leaving for over a year and had wondered what they were going to do, but it really wasn’t my problem.

Now, as I read through the letters with a Choral Ethics perspective, they read as a classic Choral Ethics dilemma. While I don’t think I consciously let this situation of my own color my suggestions to ChoralNetters with similar dilemmas, I’m sure they have.

For the month of February, I’ve decided to share portions of these letters and some perspectives with you. Hindsight is always 20/20 and with time and age, things become clearer. In a way, these letters bring me back to a period in my life I had forgotten.

While I sort through another box of Tupperware and kitchen gadgets in the next few weeks, I will be thinking about the time and place from those letters. I will also be thinking about how to present the most important kernels from the letters to you, another way I am trying to cope by getting my mind off our present difficulties.

Until next week, be well and be safe.

I am taking my Choral Ethics Blogs to my chamber choir’s Facebook page for the foreseeable future. Please join me there this morning! https://www.facebook.com/themidwestmotetsociety/

*Name Withheld