So I’ve been experiencing this peeling away of layers. I’ve been looking head-on at some pretty old stuff that’s been hanging out in my heart and making me feel like I’m made of splintered bone and dog crap. Stuff I’ve looked at for a lot of years and mistakenly believed was part of me. I’m so sick of running into the little steaming piles of emotional turd all the time, when I’m trying to live a life that brings me a sense of fulfillment, and purpose, and joy. It’s hard to stay joyful with a mouthful of dog poop. And I don’t even have a dog. What’s that you say? Try the shit sandwich? Tastes great with relish?
Okay. Enough of that crap.
Bwah! I can’t stop. Someone please stop me.
Okay. I’m stopping. I’m here now. No, really. I am. And what I wanted to tell you about is singing.
I’ve always loved to sing. I spent many hours making elaborate house settings for my Ginny dolls and Barbie dolls on my bedroom closet floor while belting out America’s Top-40 along with the pea green Bakelite radio I inherited from GiGi when she died. It had a giant plastic dial that felt like one of the ridged circles from the Spirograph and Hotel California and Moonshadow sounded very far away coming out of its little square speaker. I sang and my father yelled up the stairs for me to pipe down with the howling. Yeah, so thanks for that, Dad.
I sang in front of crowds a few times, once to great acclaim as Dolly Parton singing 9 to 5—the guest star in the 7th & 8th grade production of The Muppet Show. I rocked it in my mother’s friend’s bra stuffed with plastic bowling balls and big, blond wig. I assumed the ability to rock it would stay with me. Which, you know? For some reason it didn’t. So in 9th grade I sang You Light Up My Life in front of 500 people after practicing for weeks and weeks, and I tanked so hard that the auditorium echoed with the sounds of silence—and not the good Simon and Garfunkel kind, but the holy crap are we supposed to clap after that kind—for at least a minute after the song blessedly ended. The stage manager patted me on the back as I exited stage left and said, “It’s fine, but honey, you really have to breathe when you sing.†Yeah. I will SO try to remember that next time. And oddly enough, there was a next time. But it involved a Jr. Miss Pageant, black leotards and white ballet slippers and un-choreographed interpretive dance to Moog Synthesizer music instead of singing. Oh, and 500 people. Probably a lot of those same 500 people who had to sit through my rendition of Debbie Boone’s only hit.
Oooh, she is H-O-T-T!
No, silly. Not Debbie Boone. Me. I’m hott.
A few other events like that drove home the idea that yes, indeed, Dad was right. I sound like a chicken in the death throes when I open my mouth to sing. Which kind of sucks because I really, really love to sing. Put me in the car and point me in any direction on any interstate highway with a stack of CDs and a tank of gas and I’ll end up wherever I’m supposed to be with a throat that’s close to bleeding. If there’s anyone else in the car with me they’ll tumble out with fingers stuffed in their ears begging for a room of their own where they can go to be quiet, please. Please? And until recently, I’ve done it knowing that I sound terrible.
But here’s what’s happened this year. I joined a harmony-singing group that’s run by a woman who is one hell of a singer. She has an incredible range and gives great advice to those of us who are floundering and feeling insecure. And why, yes, that would be me over there on the far side of the circle looking all furtive and as if I just stuffed ten packs of Bubble Yum down my pants in the grocery store—floundering and insecure. The first few times I attended the meeting I thought I would stink up the room with my fearfully sweaty armpits. I kept my arms locked tight to my body because yeah, they were definitely sending up smoke signals.
H—E—L—P M—E!
And it took me at least seven or eight weeks to stop apologizing at the end of every song we sang. We work from the song book, Rise Up Singing and do a lot of spirituals and gospel songs because they’re easier to harmonize.
I kept going back even though I feared I would never really get it, because on the first night we did a chant called Hava Nashira which we sang in a round, and slower than what you can hear if you click on the sound clip on the linked page. During that song I felt as if a channel opened up from the top of my head right down to my feet. I felt the song move through me and lost all sense of time or thought while I sang. I didn’t lose my place in the round and the rhythm became part of my body. I wasn’t doing anything but being the song. When we finished, the leader, Saunis, turned to me and she said You have a beautiful voice. And I knew it was true. For that brief moment, I knew with every bit of me that I had a beautiful voice. Then we moved onto the next song and I went right off the rails.
