song...

i keep it a secret how much i truly love it--mainly because i im afraid im not very good at it. i could have been maybe if i had given myself a chance. when i was a kid, my music teacher, mr. webb told my mom he thought i had musical aptitude--a good ear, i always sung the right notes back to him when he tested us, he thought i had a natural sense of rhythm. he asked my mom if anyone in the family had musical talent. (i had aunts who used to go sing in italian clubs in south philly and my dad used to sing and played every stringed instrument under the sun.) mr. webb was after me for years to take up an instrument or join the glee club. i was way too shy for that though. the idea of opening my mouth up infront of people to SPEAK, let alone sing, was terrifying to me when i was a kid. i'd rather go home from school every day and shut myself up in my room and sing at the top of my lungs to my 'Cats' soundtrack (the record du jour for me when i was a little girl)--let it be a secret how much i really loved it. singing was my very first love and the very first and very last thing i ALWAYS find myself doing when i am truly broken--it always was. i always feel like i dont have a right to claim it as mine because then somehow that means i have to prove that i am good at it and i don't know that i am and really i don't think i have to be good at it for it to be comforting to me, i guess.

when i was in my early teens, i lived my life to the sound of sarah mclachlan's voice--purposely just nearly off pitch she sung, teetering on the edge of cracking always, with that half yodel thing she used to leap from one note up to another. if her songs were colors, they'd be greys and blacks that suddenly break into blinding whites. her lyrics were melancholy and her voice seemed strong yet breakable when it needed to be and i was hypnotized. i'd play touch and solace and fumbling back to back to back and sing along to every note until my throat was sore because i lived in an ugly house with a crazy man and the sound that seeped from the speakers was the only thing that could envelop me and take me out of there. i was sad and angry and scared. sarah was for the sad. but ani was for the angry. ani difranco doesn't play the guitar--she attacks it. you listen to her play and you picture smoke coming off the fret boards--i imagine strings popping and breaking and wood splintering left and right. dilate was ani's most pissed off best. not a pretty girl too. she took every nasty feeling i ever had and gave it a rhythm and a tune and it was like she could pull out the ugliest parts of me and absolve them by making them into art.

there was sarah and there was ani and there was gospel. black gospel. based on slave spirituals that spoke of the most unimaginable, gut wrenching hurt--being caught in a world that hated you and having no one else to depend on but God--looking to heaven and waiting for the day you die because life ain't got nothing good for you. because life is forced work and whips and rape and stolen children and scars and weary, creaky bones and calloused hands and sad, tired painfully soulful eyes. i understood hurt. i understood needing to look to another world to survive in this one. i did not understand God in those songs--only the longing. God would come later--but it's still the longing--the depths of human misery, the unspeakable capacity that people have to hurt one another, and the relentless resillience of the human spirit to hope for something better despite it all. that's something i understood from an unfortunately young age. gospel music is raw--scratchy and full of moans and wails. wailing to God with a voice so rough, if you touched it, it would scrape off the skin. the absolute necessity to make art out of pain in order to live--sing it out because if you keep it in, it's gonna kill you. reach out to God cuz he's all you got. my soul finds a home in this.

sarah, ani, gospel, and a little later on, in came celtic. byproduct of the riverdance craze--pbs was exploding with all kinds of celtic music specials. i was like 16. there was something about the fiddling that made my blood jump. it was organic. chalk it up to the irish and scottish genes--the 'McK' last name. i loved it. it sparked an interest in celtic mythology--druidism and irish musicians. pbs played a half hour special that featured this flame-haired woman with a long nose and the voice of heaven's highest angel. she sat and plucked at a harp and sang so beautifully of swans and bonney portmore and highway men and celebrations of harvests. loreena mckennitt. i had never heard of her. i went out the very next day and bought every album i found with her name on it. there was something so rooted about her music--she sang of ancient sensibilities that the modern age has dulled in most people. a love for nature, when people looked to stars to understand where they were on the earth. pagan rituals by bonfires. Samhain and Beltane. she blended ancient celt rites with middle eastern rhythms. it was like some kind of audible drug. the music was beautiful--but her voice--that beautiful voice that rang out like a bell--full and round and reverberating. she was like this otherworldly creature sent down to earth to sing our hearts into a calmer pace. i put her cds on and lit candles up in my room, opened up the window to let the air in and watch the flames flicker. it was like casting a spell, communing with ancient ancestral spirits. it sent me into a wiccan phase. every phase i have ever gone through has always been precipitated by some kind of music.

so what's the phase now? religion? no, that's not a phase, but it has its music, life sustaining as blood. it's like another form of communion for me to sing a hymn. though most of them are still foreign to me. it's the mere act of singing to God--to me that's what true worship is. of course, the first thing i got into when i went to church was choir. how could i not join the choir? my very first week as a church goer, i snuck all nervous and shaky into thursday rehearsal and met the sweetest man who told me over and over again how glad he was that i came. not exactly the man you would picture when you think of a choir director. motor cycle helmet at the foot of the music stand. the most delightfully off-color sense of humor. i loved him immediately and was overjoyed to see how patient he was with my musical illiteracy. i couldnt read a single note--but really i didnt need to because from behind me, i could hear the sweetest voice singing every note i needed clear as sunshine on a beautiful day. i was amazed at how much the voice reminded me of my beloved loreena. i never imagined i would turn around to discover the voice was owned by this little unassuming woman dressed in linen--oranges and greens--and birkenstock sandals. i told her she had one of the most beautiful voices id heard. she said something like 'hardly' and seemed to look at me cautiously from behind her glasses, almost like i had no business giving her such a compliment.

i would soon discover that the only thing that outshone the beauty of her voice was that of her soul. she is the kindest person i have ever met in my life. a saint. a person God put on this earth to remind the rest of us of what we should aspire to be. and of course it was music that first brought her into my life and, it seemed, in her, all my past music loves converged--the folk elements of sarah and ani and the gospel interlaced with the wonderfully hotblooded celtic--she was part of a band that blended all these things together with a dash of--joy of joys--feminism. maybe she is what i would have been if my parents weren't crazy. if maybe i would have listened to my music teacher when he told me to pursue instruments and singing and whatnot. if i had people who werent' too preoccupied to support me when i was a child--if i had a mom who pushed me just a little more and a dad who did not scar me...i don't know. there is no use in wondering what i would be now if my past had been different. my past is just that--past. i need to let it be the memory it is. and anyway, the point of this whole post is not familial dysfunction, but the solace i sought within it. that solace was always music. it always came out thru my voice. i still hide how much it truly is a part of me. i still want to deny that i care whether or not i am good at it. i want to make up for lost time, to assure the little girl i used to be that it's ok to sing in front of people, especially if they ask you to and if you make mistakes, then there are ways to learn how not to make them again. i want to understand why music moves me the way it does. i want to understand how to write down the tunes i have in my own head. but i'm afraid of discovering i can't do it. all of my life i have always been afraid that i just cannot ever measure up--to what others can do and to what others expect me to be able to do. im the person who never let herself try because she was too afraid of failing...i hear that same sentiment echoed in my son today. he loves to say 'i can't'. i used to say 'i can't' all the time and my mother let me get away with it. and so i am left with unexplored loves as a result. that's what song is to me--an unexplored love. something i wanted but was too afraid to reach out and try to grab. it is part of me without me really possessing it...there's gotta be a deeper reason for why it has always spoken to me and why i always felt compelled to sing back--whether in tune or not...i always want to sing back.