Depression

I have a piece of music I downloaded a long time ago that I listen to when I feel particularly depressed or worried. It is a high school band trying -- and I am sure they were trying really hard -- to play some of the themes from The Empire Strikes Back. They come close to pulling it off in a few places, but on the whole the entire thing is one of the most awful musical catastrophes to have ever been released upon the public.

It always makes me feel better for two reasons - one, I have never done anything like that and STILL posted it on the internet. It makes me smile in wonder at what could have posessed them to actually put it on their website.

But the second thing I like about it is what a reminder it is of how faithfulness in little things takes care of big things. It isn't that the kids didn't want to sound good on the day of the performance, and it isn't that the conductor didn't conduct his heart out, but the reason the band was so bad was that the kids did other things besides work on their technique, their sound quality, their sight reading, their sense of pitch and blend. So when you put it together, the euphonium is a few shades too sharp, the french horns don't come in together, the flute unison isn't, the crash cymbal really does, and one of the trumpets has no volume control. I don't need to play the whole orchestra, I just have to learn my notes, get a sense of tone, and adjust my pitch to fit what is going on around me.

For example, as an application to my life right now, if I quit blogging and start studying for my exam tomorrow, they might even say to me, "Hey, you're not half bad. Tell you what, why don't we let you keep attending law school?" Then I would smile and think of that poor band and how one of those kids might even be one of my classmates, getting better grades than me because he was busy doing writing and logic assignments intead of practicing music... it's all a matter of perspective, I suppose.