Category: choir

Re: Music

I like movies that contain music, subtle or overt. I once rented a VHS tape called Evita starring Madonna and the desk clerk asked me if I was aware that the film was a musical. My look of surprise made her ask, “Do you still want it?” Apparently the tape had been returned many times because folks were put off by the fact that all the actors sang something. Apparently taste can be found in ears as well as on the tongue.

I get hijacked by music. I don’t choose to have music playing while I work or fuss around the house. Music finds me when I’m going about my business though. In a store it will follow me as I look for blue jeans. I’ll chew my food in rhythm to a restaurant’s playlist. I get the music in me despite having no musical training. My musician friends are amazed when I answer their skill testing questions. Instrumentalists are artists I admire enough to pay money to watch them perform. I’ll sometimes linger by a street performer because the air itself seems somewhat different as it blends with the melody. It sparkles!

Imagine the first gasps of wonder as ancestors in caves created vocalizations or tapping sounds on bones and stuff! My perfect world has people singing or humming all the time. Paul Simon was once asked his greatest thrill at being famous. He said he is always delighted when he passes someone on the street murmuring one of his songs. Music has been described as a soundtrack to our lives and that’s probably why I get earworms of melodies that imbed themselves in my head and just won’t shake loose until I hear another tune. Who doesn’t find themselves joining in when they hear a familiar lyric from a car radio: Home where my thought’s escapin’. Home where my music’s playin’. Home, where my love lies waitin’. Silently for me.

Music is said to soothe a savage beast or breast. Speaking of which, our inner child remembers a mother’s lullaby while being fed and cradled, so we naturally associate sound with comfort and joy. But sometimes music incites when it’s linked to parades and protest. I’ll never forget marching behind a bagpipe with my teacher colleagues during strike action against our government. Anarchy can have a soundtrack too.

I may not have a cultured musicality or practised musicianship. My only music lesson was a month of violin. I’ve winced when hearing snobbish comments at a concert venue: Being a wine connoisseur is one thing but music is for everyone. Ranking of a musical piece is not a requirement for me, appreciation is key. I have trouble with some genres like Rap and my easy listening preference tends towards Folk but I love being surprised by sound. The long retired television series ‘Glee’ enthralled me. Opera may be tedious at times but it gets my respect for being the origin of the staged musical. Music in any form is to be lived.

I got rhythm. I got music. I got my gal. Who could ask for anything more!

Re: Know

Once upon a time a friend came to visit. She was known to be a bit flakey in a good way; prone to creative spurts and mystical pronouncements. She had met my wife several years before and now she wanted to meet me. I think she wanted to affirm that my bride was headed in the right direction before she decided to tie the knot, so to speak. I remember feeling I was being mildly tested. On departing she gave presents of poems to her old friend and a stone to me. I looked at what she had printed on the rock: Know.

To know, is very central to my personality and behaviour. My wife’s friend provided that affirmation having barely experienced me. I seek knowledge, knowing I will never know all that I wish to know. I’m not after omniscience, merely a competent level of understanding. My quest can be funny, pathetic and infuriating at times. For example when I am trying to sort something out I will check for multiple confirmations that I have got the message. This applies to sales receipts as well as important contracts. I wish to know that everyone involved in a decision is on the same page.

We need assurances that we have been heard, felt, or seen. No one deserves to fall through the cracks. Seeking information is the beginning of all knowledge acquisition. I used to sing in a church choir. One of my favourite hymns began like this: ‘Ask and it shall be given you/Seek and ye shall find/ Knock and it shall be opened/Be opened unto you’. Knowledge is empowering, enabling, ennobling and encouraging. Having the know-how allows me the confidence to stride forth and accomplish things.

I go about all this as quietly and unobtrusively as possible so as not to freak my people out. Say I’ve been told that I am on a wait list for a doctor, which happened to me recently when my previous physician retired. I wasn’t willing to leave things to chance so I checked with an online registry in my province. When they could confirm I was on a list I next called the local clinic to see if I was on their duplicate list. Time passed so I set out to affirm that the wheels were still in motion: I wanted to confirm the confirmation. The squeaky wheel theory very much applies in my philosophy of life. However, I like to think that my approach is more dogged, than annoying. I try to appeal to people’s innate desire to be of help to their fellow humans. I never want to get ahead in the line: Just knowing I am IN the line is satisfaction enough.

Know-it-all TV host Johnny Carson used to admit that he did not know things. Likewise I’m fine with ignorance because it allows me to get excited when I’m late to discover that Marni Nixon sung big songs in movie musicals while others lip synced her gorgeous voice. Let’s call that a ‘getting to know you’ experience.

Re: Carols

It’s that time of year for Christmas music. The jing-a-ling loop heard in stores and on most radio station playlists may make people get Ebenezer Scrooge grumpy or it may start their yuletide engines. I usually like the first few weeks of this sound and then I start wishing that the season would just hurry itself along. A pun is called for: I’m a Bad-Humming Bug!

For convenience I call all christmasy songs Carols. I’ve sung many Christmas hymns in church choirs and once joined a regional choir that performed favourites in a Holiday Extravaganza! During my elementary teaching days, I even wrote an original song for a play written and performed by my whip-smart fifth graders: “…Don’t be a grump/Get off the couch and don’t be a lump/Share your feelings/Share your life/It all comes true on Christmas night!” The play was way better than my song but a deal was a deal.

I had a short term relationship one Christmas holiday. Her name was Carol. I didn’t tease her. Maybe that was the reason it ended before the new year. In general maybe that is why many people don’t like songs about Christmas; because it reminds them of past loves, broken promises, expectations about presents or turkey dinners gone terribly, horribly bad. Some Carols can certainly stick in your mind. Likely because of the constant airtime during December, one tune or another will bore its way into your head. Earworm is such an appropriate word isn’t it?

That critter can often get lodged in my brain deeply enough that I can find myself belting out Baby It’s Cold Outside while enjoying a hot shower in February, half expecting to be joined by Will Ferrell’s Elf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7RMy7Vg0LU
This duet is one of my favourites in the Christmas songbook. I find it to be playfully seductive but some have criticized its lyrics as being inappropriate as we examine what it means to be sexually active in a #metoo atmosphere. This version by Idina Menzel & Michael Bublé from a few years back, featuring child actors, may cause outrage; but it’s so cute!

Still another version of this song that came from a GLEE episode. It appears light hearted yet at the time it aired on television the context seemed so groundbreaking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ja9JLuGryU

Quite a while ago, when my tenor voice was reasonably under control, I got paid to sing for a Worthy Matron of the Order of the Eastern Star. Her choice was The Christmas Song.

Its long sustained notes and lower register were a challenge for me but I pulled it off. Afterwards, one gentleman in the audience sought me out. With a tear in his eye, he told me that my performance reminded him of a fellow soldier who sang this very song at dockside while he and his buddies were boarding transport to return to Canada after WWII.

Some carols never leave us.