Noi and I have just been listening to a recording of Fafa's school's symphonic band performing their pieces for the SYF. Our niece is in there playing bassoon. It seems she's troubled by making a mistake in one segment, but we couldn't hear it. As with any school's band's performance it's difficult to think of a more joyous, precious noise being made anywhere. And now these performances are regularly captured in digital recordings it seems to me they are likely to be more precious than ever.
Whenever we're doing any kind of drama in school I'm at pains to draw my students' attention to the process they're part of, to illustrate just how much there is to be learned from the experience. Heck, I've been doing this for some thirty years and I'm still learning. Yet despite all the invaluable lessons that one might cite to justify the time and effort spent making drama, or music, or dance, or any other form of art, the truth is that what really matters in the end is the product, the work itself. And this matters not in quantitative terms, but simply in terms of itself, as something that transcends time and reminds us of our place in eternity.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time, as a crazy, little-regarded, dirt-poor engraver once etched upon our consciousnesses - for ever.
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