"Time, time, time--see what's become of me."
--Simon and Garfunkel
When I was in high school, Chick Earle helped coach the Andalusia High School baseball team. One of my best friends, Zane Johnson, played on the team. I remember he would say that Chick was known to yell "Time him, time him!" It became a running joke with Zane and me. It's been about 32 years, 7 months and 7 days since we graduated--but who's counting, ya know??--but I guarantee you if I saw Zane today, and I yelled "Time him, time him" he would laugh. Baseball is so much about timing. Chick probably knew that better than anyone I ever knew.
If you put a quarter note triplet in front of the average high school drumline, I would bet you a lot of money that they would play it like dotted eighth/sixteenth tied to eighth/eighth. It's close but it's wrong. The timing is wrong. God forbid they have to play half-note triplets. Right, 2019 Southwind hornline?? Helloooooooo! But I digress. In music timing is absolutely crucial. I have a book of orchestral excerpts for auditions, and in the preface notes, the compiler of the book actually said that very thing: that rhythmic inaccuracy is the number one contributing factor in being passed over in an audition. Timing matters!!!
I used to have a book called How We Decide. The first chapter was about Tom Brady and his rise to football fame, beginning with his career at Michigan. It was fascinating to read about just how fast he could make the decision to throw the ball to this or that receiver or to run it, or to do whatever else he might have done with the football. (I guess that could include deflating the ball also.). When you look at the size of a regulation football field, and take into consideration just how fast professional athletes are, on both sides of the ball, it is obvious that timing matters.
Time and timing seem to dictate so much of human existence. We are obsessed with time. Back to the Future, and its two sequels point this out in cinematic beauty, complete with amazing music that had to be timed perfectly for it to make sense. At exactly the time the flux capacitor (part 121G at O'Reilly Auto Parts, by the way) kicked off at 88mph, that music climaxed and BOOM! Back to 1985 we go! But what if the music and the film aren't in time? Well...then the effect is lost. You might not know that when you watch the opening credits for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the trumpet solo you hear Malcolm McNab play is actually take 17. He played it 17 times perfectly, but the composer wasn't as a good a conductor as he was a composer, and on the first 16 tries he couldn't get the music to line up with the video on screen. If you're Malcom McNab, it tends not matter, because he has never flubbed a note, ever.
We've heard of being in the right place but the wrong time. And we've also, unfortunately, known of instances of being in the wrong place and the wrong time. But what about when the timing of everything is exactly right?? Well, that can produce some amazing results. The thing about timing, though, is that you can't force it, and you can't always know that the right time is right.....now. No, now!! Wait...now!!!! Dang it, I missed it! NOW!!! Now?? Uhh, ok...ok.....NOW! Nah....that does't really work. There are just some things you simply cannot know, until after the fact. And perfect timing is one of them.
