Memories keeping me up again…

Sometimes it’s the future that keeps me up, but just as often it’s the past.  Tonight it’s high school and choir memories.

I remember how I was standing in line at disneyland and the guy in front of me found out I was in “That choir from Utah,” and said “Yeah, we’ve heard about you.  We were really upset when we found out you would be in the competition because that pretty much guarantees we can only get 2nd place at best.”  And I thought, “This kid comes from a high school with a population three times larger than my home town.  How can they have heard of us?”  But they had.  And he was right.

I remember singing at solo & ensemble and how students from all over the state poured into the classroom when it was our turn to sing.  I guess they had heard that it was a pretty good show.  And it was.  We usually got the judges to laugh.

I remember after one competition in California the judge said “Okay, first: Basses can all sit down because they were better than most college choirs I’ve ever heard.”

I remember sitting on the stairs at the front of the bus and just singing a song I liked. The choir director sang along and when the song ended the whole bus clapped and the choir president told me it was the best she’d ever heard me sing.

Later, in college, I tried out for the ‘select’ choir even though I wasn’t a music major and they said that you pretty much had to be a music major to get in.  When I sang “Battle Hymn of the Republic” the directors said to each other “He’s got a great, untrained voice.”  When I sang the sight reading part of the try-out they didn’t say anything, but their eyebrows went way up.  I got in.

Later, when I wasn’t in the choir, I heard how there was an opening and that the choir was going to New York.  I walked in a month before the trip and asked to be let in.  A month later I had the chance to sing Mozart’s Requiem in Carnegie Hall with the group.  It was because the director knew my sight reading skills were good and that I knew how to take direction.  Stuff I learned in high school choir.

Good memories.

I hope that 5 or 10 years in the future I’ll look back at this time period and find just as many good memories.  I wonder what my nights in 2020 will be spent thinking about.  Maybe what I did for work?  Maybe the kids?  Probably the events and accomplishments.

I think the important thing to do is to have accomplishments to look back on.  It helps a person feel good.  Setting and achieving goals is how we feel relevant and useful as humans.  Perhaps the link between work and happiness has something to do with that.

I’m grateful to people who helped me learn how to make memories back in the day.  I look forward to seeing you again.

Up late again,

Greg