HARD WORK

"So, is this your job, Matt?" said someone at choir tonight.

"No," I replied. "I have a day job as well. I work in a software company."

There are people who do this for a job. They work for organisations like Rock Choir, or other big companies jumping on the Gareth-Malone-bandwagon. A friend of mine recently joined a work choir at John Lewis, where a cool young man with tweed jackets and skinny jeans goes in and conducts them all on a Wednesday night. He's really good apparently. I'll bet. Those guys know how to do it.

Tonight I felt like I was making it up as I went along. Questions raced through my brain, doubts pulsing with every bar and every beat. It started as a dream a long time ago this: a community choir that brings people together - a group of people enjoying producing great music and enjoying doing it as one, all part of something Bigger, something Greater. I don't have any credentials - I didn't go to music college or appear on some talent show, I just had an unwavering hope that somehow if you're called to do something, the call outweighs the qualification. I'd never arranged anything or conducted anything, I'd never really thought about how much effort it might take to put something like that together.

I felt under-qualified tonight. I missed things, I wasn't concentrating, I got things wrong and I didn't really focus at all. Rather than draw the best out of the voices in front of me, I felt myself getting annoyed and wondering whether I can really do this, whether it's even possible. The things that make it zip are always the hardest to master - and those things are the hardest to teach it seems - especially if you don't really know what you're talking about.

"Software?" they said, surprised. I'm quite surprised at that too, to be honest, but there it is. This is the strange mix I've crafted for myself somehow - the world of instruction-writing, carefully composing sentences which might never be encountered, and the creative fire of musical ability that seems always just beyond my grip. I wish I were a little cooler, a little better at all of this.

He doesn't call the qualified, says an old part of my brain; he qualifies the called. It's that that gives me the strength, to be honest: the strength to keep going and not to throw in the towel. And in any case, this isn't supposed to be about me is it? I'm on a quest, remember, to be a signpost.

It's just that it's hard work sometimes.