An African adage asks and responds: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Speaking of elephants, there's also a really old and lame joke that begins: How do you get down off an elephant? Or, lumbering further afield, we could talk about pink elephants...or elephants in the room....
But back to our one-bite-at-a-time elephant.
Recently, the chorus in which I sing performed Rachmaninoff's Vespers (more properly known as the All Night Vigil). It's a big piece of music, an elephant in its own right. It's sung a capella (without accompaniment) in 15 different sections. In contrast to many choral works, the chorus sings throughout, almost without pause. The piece demands high highs and low lows in both pitch and amplitude. It's unrelenting.
For Anglophones, there's the additional challenge of learning to pronounce those tongue-tying, mouth-twisting Russian words so that they appear comprehensible-and convey feeling.
So there I was, about three-quarters of the way through the concert, thinking: This is really a huge piece of music. I've still got a ways to go. I need to pay attention to what I'm doing so that I've got enough stamina to get to the end.
Pace yourself, I thought.
I know. Partway through a concert is a bit late to be thinking these thoughts. In theory, I should only be thinking about what I'm singing. But that's theory. In actuality, we all have thoughts that drift off of task, even at times of high concentration.
I went back to singing. We completed the concert. It was wonderful. There was still the hour's drive home...and the same concert to give the next day.
Gulp.
Before the second concert, our conductor-I had mentioned the issue of pacing to him-spoke about the pacing that we needed to do for this piece of music. He suggested some specific things that we could do, like taking a moment between the sections of the music to let go of the prior movement, clearing our heads to be ready for the next. The importance of diaphragmatic breathing for stamina. Just having an awareness of what a marathon this concert entailed.
Actually, he compared our "marathon" event to the demand placed on athletes, in this case the just-about-to-unfold final sports event of the 2010 Olympics, the amazing Canada-U.S. hockey game. (And yes, even some of our most loyal music fans paid for concert tickets but stayed home for that other activity.) Hockey players, as he pointed out, are on ice for "only" 45 seconds per shift.
Now, in a convenient example of life imitating the point that I want to make, as it happened, this particular game continued into overtime-by which time the concert had ended and many choristers and audience members had seated themselves in front of a TV set to watch the finish. The hockey players needed not only to complete their regulation time, but also to maintain the stamina to play during overtime. It was a bigger elephant than they'd anticipated!
In a fascinating article, The Making of a Corporate Athlete, performance psychologist Jim Loehr and business executive Tony Schwartz emphasize the central importance of pacing for peak performance. They speak of those spaces in between high levels of performance. They underscore the importance of taking time for recovery.
Whether that "recovery" time includes the moment between sections of music, the time on the bench in a hockey game, or the quick walk around the block before starting a new assignment, the spaces in between-the white that allows definition of the black-are central to optimal performance.
As for getting down off an elephant?...You don't. You get down off a duck.
