Lyre 2015 - Looking Back

A Note from Sheila Johns for the Lyre Board

As I reflect back on our time in Detroit, the feeling quality of the experience becomes ever stronger for me as the 2 weeks after the conference have passed.  I feel that it is truly amazing what was allowed to come to pass during our days together.  On reflection, it seems almost like all of our hard work, each of us in our own areas of assumed responsibility, was orchestrated like a symphony, from airport rides, to registration, to browsing for music, to considering the shapes and sounds of our instrument itself, to putting programs together, to teaching and participating in both small and large groups, to experiencing the amazing potential of the next generation of lyrists, to deepening old friendships and making important new ones, to socializing down the hallways and in the kitchen to jamming in the conference room, to the merging of our different spoken languages into our common musical one - playing together, listening together, sharing together on every level and finally with the general public – a week of pure magic, both similar and utterly different from any international gathering we have ever had.  A distinctly new sense of real community has emerged – that which some of us had envisioned already in 2003 but which only now, 12 years later, seems truly destined to finally come about.  

I just want to express my gratitude to each one of you who labored so diligently to do your part to make this all happen.  I truly marvel at the beautiful way in which everyone devoted their full efforts to creating a whole that, looking back, ended up being so very much greater than the sum of all of its parts – greater, I think, than any of us imagined could be.

Sheila P. Johns

For the LANA Board