The Rock in the Background

When you play a piece of music on piano, there is generally a melody line and an accompaniment. When you cast a show for Musical theater, there are soloists and leads, and there are small groups like a barbershop quartet, or ladies trio, and then the ensemble. When you make a house a home, there are cosmetic design fixes and then there is structural integrity. Within each of these scenarios, the trained eye knows what is keeping the melody, the soloists, and the pictures up on the wall in a house.

When I am casting a show, I put my best musicians in those tricky small group positions.  Their moving notes and tight harmonies will carry the soloists and build up a foundation for the leads.  They will also set the bar higher for the ensemble, to follow their harmonies.  Granted, the leads need to be able to sing, but the leads do not need to be able to harmonize and blend with the majority of the ensemble.  A lead can learn his/her simple and often-popular melody, and belt it out.  (The hardest part,  when casting a high school group, is getting them to understand that the glamour of "being the lead" does not mean they are the best musician in the bunch.) 

When playing piano, the moving notes in the accompaniment or harmonization are not quickly recognized by the untrained ear.  The public ear goes to the right hand singing through the keys, in a quick-glistening run or beautifully-lined melody.  But the performer is really tested by his or her accompaniment, arpeggios, and moving notes supporting the melody line.  The supporting notes take more practice, they are more complex, and the timing has to be well subdivided and even, in order for the melody to have a note to stand on.
 
On a show like House Hunters, many clients comment on the wall color and the kind of counter tops, often neglecting the drainage system of the house or the condition of the HVAC unit.  How will the counter-tops have a cabinet to stand on, if the floor is flooded from a poor drainage system? 

And such it is with life.  Our real test of life is in our day to day moments, the habits and running of our daily encounters.  Our response to constant disappointment or constant praise.  We have many opportunities for a public and cyber life: status on Facebook, text to our friends, positions of leadership, teaching, speaking, implanting a pacemaker in someone, holding a court case, participating in class.  The list could go on of our outward appearances, in whatever role we have. 

Is that our real life, the essence of who we are? Would all of that outward show crumble if we were to crumble inside, be mentally fatigued, overtired, overworked, stressed, gripped with anxiety and fear for innumerable encounters throughout the day? I would say, yes. The show would crumble eventually.  We can put on a wonderful front for a long time, and choose people and places where the front will be shown.  But may I suggest a solid relationship with a powerful, all loving and all knowing God, who is not only able to offer you freedom from the sin of the world, and a life in eternity, but also able to sustain you in your own show and keep you within a light burden and an easy yoke?   

So I just took my 2nd Cellcept of the day, a medicine that works in the background, and takes about a year to kick in while the lead, prednisone, is currently making me feel and function really well.

Cheers, to another background star.