Singing

Singing.  The very word causes people all over the planet to shudder in fear.  Well, except for maybe the Irish, Italians, Spanish, Russians, Germans, Brazilians, Chileans . . . O.k.  So the only people afraid of singing, really, are Americans.  But, being one of them, the comment is still legitimate.  Singing was always something I secretly enjoyed, but not something I ever sought to do in front of others, sort of like --- well, this is mostly a family blog and I'm just not going to go there.  The point is, in over 42 years of living which included, as they so often do, high school, college and several years in New York City, I never took a single step toward forming a band or otherwise participating in organized musical activities.  No choir.  No orchestra.  No musical theater.  Instead, I did what any properly raised, first-born American, female WASP does -- I completely repressed and ignored the desire.  Now, there are certainly reasons and explanations for such things, but I will leave that to the likes of Oprah and Elizabeth Gilbert to excavate and ruminate about and generally beat to death without accomplishing much of anything.

So what caused me, after so much time, to finally pursue my inner Karen O.?  Death.  Yes, death.  The realization that I was, in all likelihood, at least half-way done with my spin on the merry go round had the predictable and cliched effect of causing me to run a mental inventory of what was in stock and what was not:  "Responsibilities?" Chock full.  "Sorry-assed Excuses?" Got plenty.  "Singing and Songwriting?" Cavernous gap.  Completely out of stock.  ('Course, the bins for "Hangovers" and "Stupid Things I've Done" were spilling their contents out onto the warehouse floor, but that's neither here nor there at the moment.)  I stared at the blank space for  a while and then started writing a novel.  I stared at it some more and got back into tennis.  And then I stared at it again and fired-off an e-mail.

Still, I never really thought that singing would actually be involved.  I mean (a) no one was going to accept the invitation, and (2) why would anyone ever take me up on such a thing?  It was supposed to allow me to fill the shelf with at least one flimsy sack of "I tried" so that I could go tend to the business about the hangovers  (how to increase the storage space, of course, as more inventory was certainly on the way) and see what could be done to strip the label off the bin of "Stupid Things I've Done" in the hopes that the contents would thereby somehow become unrecognizable.

But alas, the carefully laid plans of middle-aged women  . . . sometimes work.  Indeed, my e-mail did exactly what it was designed to do, no matter how much I wanted to pretend it was all just silliness.  Objectively it is totally and completely silly, but subjectively it was cover for finally finding out if I could do it before, you know, I was cold and dead and couldn't carry a tune to save my already dead life.

So, that brings us to the part where I arrive at Jim's house for the first band practice.  I cannot think of a word that really describes how I felt.  Nervous?  Damn straight.  Excited?  Most definitely.  Incredulous?  Believe it.  But I think what comes closest is vibrating.  Not vibrating like --- again, except for the swearing, this is a G-Rated blog, so I'll thank you to stop that -- but vibrating as in the effect of a tuning fork.  According to Wikipedia:

Vibration is occasionally "desirable". For example the motion of a tuning fork, the reed in a woodwind instrument or harmonica, or the cone of a loudspeaker is desirable vibration, necessary for the correct functioning of the various devices.

This is the kind of vibration I mean.  The desirable kind that is necessary for the correct functioning of various devices, me being the various devices.  Of course, Wikipedia goes on to say that:

More often, vibration is undesirable, wasting energy and creating unwanted sound – noise. For example, the vibrational motions of engines, electric motors, or any mechanical device in operation are typically unwanted. Such vibrations can be caused by imbalances in the rotating parts, uneven friction, the meshing of gear teeth, etc. Careful designs usually minimize unwanted vibrations.


Well, I admit that "creating unwanted sound and noise" does seem to be relevant here as does "imbalances" and the "meshing of  . . . teeth."  But never mind. We are going to proceed with the part I like better that talks about functioning properly.  Now, I promise not to get all Dr. Phil on you because, how should I say this -- I hate that shit -- but if I am going to even pretend to be honest about this experience, then it needs to be said that I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do when it was time for me to sing.  I envisioned the most likely scenario as follows: I would, in fact, attempt some sort of sound-making which I have always liked to call "singing" which would have been followed by Jim discovering an unforeseen problem with his musical equipment and Andy suddenly remembering an urgent obligation he had to attend to somewhere else -- urgently.  Still, what I felt was the promise that, one way or the other, I would finally find out something that I had wondered about for a good part of my life -- exactly how many keyboards does Jim really have?

Five.  Jim has five keyboards.  No lie.  He also has several amps, a drum kit, a bass guitar, a tambourine, several microphones and stands and a Mac computer all set-up with Garage Band.  There is a bunch of other stuff too, but I don't know what it is called or what purpose it serves.  This nice little set-up he has in his basement also has a name: Sonic Goat Studios.  It looks like this:

So, Andy and I arrive for our first group practice session and amble down to the basement.  I notice the microphone on a stand in the middle of the room.  Now, truth be told, I had seen Jim's basement before and was generally familiar with it.  But in my previous visit (which, I should note, was at a holiday party that contributed one of the hangovers to that bin I was talking about and at which I found myself behind the drums demanding that someone show me how to play them), there had not been a microphone so prominently located.  Of course, anyone who has done any kind of actual singing before would expect such a thing, but alas I was not in that category.  To me it looked like a snake rising up from the ground all pissed-off already.  It practically hissed.  I hate snakes.

As Andy gets his guitar plugged in and talks technical talk with Jim about the amps and yada yada yada, I am trying to get an angle on this whole singing thing, especially the part with the microphone.  Maybe if I just stand far away from it they will hear me enough but not so much as to actually be able to decide if the sounds I am making are good or bad.  We do a sound check and I talk into it, which tells me we are now moments away from blast off.  Running away occurs to me, but I decide that it would only create more problems.  Instead, I exit the Sonic Goat and relocate to a different part of the basement (one without any microphones or expectant band mates) so that I can practice and hear myself -- alone.

When I return they joke that they thought I ran away.  Ha ha ha.  (Still a possibility.)  But, despite the nerves, I also know that this is it.  This is what I have wanted to do and try and experience.  It took me 42 fucking years to get to Jim's basement so the pain-in-the-ass lawyer part of me is not about to let the pansy-assed part of me bail out now.

So, Jim counts us in, I channel my best Karen O., and open my mouth and sing:

Gold lion's gonna tell me where the light is
Gold lion's gonna tell me where the light is
Take our hands out of control
Take our hands out of control . . .