The appliances you rely on daily – stove, refrigerator, dishwasher, furnace, water heater, etc. – don’t break often. They are reliable for long stretches of time, because they are (generally) built to last.
When it’s time to replace one of them, though, two things are true.
- It needs to happen right away. (That is, you can’t wait a week to heat your home.)
- You suddenly find time to do what you need to do to get it done. (That is, you’re not as busy as you thought!)
We need to treat our music like necessary appliances. When we don’t have it down, when it needs fixing or replacing, we need to find the time to do it, and get it done right away.
It’s the only way to maintain forward momentum in the ensemble. You can get stuck with not heat if you don’t get your furnace fixed, and you can get stuck with no musicality whatsoever if you don’t make sure the tenors are singing correct notes.