I don’t always wear socks, but when I do, I wear them outside my shoes. Or at least I did for three days in May.
My fashion choices don’t usually come across in an audio recording. For five months I had been arranging, practicing and perfecting nineteen hymns to make a CD for all the saints. Finally, all that preparation came down to three days of recording.
I returned to the stunning sound-scape of Rieth recital hall with amazing new microphones and software that caught even the slightest sigh. My mom came as the muscle to help me move the harp but the real heavy lifting on the recording was done by my sound engineer, Nate Butler. Or at least by his ears. Nate has incredible ears! Last time we did a CD together, he was teaching me how to breathe with my mouth open because he could hear me sniff!
I turned up for this session wearing clothes without buttons and jewelry that wouldn’t clink. We 
brought our own rug so that the special soft soled shoes I wear to play harp would not make any thuds against the wooden stage floor. But as I started to warm up with scales, Nate pulled off his headphones with a frown.
“I hear a squeak.”
I started to panic. Was there something wrong with the hall? With my stool? With the harp? We didn’t have any spare time to fix this!
Nate loped up to the stage. He walked around the harp, leaning in to listen. Finally he pointed at my feet.
“It’s your shoes.”
The leather sole of my shoes are worn smooth with use and he could pick up the slick scuffing sound they made as I pushed the harp pedals. Like I said, ears.
My mother ran back to one of her bags. “I think have a spare pair of socks.”
Seriously, spare socks. On preparedness and creativity, I think my mother is the boy scouts meets McGyver. I slipped the socks on the outside of my shoes and pressed a pedal. The squeak disappeared.
Creativity is found in the big things, the idea for a painting or a song, and in the small things, like fashion recombinations. And no matter how impressive we find the big stuff, we are sunk without the small idea like a sock saver. You can hear the absence of squeaks for yourself on my new CD Hymns and Variations, available here, on iTunes, or call 574-875-0795.