Perseverance

This is a talk that Laura Berquist gave at Redeemer's InterArts Fellowship on September 9, 2005. Laura is a music director in musical theatre, a vocal coach, and a pianist.

"Perseverance—a steady and continued action or belief, usually over a long period and especially despite difficulties, obstacles or setbacks."

Chekov wrote, “It’s your duty to go on working steadily day by day, quite quietly, to be prepared for mistakes, which are inevitable and for failures.”

Arthur Rubinstein admitted, “If I don’t play the piano for one day I know it. If I don’t practice it for two days my family knows it. If I don’t practice it for three days, my public knows it.”

We persevere in recognition of our own journeys and visions as artists.

We persevere as representatives of the arts community and of all artists who seek to enrich our world with beauty and creativity.

I persevere on behalf of my own sacred circle of family, friends and mentors who have invested their lives into mine.

My mother was raised in an old-country Hungarian household bereft of beauty, conversation or love. The children were abused physically and verbally plus all of the other mores that go along with that kind of dysfunction. They managed to survive by creating their own beauty—their art within the framework of their lives. One son was a professional trumpet player, another an artist, my mother a singer and seamstress. Perseverance.

My Dad was raised by a domineering mother and an alcoholic father who never had the “macho” kind of son they wanted who could hunt, play sports and fix cars. But my Dad had an Aunt whose living room was filled with paintings hung side by side from the top of the couch clear to the ceiling. Auntie Ruth stood my father on the coffee table and taught him Shakespeare and elocution and the beauty of language. Perseverance.

Two people who managed first, survival, and second, perseverance, through art and beauty and brought it into our home. As a child, I would visit each set of grandparents and see plenty of clutter, nothing on the walls, disregard for any order and harsh words for all. In my home, there was the Michaelangelo statue of David in my Dad’s office. The walls and tables were filled with flowers and paintings. The sewing machine was always humming with new creations, books were read and shared by the score and there was music. Always a radio or a television or long play records. A piano and an organ were in our living room and regularly I’d hear my Dad singing and playing, or my mom learning the latest Broadway song or a hymn. Sunday mornings I was awakened to a little 78 recording in my room of “Wake up, wake up you sleepy head it’s time for Sunday School…”.

At age 10, my father took me to see Joel Gray in the National Tour of GEORGE M. The magic of the theater, the smell of the grease paint and the roar of the crowd, as it were, took root in my heart. I loved going to concerts and theater and watching performers and artists practice their craft. My mom and dad sacrificed time and money for piano lessons and thus began the practicing, the daily perfecting of scales and rhythms and hand positions and posture under the direction of our lady of perpetual obligation—Sister Vivian. Perseverance. This love of art combined with the weekly practice of the worship service, the prayer meeting (which some have observed share many of the same sacred and mysterious elements of the theater), informed my earliest definitions of the artist.

So, between Joel Gray, my parents and a nun I found the strange and often contradictory notion of the artist; the excitement of live performance coupled with a solitary mandate for sacrificial practice—perseverance. My pursuit of art, my personal demand for excellence and my desire to contribute, is summed up in the words of many of my mentors and teachers who said “Stay the course, Laura.”

My university exposed me to every genre of music and theater. It is impossible to separate the concept of excellence from the artists who modeled it and who gave me the tools to love and appreciate it. They taught me the personal joy of performance. Whether opera, musical theater, singing in numerous ensembles and choirs, accompanying –all these helped me form my voice and my sense of musicianship. I heard a steady chorus of encouraging voices saying, “Stay the course.” Persevere!

Voice teachers saying, “Practice, perform, practice, perform.”

Professors in choral arranging—“You have a knack for this, keep at it.”

A conducting prof—“Again, Laura, again,” drilling conducting patterns into my arms and brain until they woke me from my sleep—and still do when I’m working on a new show.

A theater director—with his wry voice,“ That’s it Laura, that’s it.”

My opera coach, who also taught international opera star Sam Ramey, “Yes, Sweetie, Yes.”

The opera conductor—“You are a wonderful musician. Stay the course.”

Staying the course—persevering—meant applying these concepts outside the walls of the University and into the community, especially the faith community. My experiences with church music and composition led me to work with masters in the field. My life was filled with publications, recordings, conducting and performing. The faith community accepted me and helped me to grow as an artist, blending for me those elements of the sacred with the beauty of the art form.

Staying the course meant courage to innovate and experiment by co-founding a theater company. We produced the world premier production of the classic Charlotte Bronte book, Jane Eyre. I worked as the musical director with Tony award winning actors, designers and directors and was more challenged, determined and sure of the course of my life than I had ever been. The show ultimately made it to Broadway. It made it to Broadway without me, though. A tremendous disappointment and the questions of talent, ability, political savvy in the entertainment world would haunt me for years. Did I want to persevere in a business that was cut-throat, had no seeming regard for integrity and honesty and true commitment to the art form? That seemed to be no “respecter of persons”?

The scripture, “All discipline for the moment is hard, but in the end it yields the peaceful fruits of righteousness for those who are trained by it” rang in my mind over and over. But I don’t want to be trained by disappointment. I’ve stayed the course, I’ve kept the faith, I’ve run the race, I put on the full armor; I’ve got experience and integrity and morals and talent and discipline and extraordinary gifts—and dammit, I’m a Christian!

