Inside Baseball

I’m a behind-the-scenes guy.

I have a firm memory of watching, as a little kid, a TV program called “You Asked For It!” Viewers would write in and request that the program do one of their little mini-documentary segments about a favorite topic. From the arts to sports to nature to technology, from current events to ancient history … almost everything was in play.

One evening, they ran a segment about “how they make a movie”. Probably. Something like that. It was definitely a peek behind the curtain, to show what went into making filmed entertainment.

I was riveted.

So nowadays, any behind-the-scenes clip or segment or documentary is very interesting to me still.

The challenge with that is … once you find out how they do the magic trick, are you able to enjoy it in the same way that you did before you found out?

In some ways, this is an occupational hazard when you’re a church musician around Christmastime.

The congregation members hear (in a perfect, non-pandemicky world) the dulcet tones of the singers and the string players and the brass players (quietly); they close their eyes, and let the music wash over them, stimulating the nostalgia centers of their brains; and hopefully they smile.

The purveyors of that music, meanwhile, are focusing really hard on doing all the musician-y things they do; and at the same time, in the backs of their minds, they’re remembering all the rehearsals and sectionals and digging-in-on-those-pesky-high-notes, all the commitment of time and effort and skillsets, everything that helped them to get to the musical finish line.

Does that dampen the musicians’ enjoyment of Christmas Eve?

Well, it does change it. It can’t help but. Once you know how the musical sausage is made, as it were, your perception of it is altered. But does that decrease the enjoyment? That can sometimes depend upon the particular circumstances within which we’re making the music. Speaking only for myself — because for whom else can I speak, really? — my enjoyment of the moment is different, but not less.

If it’s satisfaction with surviving a difficult musical passage, and “keeping this hulk together”, that’s legitimate.

If it’s taking pleasure in what a piece of music came out sounding like, and knowing that all the hard work paid off, that’s legitimate.

If it’s recognizing that, while the music didn’t come out perfectly, still that little kid in the front row couldn’t take her eyes off the young string players down front (and who knows? maybe she’ll remember that moment when the school music teacher asks her what instrument she thinks she might like to play) … that’s legitimate, too.

Not everybody has the same experience. But as a church music leader … along with the creating of the music that’s pleasing to God and to the people whose ears it hits on its way to God (which is really kinda the whole point) … one thing that is important to me is that the musicians we’re leading get to have an enjoyable Christmas Eve too.

(That way, they’re more likely to want to come back and sing in future Christmas Eves, which is another thing that can be important to me.)

It’s okay that folks in the congregation don’t know exactly what it took to get all that “glo-o-o-o-o-o-o-oria”-ing right. It’s okay for them to smile, and enjoy, and appreciate that the singing and playing struck them just right.

It’s okay that the choir and instrumental folks carry that “whew! made it!” subtext with them, when they consider how well things may have gone.

Everyone’s an individual; everyone hears music (or whatever) from their own perspective, and with their own life experience overlaid across it, whether they’re conscious of that or not.

And everyone comes toward Advent and Christmas from their own unique angle. And everyone’s angle is legitimate, too — whether they’re looking forward to the “roast beast”, or working to prepare it.

-Rob Hammerton