Singing

Well, it remains to be seen . . . but on Wednesday I’m starting voice lessons.  I’m in this for the long-haul: I want to learn to sing.  I don’t just want to be able to pull off a song here or there, I want to be able to sing.  That will take years.  I’m hoping that I’ll be able to use these skills in shows before that, of course.

I sang in chorus in 8^th grade, and . . . that was it.  In college, I recall auditioning for a chorus, and getting nowhere.  That little thing where he hits a note on the piano and asks me to sing it?  I failed miserably.  20 years later, I auditioned for a musical and I failed that same test.  I still got a part in the play – they loved my speaking voice, so they asked me to be the narrator.  Note that the narrator doesn’t sing. 

I avoided singing for the next five years, even though I was in musicals.  I stuck with the Christmas show, where I was effectively the narrator-of-choice.  The big spring-time shows?  They begged me to try my hand at one of those shows, but there was no narrator there.  I would need to sing . . . and I couldn’t sing. 

Last year, I watched both of my boys performing in a gender reversed version of “Pirates of Penzance”.  Why wasn’t I on stage with them?  Because I couldn’t sing.  My ever-loving girlfriend didn’t help matters.  She sang in choirs, she was classically trained and all that.  And she insisted that I was tone deaf, and would never be able to sing.  She didn’t just say that to me.  As she introduced me to people involved in the choir, she was quick to announce that I’m tone deaf.  Of course, she wasn’t qualified to make that diagnosis, but she did anyway. 

From when I decided I would audition for “Godspell”, she found that nice combination of being critical and refusing to be helpful.  I began to wonder if I was hitting upon insecurity on her part: could it be that she needed me to be bad at singing?  On stage, I was a far better actor than she.  And I was a far better dancer than she.  We could go further – writing, drawing, painting – but you get the idea.  Well, for “Godspell”, I left it to the directors, since L was being incredibly unhelpful.  They never asked me to lip sync.  I sang and I sang loudly.  And I didn’t bring down the whole show: I wasn’t as bad as I had thought! 

Perhaps this is the year I learn to sing.  Perhaps this is the year I actually stand up and sing, and I get an actual applause.  I’m not a “musical” fan, but if I’m going to be in musicals, I want to be more than “the narrator” or “person six in row three”.