As I've mentioned in previous articles, I sing in the Fordham University Choir and in the Schola Cantorum. I also sang with the choir at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Buenos Aires for a few months, and I sang in my high school choir and with the South Shore Children's Chorus. This past Friday I had the great experience of going to Carnegie Hall on a choir field trip to hear the St. Olaf Choir, one of the best college choirs in the country. It was lots of fun.

When I was in my senior year of high school, I read Ayn Rand's novel 'The Fountainhead,' which has as its premise the idea that selfishness is the supreme human virtue. I do not think I would rate the novel among the very best of all the works of literature I've ever read, and I think that Rand's idea is a bit unpleasant. I can, however, see her point in vindicating individuality in the face of a conformist mentality. Rand, many people will be sure to tell you, cannot be considered a serious philosopher. At any rate, she does have a certain amount of cultural influence, so her idea is worth discussing.

Shortly after I read 'The Fountainhead,' I heard a choir director say that singing in a choir is something that is impossible to do alone. This is true; every individual member of the choir plays an essential role, and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This is the ideal for all team endeavors, from service projects to nations. In its ideal form, it's the paradisal state that St. Paul calls the body of Christ (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:12-31), what John Donne is thinking of when he says that "no man is an island." Donne speaks of an ideal library in which "every book shall lie open to one another"; Northrop Frye would call this a community in which there are selves but no egos. This is the very best version of human community. It is what the experience of being in a choir stands for.

It is certainly true that the kind of dysfunctional communities that Ayn Rand caricatures do exist. Self-actualization is important, but individualism to the point of fanaticism is not the answer. The dynamic represented by a successful choir might just be the answer to the dysfunctional kind of community very well represented today by divided nations, fractured families, and whatnot. I, for one, am very glad that I have the experience of singing in choir at Fordham and the accompanying hope for community bringing out the best in people and people bringing out the best in community.