We the Choir Gather and We Learn to Sing Together

[Sacred Fool]

  
P&D:  Those are both very sweet stories and I appreciate where you're coming from.  I certainly felt that way singing along in my high school choir.  It was such a pleasant shift to be participating in something beautiful that was bigger than self and, frankly, better organized than self.  It's a cool experience of subordinating (or lending) individual primacy to the conductor and to the group as an whole for a "greater purpose."

Rather than continuing to stumble over trying to make a general point, I'll just say personally that from there I took a very different path.  Singing along wasn't enough for me because, in my being, it just let off hints of the far more satisfying experience of perfecting the instruments of body and soul in order to much more deeply interweave self with the medium in a more self-directed way: as soloist and as composer.

So, it's kind of like a translation problem for me.  For me a phrase like "learning to sing together" doesn't mean "singing along," it's a far more complex vibratory experience which engages self on many subtle levels.  And there's an underlying current of yearning to "return to the waters of my birth," metaphysically speaking, that can carry me away when these kinds of issues come up.

I'm sorry I troubled you with my biases.  Be well and carry on!!!