Back from Greenbelt.

Half a week holiday isn't very much for someone who usually gets one day off per week (if that) and hadn't had a holiday of more than 3 days since January.

So I decided to take the rest of August gently. I did some practising, but blew off paperwork and other tasks. I had a weekend away with Sweetie and actually did not go to church on Sunday for the first time in... over a year, I think. I went to Greenbelt, which was great.

Everything starts again tomorrow; phoning students to arrange my schedule, practising in earnest, printing music lists, planning Christmas services (or at least the music for them), trying to coordinate rehearsals, the lot.

I've blogged on my public, professional blog about some of my experiences at Greenbelt. It feels very strange to do so, like I've exposed some of my spiritual innards. But I think it's necessary if I'm going to find a voice on that blog.

I'm not planning on disappearing from here, but the more I blog about music here the less anonymous I'll get, so I'm going to try to keep the music stuff more public.

If I "know" you here and you want to read it, let me know your e-mail address and I'll give you the url to the other blog. But don't out me, please.

Oh...

Had a chat with Gentle Vicar this week.

I knew about this but hadn't said much here, just yet. Networking Organist is leaving Nearest Church in the autumn and has recommended me to be his replacement. Gentle Vicar is happy to employ me on the strength of that recommendation. That's a little daunting; I think Networking Organist carries a higher opinion of my skills than I do.

The money is not brilliant, but it is regular. Professionally, there's a reasonable amount of flexibility, a reasonable freedom to experiment... the music at Nearest Church is in a bit of a sorry state, but building something out of that will be a valuable and rewarding experience, if trying at times.

I have concerns about some of the relationships within the community, concerns about my own leadership ability, but Gentle Vicar does seem to be, for the most part, my kind of heretic; he's someone I do think I can talk to about these concerns, as well as some of my hopes and tentative plans for what could be done. I think, I hope, that we can also be quite reasonable about the hat-swapping -- sometimes I will be the organist, sometimes I will be the parishioner. Sometimes Gentle Vicar will be my boss and sometimes my parish priest. I think we can deal with that.

The organ is in a rather sorry state, too. But you play the instrument you have. It won't get repaired if it doesn't get used.

While my physical problems are painful at times, they're unlikely to stop me playing in the near future. When they do -- if they do -- loss of function should be gradual enough that I can give appropriate notice. Gentle Vicar is supportive about that, too.

I said yes. I think I'm going to make a huge number of mistakes, but I said that, and I said yes anyway. We'll sort out the details nearer the time.

I don't know how much I'm going to blog about it. I want to protect some of my anonymity. I guess I'm just another organist in a suburban parish church with an ageing congregation, though.

Celebrations and Concerns

What a week it has been!

In some ways a bit of a rough week: it's just That Time of Degree, I'm afraid, there is a silly amount of paperwork to be done and I've been put into a performance project which is eating serious amounts of time in rehearsals that are, quite frankly, rather tedious at best. I've had a bit of a cold which always saps my energy and makes my chronic health problems more symptomatic; there's not a lot I can do about that but rest more, but see above re: scheduling. It's all rather overwhelming and discouraging if I think about more than one bit of it at once. And Sweetie is away this weekend, so I am at home by myself facing a very messy bedroom and wondering whether to use my 'rest' day to try to make it a little more livable.

It has been a very hard week for various friends of mine for reasons I'll not discuss here. They have been very much on my mind and in my prayers. At times this week I've also felt quite overwhelmed by the sheer amount of pain and hardship in the world. There's so much I can do so little about, and so much I should do something about but fail to do, and I don't quite know where to start. It's the typical save-the-world-before-breakfast problem.

The good, though, far outweighs the bad.

Monday's post basically wrote itself and I don't really feel like I can take much credit for it. But the positive response to it has been cheering me all week, partly because it's flattering to my ego to be told I've done something good but partly because I so desperately hope that the vision of the world I put forward in that post is actually true... having so many of you affirm the truth of what I wrote feeds that hope.

On Tuesday night I was gripped by a different sort of creative inspiration (or maybe it was the fever I had?) and got some composing done; I shouldn't really be working on non-degree stuff right now but this would not let me go to sleep until I wrote it down. It isn't finished, and won't be for a while, but I've been agonising over another composition project (for which I still have not found an appropriate text) and the reminder that yes, I can write music, was very welcome.

