A different kind of choir
Writing a post about my recent choral experience at the Playful Learning Conference 2026 got me thinking about another experience of singing I've had in 2026.
Earlier this year, I decided that I wanted to sing more. I took a leap I had been putting off for a long time and joined a choir. I had to audition and everything. You didn't ask, but my audition piece was Norah Jones' Turn Me On. You also didn't ask, but yes I got in. I didn't stay more than a few months, though. It didn't take long for me to realise the joy I hoped I would get from singing in a group wasn't going to come from singing in a formal choir. Relatively quickly, it began to feel more like an obligation and, ultimately, a burden, than something joyful.
I've tried to pinpoint what it was that put me off. It wasn't the admittedly strange warmup activities (lots of waving arms in the air and wandering around in circles grinning at each other) or the choice of songs (some neo-soul, some classics), nor the way the choir was led. I haven't been able to pinpoint it exactly yet, but it was something to do with the organised, formal nature of it; or rather, it was something to do with the why. The choir I was going to focussed a lot on public performances, and was geared towards them; they were focussed on output. All I wanted to do was sing.
The two aren't mutually exclusive, of course; there was no pressure to perform publicly. And it's not even like I can put my finger on something tangibly counter to what I felt I was looking for. It was more a general feeling that getting it 'right' was more important than just having fun doing it. Except, everyone else in the choir looked like they were having fun doing it - heck, I was having fun doing it. It just wasn't the kind of fun I was looking for. It was more like going for a training ride with a cycling club than going for a bike ride with friends.
Both, of course, can provide joy and serve playful purposes; training provides the means, experience and skill to publicly perform. To continue my cycling analogy, if race results - or even doing a race at all - are your goal, then training rides are necessary. They're also necessary to do more challenging rides with your friends. But they don't supply the kind of week-to-week joy that I was looking for. Despite my attempts to connect with it in that way, it just didn't feel like it was coming. It didn't help that it was at an inconveniently late (for me) time on a Wednesday.
What can we learn from this? There is, of course, the recurring practice of Being More Margot; maybe being more open would have helped me connect with it. But there's also the importance of being realistic and honest about what you're looking for from a pastime such as this. I had specifically chosen this choir because of its tight performances and neat arrangements, thinking that the better the choir, the happier I would be. I can sing OK - not great, but OK. I imagined I might feel a bit put off by a choir that wasn't as "good". But there's the thing - I was searching for good only in terms of the quality of the sung output, thinking that would bring me joy. It turns out, however, that's not what I wanted. What was nice about the Bark Choir at PLA 2026 was the freedom, the engagement, the looseness of the choir. Something about that felt really fun, and silly, and joyful.
Initially, this felt like a bit of a failure on my part - maybe I should have tried harder, practised more, stayed longer. Perhaps that would have made a difference. But it's also worth remembering that play, real play, involves your ability to disengage; play is voluntary. Forcing myself to stay when I wasn't really enjoying myself may have had beneficial results for my overall ability to sing in a choir (and thus provide eventual satisfaction), but that ignores the purpose for me going to a choir in the first place - to enjoy singing. It feeling like 'work' definitely didn't do that.
It's OK for something that should feel playful to not feel playful. What matters is that you approach it openly and willingly - if it turns out it's not for you, that's OK too. The practice of playfulness is not trying to force things we don't like, but to increase our capacity and ability to try new things, and engage fully with those we do. For now, I'll keep singing at the top of my lungs in the kitchen.