Rehearsal

I'm sitting on a park bench in the middle of downtown Pomplona right now. This is a city of 2 or 300,000 people, and it moves with the energy of a much larger city like Vancouver or Seattle. I broke off from the group so I could write you all. It's been an emotional roller coaster of a day. More on that below. But first, a few pics of this amazing city, where they so the running of the bulls every summer. This is the city hall. 

Here is the church we are singing in tonight. 

This is of some of us, pretending we are running from bulls on the fences they put up to separate the spectators from the bulls. 

And this is the clock that counts down the time to the next event, next summer. 

Now, for the harder stuff. 

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Rehearsal. It's something we do almost every day in this choir. We are used to hard work and dedication. Sometimes, though, something surprises us in a rehearsal. Today was one of those times. We were working through a piece we've sung for 4 years. Through the creative process, something happened that put many of the choir in an emotionally vulnerable place. It wasn't intentional, but we ended up finding a new level of emotion in the piece. It was so deep that we had to stop singing for 20 minutes to recover as a group. We went outside, into a park surrounding the building and had a good cry together. It's a healthy place to be in together, but very hard to do. You have to be very vulnerable with each other and have a great deal of trust. That's part of making amazing art at this level. Trust and vulnerability. Believe in each other, not just in yourself. Miss you guys.