Hmm...
On my last choir tour in 2010 we were singing "Choose Something Like A Star" from Randall Thompson's Frostiana. Dr. King always told the story of his choir singing it after a classmate had passed away so it made the song mean something more each time. At one of the schools I couldn't sing because I couldn't stop crying. I was doing fine and then I looked at TK and something in his face moved me so. I tried looking around the high school choir room for something to distract me from the crazy emotion I was feeling but then I looked at our choir and stopped on the face of Jake Taylor (a good friend) and what was he doing? Crying too! I noticed a few other red faces and really couldn't stop crying. We were a family doing something we all loved to do, together, and it was amazing.
I guess that's something that fits all of those categories of what kind of "moment" I should write about.
Here the poem from the song:
O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud --
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says "I burn."
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.
I miss choir...
Here's a YouTube video of the song. Not us. I want our recording..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dg2iE2ixeE
