Anything worthwhile takes a mess of effort.

Even writing these simple pieces usually takes me a few hours.  Yeah, some of it might be spent staring into space, arranging a playlist, or petting the dog, but it’s all just a way of making time for language blocks and potential ideas to fall, Tetris-like, into something more coherent.

When I paint, though I’ve been known to finish something in under an hour, it mostly takes at least a full workday.  And often some chunk of a week.  I’ve gotten pretty darned skilled at the quiet contemplation of a canvas.

It’s been close to a year since I’ve written any music, but that process is no less intense.  An idea has to come from somewhere.  Whether you labor at it diligently or chase after it with a butterfly net, it almost always takes time.  Getting a guitar part right.  Writing the (bleeping) words, too, takes forever and I might as well be distilling my own blood.  Not to mention getting my voice recorded in some way that won’t sound like dog-strangling.

I digress.  More on point, I quote directly from the Nutcracker program: “Birmingham Ballet’s annual presentation of The Nutcracker is a large community effort.”  That may be an understatement.  The program is three pages of small type with a long list of names like Absher, Addie, Allowyn, Baylor, Brianna, Caleigh, Elle, Ellie, Emma, Grace, Hannah, Hope, Linnea, Kendall, Riley, and Romberg.  On Dasher and Dancer, On Prancer and Vixen….

And each of those little names – and all that aggregate time spent with all those baby name books – has at least one adult who is responsible for all the jetting back and forth to ballet practice.  One adult who might be forced to say (at least once in a while), “Yes, you still have to go.”  One adult who had to use heretofore unknown skills to alter or fix a costume entirely too close to curtain at the first performance.  One adult with an almost superhuman love for that little dancer.

And who designed the programs?  Printed them?  Put together the website?  Herded five-year-olds at practice?  Buckled Jack Frost into his flight apparatus?  Swept the snow?  Made the props?  Set up the lighting?  Tracked the music?  Ran the ticket booth?  Ushered patrons to their seats?  A “large community effort” for sure.

But nothing substantial seemed to go wrong at the Saturday evening performance, in spite of the obvious possibilities.  (I can imagine a set of people who could enjoy dance like rednecks do NASCAR – mainly for the crashes.)  Instead, I throughly enjoyed the pretty sets, its sense of humor, Drosselmeyer’s magic, Harlequin and Pierot, the bouncy bows and dresses at the Christmas party, the world’s cutest mice, success in snow-land after multiple practices, the wonder of the snow itself, individual Sugar Plum Fairy and Spanish and Arabian and Dew Drop Fairy performances, and the fun of hearing the parents around me in the audience murmuring and bubbling about their children at all the right times.

I’m not sure I’d ache to see the Nutcracker every single Christmas, but fifteen years (or more) was too long.  It’s a mess of effort that’s worth getting involved in.  I can only hope that I might entertain a few people even half as well.  But without all the effort, an artist would have no chance.

Once more, thanks to Cindy Free for giving me a chance to get all dressed up and a someplace nice to go.  A link to my earlier piece on the Birmingham Ballet’s rehearsal can be found here.