It got me
thinking about conducting, and the form of leadership it represents. About fifty years ago, if you had asked me
what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said (as perhaps I’ve
mentioned before) that I wanted to be the first woman conductor of the Choir of
King’s College, Cambridge. So far, there
hasn’t been a woman conductor
(yet!) Something I haven’t explored enough
is the impulse that this represented – to lead.
I mean, here I was, aged ten, and something in me had the confidence to
believe I could direct one of the world’s finest choirs. I had the confidence to believe that when I
spoke, the choir would listen, and when I gave a downbeat, they would
sing. That confidence soon dissipated,
but didn’t die entirely. There is a
leader in me. Until now, when I have
tried to “rally the troops” in a few select situations, I have been unsuccessful. The troops, as it were, have not always wanted
to be rallied, at least by me. I have
too often forgotten to remind myself that this just means these are not the people I am meant to lead. It does not mean I am not
a leader!
So there is
something in this leadership equation that brings together a person with a
certain set of talents with the people that need – and want! -- a leader with
that skill set. And while orchestral
conductors may find some success with church choirs and vice versa, the fact is
that a leader’s best success will come in the field of their true passion. A leading heart surgeon would not necessarily
make a great CEO, a great CEO would not necessarily make a great college
professor, etc. Many of my friends insist they would never want to lead, so it has surprised me that I do. Yet I could never fake enthusiasm for random leadership positions in
organizations that really didn’t mean anything to me. Of course, that also made
me a poor employee.
These few
months of “intermission” have forced me to really identify what now “means anything
to me.” I was more than half a century
ahead of my time in a field that wasn’t ready for me. That is just how it was,
and probably is exactly the journey I
signed up for in this lifetime. And in
the intervening years, my path has been surprisingly hard, not what I ever
wanted or expected. While I have managed
the last few years to go back and pick up some of the lost threads, the fact
is, I not only could not return to the late sixties and start seriously
training to become “the first woman conductor” at King’s, I would not want
to. Too many other experiences, places and people have formed me into a
different whole.
At the moment, the only
passion I can clearly identify is my passion for having survived this journey,
and my desire to communicate all its lessons, which I have started doing in
this blog. But I envision a more active
leadership role growing out of this, above and beyond being Liz Lavish, writing checks! I
am not quite sure who wants the leadership of a pioneering woman English church
musician, artist, mystic, anglophile and writer who has been broken over and
over and over again by life yet has not given up. I am not quite sure who needs the insights of
a cutting edge “out there” spiritual thinker who is the product of high church
Anglicanism. I am not quite sure who
wants the leadership of a wise, super well-educated woman who never married or
had children, and has been homeless and spectacularly nonfunctional in “normal
American life.” These paradoxes are what I bring to leadership. I am not quite sure who my choir is. But in about three weeks my wonderful current living situation is ending, and I will be stepping
out into the world again with my baton in hand, ready to conduct. And can you believe it? I walk out in the
assurance that there will be a “choir” gathering in the choir stalls!
