A CHOIR WITHIN A CHOIR

In the here and now I am in a choir.  This is a complex choir comprised of several other choirs that are also comprised of several other, perhaps hundreds of sets of choirs within choirs.

The most immediate choir that I am a part of is centered in my own particular human body.  It is a choir of organs. My internal organs, heart, brain, lungs, liver, gizzard, glands, bones and other assemblies of cells which, even at the microscopic level are made up of essential interacting parts. Included in this body is the set of organs I use to sing with.  Ears to hear myself and others, eyes to see my music and look at the conductor.  If I learn the music I can include the conductor and the audience in my vision. I need to feel what is going on inside my body.

In this same here-and –now I am a member of a family and a community, a number of organizations locally, some state-wide, and some nationally.

The extent to which they make music together, metaphorically speaking, is the extent to which you might call them choirs. Some that literally have made music together are the Albany State University Chorus and the Albany Chorale.  The Porterfield Methodist Church Choir  joined with several other  Methodist Church Choirs a couple of weeks ago to perform at Porterfield.

If you stand not too far off and look at this picture you will see a network of networks of people who are alive today. But even this degree of connectedness is not the complete picture of what I am getting at. 

And what might further our grasp of the picture? The word history comes to mind.  Being in the here-and-now brings the past into the present, always rumbling and lurking in the background, then coming into the foreground when its turn comes, in the form of memories, to command center stage.