I know: a contradiction. A philosophical impossibility! And yet, it happens all the time.
This week I read a letter in Cary Tennis’ excellent column in Salon from a 29-year-old woman who wishes to be a singer. She has spent the last decade or so waitressing, doing a little college and then dropping out, plunging into various love affairs and then falling out again. And now, on the cusp of 30, she has begun to worry that it is too late, that her life should have been sorted out by now, and that her desire to be a singer may never be fulfilled.
Leaving aside the fact of her relative youth – I write this as I teeter on the cusp on 40! – I could have answered her letter quite simply: Well, then, SING. Sing in the shower, sing in the car, sing to your customers at the restaurant, sing on the street corner. Call the local nursing home and ask if you can come in to sing for a half hour. Go to an open mike. Sit in the park and sing. Sing to the pigeons, the clouds, the trees. Sing even to your loneliness, to your fear that you’ve wasted your life, to the big round number of your next age.
Singers need to sing. This is primary. When they don’t sing, things go kerplunky, frazzlish, snigglemarled. All the strings and wires that should hang straight and taut, curl into coils that snarl around your ankles and trip you up as you head to the closet. The phone rings and it sounds like an owl screeching. Your ability to judge and think and plan becomes as bent as the refracted image of a straw in a tall glass of lemonade. So you must first, before anything else, just sing yourself a lullaby, a child’s rhyme, a verse from “Annie,” a few bars of “Stairway to Heaven” – whatever you fancy.
(Or, make it up. Invent a spontaneous libretto about a waitress who wishes to uncage her soul and sing for the world. Don’t worry about writing it down. Just let it pour out, and enjoy yourself.)
Cary Tennis and the people who write responses on the message board focused some attention on how this young woman might get a decent musical education. She should move out of Mama’s house, they advise, and move to where the best teachers, coaches, and university programs can be found. There is much merit to putting yourself where the action is. Yet, I think this is adding steps to what is really quite a simple action plan: Sing.
Unless, of course, this isn’t what you really want. When you say or write the words, “I want to sing,” you may actually mean, “I want to be famous, admired, and well-dressed because I can sing.” Well, that’s another thing entirely. If that’s the case, then you’d better hop on your eliptical trainer, buy yourself some fancy duds on credit and prepare yourself to stand in some pretty long audition lines. If that’s the case, you’ll need to cultivate contacts, make an action plan, do a fair bit of schmoozing, and a whole lot of other things that have little if anything to do with singing.
I spoke with a friend about this yesterday. She, too, wishes to sing – but doesn’t. She has one of the most glorious voices I’ve ever heard, but I suspect she is “saving it for best,” rather than using it every day. She is waiting to be discovered and drawn out, to be booked for great gigs, and recognized for her amazing natural talent.
She is on the cusp of 60, and she is still waiting.
It’s true that if there were any justice in this world, she would be recognized for her talent. This is true of literally dozens of fine artists, writers, poets, and musicians I know: the people who should be famous but aren’t. But so what? That is just a bit of window-dressing, really. To my mind, it’s a sign of madness to run headlong at “the way things are,” hoping to use the blunt instrument of your skull to transform it into “the way things should be.” You only succeed in hurting your head (and your heart). Believe me, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try to gain rewards for our art, or fame, or any of the other lovely fripperies that can decorate the life of an artist.
But I am saying that those things really ARE fripperies, of secondary or tertiary importance. We’re lucky when we get them. We rejoice!
But the first thing, the primary thing, the thing that keeps you clear-headed and self-respecting, the thing that lets you know that whatever else the outside world is doing, the inner world is right on track – that is, simply to do your thing.
When I was just about the same age as the young waitress-singer, I wound up singing in a pub in Sligo, Ireland. There was a “hen party” (wedding shower) in progress, and the girls very warmly opened up their party to include me. Once they learned I could sing, they asked me again and again to share songs. At the end of the night, one of them held both of my hands in hers, looked in my eyes, and said, “Kate. Don’t waste your life. You must sing.”
Singers, please, don’t wait for 30, 40, or 60. Don’t waste your lives. You must SING!
