The Urgency of NOW

Dateline: Tuesday, July 09, 2013
Reporting on the 2013 International Barbershop Harmony Society convention in Toronto. 

Last Saturday night, Toronto Northern Lights (TNL) chorus brought the Air Canada Centre house down in Toronto with two amazing song sets, taking top honors for GOLD for the first time in their history – in their home town, no less!  (NOTE: In 2008 in Nashville, they had placed 2^nd with an incredible performance of the depression flashback song “Brother Can You Spare a Dime.”  Some of us swore they had won that one.) 

Their first song set for 2013 was a hilarious, parody-suffused medley on the theme of vegetables – with all chorus members dressed in exquisitely fashioned vegetable-like costumes.  The set ended with “This is the dawning of the age of Asparagus”.  

The second song set was based on Elvis Presley’s “If I Can Dream” – echoing Martin Luther King, Jr’s. “I Have a Dream” speech, and had the following introduction written specifically for the TNL presentation: 

“Once there was a time

Our hearts were all misguided,

Our thoughts were all one-sided,

A change was overdue. 

Then there came a time

When all the darkness lifted,

Our attitudes had shifted,

Our world came shining through.

If a bunch of silly plants

Can change their circumstance,

Why can’t everyone?

Why can’t you?”

TNL Director, Steve Armstrong, prefaced the championship redux performance with the summation that the chorus really did have a paradigm shift in attitude and intentionality during their preparation for international competition.  Internalizing and engraving this shift NOW with a sense of urgency seemed to be their collective imperative. 

Core Message: If your Dream is BIG enough, STRONG enough and RIGHT enough … why can’t you begin living it NOW?  What other options are there?  NONE of any consequence … other than to take away the possibility of your Dream ever being fulfilled.   

Summation: Don’t be misguided, one-sided, in the dark and lurking around where change is overdue.  Step outside and rise above your current circumstances, anchor the BIGGEST, STRONGEST and RIGHTIST Dream you can muster, then live it, DO it, and give it everything you’ve got – NOW!  Quartermaster