Energy efficiency

Let’s face it: my teacher Clyde Holloway was lazy. He had one or two good reasons, but otherwise he spent way too much time planning his sleep and then running late. How he managed to get to church on time each Sunday is beyond me.

As a result of his own practices, his advice to me was often, “You have enough to do. Don’t take [this or that] on, too.” And for the most part, it was good advice. The downside is that it created yet more cognitive therapy for me to undertake:

To the student, their degree recital is a major hurdle that must be cleared. To their professor, it is a major evaluation event that must be handled fairly. To everyone else, it is either a social event or a family reunion. And those last two interpretations are not compatible in the least with the first. And it falls to the student to manage them.

More than one mentor cautioned me against spending too much time (if any) with the family on the day before or the day of a degree recital. The warning was that such is distracting, energy-sapping, routine-wrecking, and (depending on the family) an invitation back into dysfunction, which is the last thing a student needs before walking out to perform. And I agree. When my family traveled to Houston, on mentor advice I chose to inform them that I was unable to play host, tour guide, restaurateur, and chauffeur until the recital was over. And I’m glad I did. To do otherwise would have exhausted me and would have allowed everyone to continue to think that a degree recital is really a family reunion.

An organist playing a recital in a church on a Sunday afternoon is often asked to play at least the prelude or more for church that same morning. The notion behind the invitation is to present the recitalist to more of the congregation and to whet the appetites of the undecided to attend. I learned after far too many times that it only exhausts me so early in the day to go through the motions of cranking up for one piece on Sunday morning and then having to sit through a sermon, plus having to do all that twice for a larger church, dropping dead for the afternoon but still having to practice, and then cranking back up to the play the actual recital. I’m exhausted all over again just typing out that rambling sentence. Furthermore, anyone needing their appetite whetted will be satisfied with the whetting and will not return for the recital. It doesn’t matter who the recitalist is – those who wish to attend will have made their plans to do so long before Sunday morning.

Go green. Conserve your energy.