I come from a very
musical family. All my siblings and I play an instrument, if not two or three,
and have done so since we were little. It’s something I’ll always be incredibly
thankful to my parents for giving us the opportunity to do (and (yes Mum, I now
appreciate it!) for forcing us to practise). My main instrument is viola and,
while I love the mellow sound of it by itself, I’ve always preferred playing it
in orchestras where it becomes not so much about me myself but the music as a
whole.
I had the real
privilege of being part of the Senior Symphony Orchestra all through high
school, playing scores of music written by some of the most famous composers
around, many in their original form (as opposed to the simplified versions I’d
played as a younger musician).
The music varied year
to year, depending on different set pieces for competitions, the preferences of
the conductor and what was being composed, but every year, without fail, there
was one piece in particular we played:
Nimrod.
First rehearsal, week
one, we were handed the music and it stayed in our repertoire all year to be
pulled out at various times and concerts.
Grade eight, I hated
it, thinking it the most boring piece of music ever written.
Admittedly, viola
parts aren’t often all that interesting to start with (cue the viola jokes…)
but this piece – from the first violins down to the tubas – was dull. My part was
only a page long but played so slow that it felt like twenty. It built – with
really long, low, slow notes – until the last line when, five bars from the end
there was one big, grand triumphant note. And then it dropped straight back
down again and ended. That was it. We had so many other more interesting pieces
to play which sounded amazing, I couldn’t understand why Nimrod kept getting
chosen.
Grade nine, I groaned
inwardly when it got handed out again. I might have held on to a hope that I’d
built it up (or rather, down) in my head but no, it was just as boring.
Grade ten, I still
hated it, although was pretty resigned to playing it by now. Amidst soundtracks
from Les Miserables and Star Wars’ Phantom Menace and thrilling
pieces like Into the Storm and In the Hall of the Mountain King, it
just became ten minutes (hours…) to endure.
And then, grade
eleven, something changed. I don’t know what it was – maybe I knew the part so
well by then that I stopped paying attention to mine and listened to the piece
as a whole or maybe I was just more mature – but I started liking it.
Appreciating it even.
By grade twelve, it
was one of my favourite pieces to play. It was with great reluctance that I
handed the music back at the end of the year.
I listened to it again
the other day, sadly without being in the middle of orchestra. It’s still an
incredible piece. Yes, the start is slow and yes, it still feels like it goes a
lot longer than a page but it truly is beautiful. I caught my breath at that
one grand note near the end.
But the thing I’ve
realised is that that note would mean nothing without the rest of the piece.
It’d be a nice orchestral chord, sure, but that’s it. It wouldn’t have the
beauty or the triumph. It wouldn’t make me catch my breath. It would just be
one note – if not for the slow building intensity of the first ninety percent
of the piece.
Those long, slow,
boring but building notes are what give that one note its glory.
Reminds me of a
particular movie I like. Every time I watch it, I wonder again why I like it.
It’s awkward, cringe-worthy and downright painful to watch – until the very last
scene, which is so downright perfect I can’t stop smiling and almost always end
up rewinding it to watch it again just so I can sigh with happiness.
I thought about saving
myself some time and pain once and just watching the last scene. One of those
brilliant ideas which totally didn’t work. The end was still sweet, sure, but
it didn’t have the same impact. It needed every one of those painful, cringy
moments to make that scene the sigh-worthy scene that it is.
Sometimes life feels
like Nimrod. Painful, slow days that drain our energy and patience. Making
dinner day after day, doing the same jobs over and over, praying the same
prayers so many times they start to feel like rote and we wonder why we even
bother. It would be so easy to give in and give up hope that anything will ever
change.
But it will. One day,
there will be that triumphant note. The one that makes you catch your breath,
the answer to that prayer. The one that would always have been special but
means so much more because of the wait. Because of the build. Because of the
hours and weeks and years of anticipation. Because, somewhere along the way, we
learned the beauty of the journey.
Life happens in the
anticipation. God could easily jump us from mountaintop to mountaintop,
skipping all the valleys and painful climbs along the way. But how much more
the exhilaration having come through the valley!
Don’t give up. No
matter how long the journey seems to be or how hard it gets, don’t give up. Not
on life and not on hope. God is working in your journey and that final scene,
the final note, will mean all the more because of it.