Wednesday night (after coming home early from my studies to drink soup and feel sorry for myself) I had a meeting with Sweetie and Future Housemate. Dreams and vague hopes are becoming plans: we have a budget, and a timeline, and a plan to find somewhere to live. This is very, very exciting for me: I've never lived in any house longer than three years, I've spent the last few years in various fairly transient housing, and putting down roots somewhere is looking very attractive. I will have a home, not just a place where I sleep and store my things. I've hoped this many, many times before, but I think this time it might work, because Future Housemate is looking for so many of the same things I am.

Sweetie has been unemployed for some months; last week he was offered a job but the contract did not turn up right away. Thursday he got the contract! Much relief all 'round: this lifts a load of worry from him and makes our future plans much easier. It means I will be able to take a long-term view of building up my paid employment to levels that will support me (and eventually others) well financially, instead of having to grab something short-term that actually hinders my ability to work on long-term plans. It means we can afford for me to take some rest after my degree, which will be much-needed and may lead to significant improvements in my physical health. It's just wonderful news.

Also on Thursday night was a rehearsal with Petite Violinist just for fun--no pressure, no deadlines to work toward, just reading through Handel and having a good time of it. What sheer joy! Of course by the end of the rehearsal we had a performance shoehorned into another concert, so the deadlines are back but they're manageable deadlines for both of us and it is always rewarding to play with Petite Violinist.

By Friday I was pretty wiped out by all of this and spent far too much time struggling with feeling rather miserable, but my last lesson of the day was just plain inspiring. And I realised that I do seem to be making some new friends, online and in person, and this was a great comfort despite feeling rather rotten for most of the day. And really--what day that includes Bach, Brahms and Tallis can be all that bad? Not to mention a bit of Ella Fitzgerald.

Today I am free to rest and that is what I will try to do. Tomorrow I get to teach, and weary as I am the thought still makes me smile. And I've managed to juggle my schedule so that I'll be able to get to Leafy Suburb Church for Evensong; it will be great to catch up with Deacon Friend and if the transport is good I might even sing in the choir again.

of appointments and Appointments

I have a hospital appointment tomorrow. This is for a relatively minor chronic condition for which my GP cannot prescribe me appropriate medication (what she is allowed to prescribe makes me depressed, and I'm not willing to put up with that side effect). I've waited some months for the appointment, by the time I've been referred to one place and another. I really hope they can help, otherwise it's more referrals and more waiting.

I've been having career-related thoughts today. My plan for some time has been to keep teaching music, and also do some arranging and composing, some education and outreach projects with friends, get involved in the local community. Eventually I want to do a Master's, though the list of possible subjects is so long I daren't look at it. It has also been my plan to eventually get to the point where my private teaching is all done from my home, and none of it on conventional weekends; this will take a while as right now about half my income is generated from the work I do on Sundays.

I learned that the music director at Leafy Suburb Church is going to be leaving. A small part of my brain filed that information away on Sunday and then presented it to me today as the daft notion that I should apply for the position.

There are many very good reasons why I am not going to do that; I'm not going to list them here. The main thing is that the timing and location are all wrong.

But... I do have most of the basic skills I would need. Okay, I'm not an organist, but I could learn it: the trick is to remember that it isn't a piano. My choral conducting skills are rusty at best but they'd improve fast with regular use, as I found out when I was doing some conducting every week for Big Project. Moving every two or three years as a child and singing in as many choirs as I could until university (when I had to cut back to one) means I'm familiar with most choral problems, if not the solutions to all of them. I don't know much about C of E liturgy and I'm unfamiliar with much of the standard repertoire in this country but that's nothing that can't be solved, in fact nothing I wasn't planning on learning more about anyway. There are issues around making things accessible to a younger generation without alienating those with more traditional tastes but I'm going to encounter those in all areas of music teaching and performance.

Most of my life I've wanted to teach and write music; to my great joy, that's what I've ended up doing. Most of my life I've been aware on some level that music is an important or even essential part of worship, for me, and singing especially so. Why it has never occurred to me (despite, looking back over the last year or so, a few suggestions from various directions) to take seriously the possibility of combining these two, I'm not sure. Pursued carefully it fits around my existing career plans rather well. And maybe nothing will come of this, but it's an interesting nudge and one that I'm not going to ignore.

I'm not going to do much about it immediately, either. Right now I need to get through the last bits of my degree. Then I need to move house and spend some time building up a class of students in the new area, and adjust to being an impoverished music teacher rather than an impoverished student.

For now, about the only thing that changes is this: when I'm looking for a church to attend in the area I'll be moving to this summer, I won't necessarily discount or reject communities that don't have a strong, vibrant music program. I can always help to build one after I get there.