News
Director Dr. David Castleberry communicates with the chorus via e-mail periodically to keep in touch. Here's his latest message.
May 25, 2020
Dear Singers,
When stay-at-home advisories were issued a couple of months ago and our rehearsals were curtailed, I decided to stay in touch on a weekly basis, providing some contact in lieu of our Monday evening gatherings. If these communications have had value, as some of you have suggested, I’m very glad. For me, they have proved to be a worthwhile discipline, even in weeks when I have scratched my head trying to think of something of common interest to share.
As an awareness creeps over us that Covid 19 is not just some blip on the screen but a real game changer with ramifications still unfolding, I thought I would share this week a personal experience that may prove useful as we move forward through this uncertainty. Some of you may have already heard me relate this, but I do think it is relevant to our present circumstances.
When I finished course work for my doctorate at The University of Texas at Austin, I accepted a year-long sabbatical replacement position at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Excited to finally be practicing the work I had spent so much time preparing for, I threw myself headlong into the job, directing two choirs and teaching twenty-seven voice students (for a salary of $13,000!). Following that exhilarating, high-energy year, I became director of choral activities at Wagner College on Staten Island, New York. Within a year, I found myself also directing the Riverside Choral Society in Manhattan and, a year later, added duties as chorus master for the Brooklyn Piccolo Opera. After four years in New York, where the Wagner Choir had grown to the point of a successful European tour, I accepted the position at Marshall University and moved to Huntington.
During this time, post-Austin, the dissertation loomed over me as a final school project, standing between me and what academics ominously refer to as the “terminal degree.” I had amassed mountains of research, sources, and lecture materials, but I was having too much fun working with students to set everything else aside and wrap up this elusive project. Every time I looked at those boxes of work, I found some excuse to put off the inevitable. Writing the document just felt like rolling a boulder uphill.
Finally in May, at the end of my first year teaching at Marshall, my graduate advisor phoned one day with an ultimatum that he would be retiring soon and I had better get on with it! After casting about for a few days, looking for a strategy, I decided to make a bargain with myself. This agreement was simple. Come Monday morning, two things would be true. First, from ten o’clock to noon each day, I would be sitting at my computer. Second, the computer would be turned on. That was it! That was my bargain. It was a good thing that summer pre-dated the internet!
The first Monday morning, I sat at the computer for two hours and did absolutely nothing. Not an auspicious beginning, but at least a start. The second morning came. I turned on the computer, sat down, and began as I had the day before, doing nothing. Finally, after about thirty minutes of inactivity, I started to feel a bit sheepish. I began to think that maybe, just maybe, I had an idea for a few sentences that would introduce my third chapter. By noon, had managed to rough out a couple of paragraphs. The next day, getting started was a bit easier and I wrote an entire page. By the end of that first week, I had written half a dozen pages and was beginning to see a plan unfold. The second week, I realized that two hours would not be enough and I actually wanted to add afternoon writing into the schedule. By summer’s end, I had completed two hundred pages of a volume that came in finished at just under three hundred pages.
I have told this story to students numerous times because, for me, it says that we don’t have to deal with all the boxes on the shelf at once. We just have to take, as the overused phrase goes, one step at a time.
As stores begin to re-open and some services are restored around us, the very real possibility still exists of a second wave, new complications, different protocols, and uncertainties of things as basic to us as worship or singing or concert-going. We will need to be patient and proceed step by step. Our perspectives will be different a month from now than they are today, as surely as they are different now than they were in mid-March. Meanwhile, I hope you will remain safe, healthy, smart, and strong, and that you will continue to find the means of support you need for yourselves and for each other. Have a good Memorial Day!
Fondly yours,
David