The art of conducting

As I get to the age when most people have retired, I realise that I can't do that, and whilst I have my faculties, never will. I am one of the those fortunate ones, whose work has always been their hobby. And who ever voluntarily gives up their hobby? For me, there is nothing better than standing up in front of 70 or 80 of your colleagues and being the facilitator for everyone's talents to become one. I keep explaining, that is the job of the conductor: you have between 70 and 80 incredibly talented people on stage, all of whom believe they know the tempo and direction of the piece of music you are performing as well, if not better, than you. But you can't have 70 slightly different tempos, 70 slightly different accelerandos, 70 slightly different dynamics etc., so there has to be only one. You could sum up the art of conducting as: a dictatorship of one person with the consent of all.