Being able to take an active part in this mystery is one of the reasons I sing.
Joy is another. It's fun and it makes me feel good. I wrote the following essay in January 2009 after my first singing lesson with Ms. Lilly in Demorest, GA. I think it captures the exhileration I felt that day.
So tell us --why do you sing?
Upset about the economy? Try this.
I had a terrifying experience a few weeks ago.
I sang.
This may not sound like a big deal to you, but it was for me. I’ve been a professional writer for more than three decades, and, though there are exceptions, we writers are typically a quiet, introspective sort. Our living depends far more on the words that flow from our fingertips on a computer keyboard than the ones that flow from our lips. Simply put, oratory is not our strong suit, let alone oratorios.
So what made me sing? It started innocently enough. My freelance writing firm has a new client, a small company that develops software for big companies—department stores, grocery and convenience chains, that sort of thing. My new client’s marketing staff is in the UK, and when I speak with them on conference calls their lilting British accents make my Tennessee-rooted tones sound twangy indeed. So I did something I’ve considered doing for years: I found a voice teacher to help me reduce my southern accent.
While working on my twang, my teacher is also encouraging me to develop more variety, more music, if you will, in my voice. The technical term is prosody, and during my two months of weekly classes so far, I’ve learned that many men don’t have it. Our vocal muscles are biologically less flexible than women’s. Add to that the American notion that real men speak in unwavering, John Wayne-like tones, and you have a formula for vocal monotony that can induce sleep.
(By the way, my teacher makes a compelling argument that President-Elect Obama’s skills in oratory played a major role in his election. She says his excellent prosody is right out of the textbooks, with vocal color and elongated vowels that are almost like singing in their ability to captivate, to make us want to listen to what he has to say. I tend to agree.)
At any rate, my teacher—who also teaches singing and piano—suggested that singing exercises would help increase the flexibility of my speaking voice. I was willing to go along with that. But when she suggested singing lessons might make me a candidate for the choir at church, I back-pedaled. She waved my reservations aside—she is a take-charge type, after all—and off we went to the stage in her little recital hall. Before I knew it, she was pounding out chords on the piano, my mouth was open—wider, I think, than it has ever been before—and I was following along with her as she led me through a series of vocal exercises.
Good Lord, I was singing!
I’ve never been sky-diving, but I can only compare the sensation I had that day with jumping out of an airplane. I’ve heard that companies offering those tandem sky-diving experiences don’t mess around, and neither did my voice teacher. When the plane reaches the right altitude, you leap from it with your instructor, no time to reconsider, dry-mouthed and sweaty-palmed, at the edge of the open hatch. My teacher was the same way, charging into the scales before I could give it a second thought.
There was also a giddiness to the experience similar to what I’ve heard happens during freefall. Midway through those scales with my teacher, I started giggling, then laughed so hard that we had to pause our exercises. It was as if something had bubbled up and broken loose inside me, finally set free. And even though the vocal exercises were simple—not like tackling an aria, not by a long shot—they proved wrong an assumption I had held for as long as I can remember: that my voice is incapable of stretching beyond a few notes, let alone an octave or two.
After I regained my composure, we picked up where we had left off, going through a series of ascending and then descending exercises until we touched down safely somewhere below middle C. Not only had my singing not set off any air raid sirens in the area, but my teacher actually said I had a nice voice. Imagine! You’re probably thinking she says that to all her students, and you might be right, but I don’t think she is one to hand out compliments lightly. At any rate, I left her studio with an exhilarating sense of achievement. I got in my car and did something more typical of a teen-ager than a 56-year-old. I phoned a good friend and said, “You will not believe what I just did!”
The new year has begun now, and the weekly lessons with my teacher continue. I have to say I am enjoying them more than I’ve enjoyed anything in a long time. While I know Andrea Bocelli and Josh Groban have nothing to worry about, I am considering joining the church choir—a big step for me, totally out of character. That’s a good thing, I believe.
My point is that everyone I know today is canceling vacations, postponing home improvement projects, in general cutting down, scaling back in these uneasy times, and perhaps that’s a good thing, too. But at the same time there are things we shouldn’t scale back, things we can do right here at home, adventures we can take that don’t require a passport. Like my singing lessons. Maybe that is the one piece of good news our slackening economy affords us today.
I’m reminded of my favorite recipe for London broil. No matter how excellent the cut of beef or the marinade, the dish is at its best when the meat is carved against the grain. I like that phrase. Against the grain. And I can’t help but think that maybe we are at our best when we go against the grain of our daily routine. Studies show that our brains function better and longer if we learn new things—not just expand our existing knowledge base, but work to grasp something that is completely foreign to us. I submit that it’s good for the soul, too.
If walking or running is your preferred form of exercise, try swimming. If you crunch numbers for a living, try painting or pottery in your spare time. Or if you’re the quiet type like me, try singing. The lessons with my teacher aren’t free, but they are a lot less expensive than the summer trip to Europe I had been planning. The best part is, I lift my voice in song several times a day now, and it doesn’t cost a thing.
