#344.3 – “The Song Outweighs the Notes”

“Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it.” – 1 Corinthians 9:24
As I expound a little more on the object lesson from yesterday, another parallel occurs to me:
The reason a mature musician ‘keeps trucking’ with their music is because they understand that music is a temporal art. Notice I did not say ‘temporary’, but ‘temporal’… meaning that it takes place in time. In that sense, it is unlike many of the visual arts, which can be done in stages. Take drawing, for example… say you wanted to draw the Empire State Building. You could start by getting just the outline done. Then, you could stop and put your pencils or chalk or whatever you were using away. You could come back the next day and start filling in some windows, and maybe the door. After another break, you could do the details (like shading or what have you) until you had the finished product. You could even go back at any point along the way and erase/correct something before you showed it to anyone.
But you can’t do that in music. Music happens… in time. If you make a mistake while playing a piece for someone, there is no ‘going back’ and ‘erasing’… you just have to keep going on… mistakes and all. And thus, music can be a very humbling art (which is really a good thing).
What drives a musician to play through the mistakes anyway is the ‘piece’ (the song). The piece is incomplete until the last note is played, that truth overrides all other parameters that a musician has… and so the ‘piece’ outweighs the ‘notes’.
Life is made up of a series of moments… and those moments may be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ at times. But our life here on earth isn’t over until we take our last breath, and so Paul encourages us as believers to run right up till our death… giving glory to God in all we do all along the way… mistakes and sins and all.

Daniel