Alright, God, if you are not a “respecter of persons” when you make salvation available to all, then you must also not be a “respecter of persons” when talent and ability and creativity is given. It must also fall on the just and the unjust. So—stay the course. Persevere. Give up that particular dream at this particular time and wait to see what God will do next. I found myself in the college and high school classroom—still striving toward my art and creativity—but this time sharing and investing what I knew in young lives who not only needed a touch of art in their lives, but really needed a touch. Taking the focus off self—not because I wanted to, but because the situation required it—helped me to persevere.

Fast forward just a few years and the next the thing I knew I was conducting national tours in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Brazil. I was making my living as an artist. But this time with a new resolve to understand my art as the means to an end. The end being ministry to others. A ministry that just happened to have its initial entry point through music and theater.

Throughout this artistic journey there is a disconnect, however, between my highest sense of art, my pursuit of excellence and the raw realities of the human condition. The complexities and tragedies of real life bring a discord to the artists’ sensitive ear. Author Joseph Campbell describes this discord as the “unhealable wound” a tragic hero sustains on his journey as he pursues the valuable and unique. My life as an artist, friend, wife and mother is no different from your life. We share the common bond of pain, rejection, disappointment and uncontrollable crisis.

Among the wounds I have suffered as an artist are those of prejudice. Being female in a traditionally male dominated structure caused its own grief. I remember a conversation with professors in a graduate school who were negative about me entering the program and encouraged me to shift full time to wife and motherhood. In church music, female composers generally only wrote for children’s choirs. In New York, women are just beginning to be hired as musical directors and conductors—and of course, to me being new to the scene, they all seem younger, prettier, smarter, younger….

I have also faced religious prejudice, from both inside and outside of the faith community. Our determination to live out a Christian lifestyle in a culture saturated with sadness and hedonism is challenging. Add to that the confusion of the Christian community as they saw us leave the comfort zone of the insulated church in order to embrace the arts.

Interacting with artists, working and living side by side, of course, brings its own realities. Watching incredibly talented friends fall into addiction, despair, depression and loneliness has been a true sadness in my journey. Coping with the rejection and instability of the artist’s life plus the economic and social struggles can be adventurous—to say the least. “Stay the course, Laura” are the words I hear as I determine my own response to the reality that often disrupts my pursuit of art. “I thought they liked me, why isn’t the phone ringing?” “Don’t they know what I have to offer, how good I am, how nice I am?” “I’m too old and have been at this too long to have cash flow issues! Why didn’t you make me a shoe salesman or a plumber?!” Calm, Laura. Stay the course. Persevere. Be true to your calling.

Earlier I noted our roles as representatives of the arts community. For it is the community of artists (the hero’s of my artistic life) who have best taught me to respond to the “raw reality” with faith and love. For my husband, the gentle Joe, and me, our response has meant a life changing move to New York City. Joe joins me now as an artist pursuing his own passions in acting, singing, and voice over. It means joining a faith community that nurtures the life and soul of the artist and expects the highest excellence in art as any secular theater. My response is to practice discipline and expect excellence of myself and now 28 beautiful young people who I began teaching at NYU this week. My response is to honor my husband of almost 31 years with my life and my art, build loving relationships with my children, now adults themselves, all discovering their own passions and loves. It is also in ministry to my parents—those survivors who first gave me the gift of art and beauty as they deal with my father’s recent diagnosis of brain cancer. My response to a hurting world is to love unconditionally. My ultimate response to the painful disconnect between the beauty of art and the harshness of our world is to walk humbly before God and bring light in dark places; for me, the light of music, composition, education and theater. The light of art. The light of love.

Art speaks when our voices are silenced, our minds quieted. When our spirits are crushed, art speaks.

My life of art, my journey and pursuit of the highest quality of expression is fraught with hurt, disappointment, fear and insecurity. But, it’s all I know to do. Along with Chekov I say, “the thought that I must create never leaves me for an instant.” But my own understanding of art has matured, intensified, and flourished as I persevere and seek to practice and create a new voice. And my bliss, my joy, my distinction as an artist, woman, wife, mother, human being, is in the weaving together my sense of art with the building of faith, and the honoring of loving relationships.

Let me just add here that this calling to perseverance, persistence, discipline, and love is not only if you are an artist. It is for all of us who call ourselves believers. It’s for the times when you don’t feel creative and find yourself waiting tables or teaching rather than painting; or working in an office instead of on a shoot; or stuffing envelopes instead of taking lessons. Our life as people of God involves excellence and calling to “love the Lord our God with all of our might and to love our neighbor.” Hebrews tells us to “put on love” as we would a piece of clothing.

"Stay the course, Laura" has been the mantra from my earliest experiences in life and art and faith. I trust you’ll hear the same voice or at least be open to listen for it as you pursue your own journey. Stay the course. Persevere.

But I must add one more paradigm to that equation. And this is another talk entirely. For every bit of effort, determination, and discipline you give to persevering, you must invest equally in being willing to give it all up. That is one real distinction of the Christian artist. We know Who we belong to. Mark’s gospel basically says to the artist, “Whoever wants to save his artistic life will lose it, but whoever loses his artistic life for me and the gospel (the good news) will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?” Perseverance is a process from the birth of the artistic impulse to its death at the hands of the Christian artist who says to the Creator, “Here am I, send me” and the Creator, in turn, and with great joy says, “Alright, stay the course. Persevere. Love.”