At first I didn’t even try to sing harmony, finding it nearly impossible to manage the melody without losing track of it halfway through. I coughed and sputtered. I felt my chest get tighter and tighter. I saw the other participants eyes cut across the circle towards me. People brought their hands up to press a finger into an ear. They sang louder. They shifted in their chairs. I believed it was all because of how chicken-dying-terrible I sounded. They weren’t asking me to leave because they’re good, UU Church-going folks and their mothers brought them up to be kind to the disabled. And you know, because everything is about me. Everything.
In the meantime, I also started hanging out with the Lunchtime Band at work. They (we) meet for lunch four days a week in the sound room out in the model shop. We eat and tell stories, and then play for about 40 minutes. Lead and rhythm guitars, bass, keyboards, conga drums (very handy for those lunchtime Santana riffs) and me and another woman sing. It’s a stretch for me because it’s rock and roll and I don’t have that kind of confidence or presence at all. But I keep showing up because they’re a great bunch of people and it’s making me sane, this facing my fears a little bit every day thing. For a long time they couldn’t really even hear me, so I knew I sucked but didn’t worry too much about it. They play loud and I pretend I can’t hear them when they suggest I use the microphone.
So now I’m doing two regular activities that chip away at my fear and self-loathing. One night at the harmony sing, I really struggled with staying on key. It seemed like every third phrase I went screeching off on some dissonant harmony line (but hey! I was harmonizing, so that’s something!) I apologized every two minutes. This guy (a really beautiful singer) turned to me and said, “You seem to have some serious issues around singing.â€
Oh no. Oh, no, no, no. Oh shoot, there she goes. Total meltdown. Snot running down my face and everything. In front of a whole bunch of people. Yeah. That? Was SO awesome.
But see, Saunis is gifted. Not just as a singer, but also as a teacher, and after they all watched me spew snot everywhere for a few minutes she got me back on track with a few pointers. Some things she’s taught me have really helped, and they’re useful every single time I struggle:
• When you find you’re going off-key: sing louder.
• When you find you’re going way off key: slide up the scale a little, or down until you find it.
• When you find you’re going way, way off key: don’t sing the words, just make an ooo or an aaaah sound to the melody or the harmony, whatever you’re trying to work.
So as you can see, one of my major issues has been staying on key. I get going and feel like I’m cranking along just really working that melody like a pack mule (in a nice way). Oh wait. That doesn’t work at all. Oh, never mind. I just mean to say that I was doing pretty well.) Then all of a sudden I’m not doing very well at all and it’s like grinding gears in my head and all of the sound waves in the room are crashing against one another instead of blending and building the vibration. So I practice. A lot. Sorry family.
Meanwhile, the Lunchtime Band figured out a few songs that I feel like I can manage with my limited range and we keep them in rotation. It’s all very casual and playful. Until a couple of weekends ago, when Cheril & Greg had their annual Halloween bonfire and potluck—which is when I made friends with a microphone. Two local teenage bands played and then our little lunchtime gaggle took the stage in the freezing cold to a dwindling crowd. The guys played a few boogie-woogie tunes (which rocked and made me happy, as did the four glasses of wine I swilled before-hand) and then we girls gave it our best shot. We sang Moondance and I screwed up the melody on the first verse and had to turn away to compose myself. We did White Rabbit and Come Together and Riders on the Storm and Me and Bobby McGee and a slow rendition of Summertime. We two girls don’t sound too great together and hadn’t practiced together in a while, so I think if we ever get the chance to do it again, we should trade off verses or whole songs. Either that or really, really practice to figure out who sings melody, who sings harmony.
I’m pretty sure I kinda sucked. But not too hard. And I think I hit it pretty damned good for a few lines. Nobody could hear us over the drummer anyway. And isn’t that always the way? But the main thing is I did it. I got up there shaking in my boots and stuck my face into the microphone and sang. And I didn’t die. Much.
Within an hour though? I felt sick. Really sick. And by the next day I had a massive ear infection and a lump in my throat the size of a chipmunk. Yeah, Ew. When I coughed up the chipmunk after 12 hours of the liberal application of garlic and mullein oil drops to the ear. Double Ew.
And the next day after that? When I sang, my voice came from deeper in my chest and stayed more on key. Aside from the grossness of that chipmunk in a Kleenex, it was pretty frickin’ cool.
Then I got walking pneumonia and have been down all week, so what the hell do I know? Now I can’t sing at all.
But after these antibiotics? Move over mediocre singer you’ve never heard of (hell no I’m not going to say move over Anne and Nancy Wilson, or move over Pat Benetar, or move over Janice Joplin. That would make me look foolish indeed).
"All through the long winter, I dream of my garden. On the first day of spring, I dig my fingers deep into the soft earth. I can feel its energy, and my spirits soar."
~Helen Hayes
