Apart Together
The freedom we've been looking for
The curtain falls on the final dress rehearsal. Behind the curtain: all of us standing in a line, all holding hands. I am in the middle. I am 15 years old, in my first lead role. There are cheers and applause from the 5-10 people, mostly other students, in the audience. Backstage, spontaneously, we seek out and embrace each other, one by one.
We all know it: we have a show – and a really good one.
50 years later, I remember that moment vividly. The elation, the connection, and the realization that weeks of individual and ensemble work have produced something none of us could have made alone.
What had changed in that moment that transformed a life? Nothing had changed about the music or the blocking or the lines. The recognition that transformed us occurred only because everyone was on that stage together, at the same moment, after all that shared work.
This is the experience Johan Huizinga described in Homo Ludens1: “...the feeling of being ‘apart together’ in an exceptional situation, of sharing something important, of mutually withdrawing from the rest of the world and rejecting the usual norms.”
I have been searching that feeling ever since.
The practice room door closes. Inside: a musician, alone with their instrument and a pile of unfinished music.
There is no shared goal with a fixed deadline, no one to reach for in the wings. There is only the question of where to begin — and the more difficult question of whether anything’s working at all.
Progress in the practice room is difficult to recognize or to appreciate. There is no curtain call, no moment of shared achievement. What remains, too often, is the feeling that nothing was quite enough: the pile of scores still unfinished, the passage still not clean.
Over time, this feeling comes with a story. And it’s usually retold at the worst possible moments: a passage falls apart again, or a session ends with nothing to show for it. And then the story reaches its silent conclusion: Other musicians probably don’t struggle like this. Something must be wrong with me.
Although this story is false, it feels completely true when there’s no one else in the room to say otherwise.
The magic circle opens. Inside: the others.
You choose to enter.
You cautiously share your work, and someone identifies what you’ve been trying to describe. Instead of a solution, you’re offered recognition. Someone has said out loud what you’ve only ever thought to yourself. The story that felt completely true suddenly has a witness who knows it’s false — not because they’ve read about it, but because they’ve lived it too. You discover that the struggle you thought was yours alone is shared among musicians who care deeply about their practice.
The shared circle offers sustenance that solitary practice can’t. Not just encouragement, but genuine understanding. Not just accountability, but recognition. The problems, the emotions, the small victories that feel too minor to mention to anyone. Inside the circle, these are the currency of conversation.
This is the “apart together” feeling I’ve been looking for since that curtain call. It is given by those already inside the circle. In time, we offer it to the next musician who cautiously chooses to enter.
This is what I am creating: a shared magic circle for musicians who are ready to reimagine their practice.
Not performers preparing for opening night. Not music students working toward a degree. Musicians who practice alone, weighed down by the private struggle, who have designed or are learning to design their own practice — and who are ready to stop carrying it alone.
Inside, you leave behind a practice that was imposed on you, and open the door to the practice that is uniquely yours – to rediscover your relationship with music, and with yourself as a music maker.
The practice of making music is not a discipline to be endured. It is a commitment to explore musicianship through structure, risk, mastery, responsibility, and freedom.
If you think this is what you’re looking for, let’s have a conversation. I’d like to hear from you.
Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture, Johan Huizinga; also referenced in That Which We Call Play, Entering the Magic Circle, Repetition as Play, The Effort of Play, and Playing Honestly
I enjoy watching my step-greatgrandsons enjoy the musical theater culture and the mutual support for what they rehearse alone. Nothing like that in the visual arts.