Prepare Ye...

A few months ago as I was making some decorations for my wedding it occurred to me that the actual making of the decoration itself was not that difficult or time consuming.  It was the preparation that was time consuming.  That particular decoration was some ties for the back row of the ceremony chairs.  My original idea was to have one tie on every other chair but as a result of a happy mistake I bought too much fabric and ended up making two ties for each chair.  I admit that I am not a skilled seamstress but I can sew a straight line.  I knew that I couldn’t just sit down with ten yards of poly satin and start sewing without taking some time to prepare everything first.  So after several hours of measuring, marking, pinning and cutting I was able to sew twenty chair ties in far less time that I imagined possible.  My now husband offered to iron them and my mom offered to hand sew the open edges.  (I’m sure there is a correct seamstress word for that)  The end result was beautiful and I was and still am happy with my decision.

                    (Photo credit: Becky Pippenger)

 

If “preparation” were a person, it wouldn’t be very popular.  Often times we groan at the very thought of preparation and wish that we could just do the end task.  After all, it’s the end task that we enjoy and want to showcase for ourselves or others. 

My husband, Charles and I enjoy going to concerts at the Strathmore and are frequently amazed at how flawless the performances are.  The orchestra, the choir, conductor and the guest performers all make it look so easy.  It must be nice to be able to sit down at a piano and produce amazing sounds that are able to take your breath away.  And then I have to wonder, how many collective hours must it have taken to get that performance to that caliber.  How many scales has Brian Ganz played in his lifetime?  He probably lost track a few years ago.  How many parents endured their son or daughter scratching out tunes on a violin in their youth? 

There is a boy in my neighborhood who has a trap set and days where the windows are open, we can all hear him.  I’m sure most of us have either been to or have seen a You Tube of a youth band or orchestra where it is almost cute how horrible they are.   My sixth grade band had two tuba players, one who could barely get a sound out and the other who overcompensated for the trumpets that were vying for attention.  But that was no match compared to the sixteen clarinets.  (Give or take one or two, after all that was more than twenty years ago.)  If Brian Ganz has lost track of all the scales he has played, Mr. Sherman, my band director, has lost track of all the clarinet squeaks he has heard.  By the time we were in high school we had grown into a band getting top scores at music contest.  All because of our preparation.  

Soon the 2012-2013 St. Louis Concert Series will be announced. With every concert comes a lot of preparation to bring our spectators a wonderful Sunday afternoon.  In addition to the talent preparing their respective pieces there is the behind the scenes efforts to make the concert come together.  The music has to be distributed to the performers, rooms have to be reserved, schedules have to be coordinated, etc.  What works for some concerts may not work for others so the preparation is an ever evolving process. 

In that regard, preparation, whether it is for something musically related or in our personal lives, is actually a gift!  Not all gifts come wrapped in pretty paper.  We might even procrastinate at accepting this one.  All of us, myself included, can probably think of a time in our lives when we didn’t prepare well enough and ended up frustrated at the results or when we did make the necessary preparations and ended up with something we could be proud of.  Now, the time to prepare for everything in our lives?  That’s another blog entry by someone else entirely.  I’m still trying to figure that one out. 

Oh, and that kid in my neighborhood?  Whoever he is, he’s getting really good.