Consider Yourself

Tonight I was watching American Idol, which I used to scoff at until I actually watched it for the first time a few years ago and found myself spellbound after about ten minutes. Anyway, watching the show, I remembered something I haven't thought about in a long, long time. I have always had a theory that most people have one thing they spend their whole life secretly wishing they could do well, one thing they simply aren't capable of doing but admire and covet and relish in others who can. For me, this is singing.

Most of the things I actually want to do I can do well enough to make doing them enjoyable. I have known since I was a little girl, however, that I did not have a beautiful singing voice. I have always loved to hear people sing. I remember being really young, five maybe, and listening to my dad play Elvis on a turntable, Elvis singing "Love Me Tender," and not wanting the sound to stop, ever. One afternoon when I was a little older, he brought home the record on which Paul Simon sang "Slip Slidin' Away"--I remember him putting it on the turntable in the living room--and realizing watching my dad that other people felt this way too, that to be able to sing like that, make people feel like this, was something of a miracle.

I loved listening to music so much that I used to beg people to sing to me, people who did have beautiful voices. I think that some of the friends I made in college--Nicole, Dana, Katrina--would not be surprised if, in 50 years I were to call them on the phone in the middle of the night and plead, "Please, please, please will you just do 'Carolina in My Mind' or 'Mockingbird?' Please?" I kind of want to call them right now.

But having people you love, whose voices you love, sing songs you love is not the same thing as being able to make that music yourself. And for a very long time, I couldn't let that one impossible dream die. I joined my (volunteer) high school chorus and sang tenor. I didn't mention that besides not being good, my voice is also unnaturally low. I am musical, meaning I can read music, play instruments, have relative pitch, so I passed for a while in this chorus by singing very quietly in my low voice and remaining, for the most part, on key, but I knew I was just sliding by, that I didn't belong. Sometimes when the singers with talent were hitting their stride I would actually stop singing, forget to sing, caught up in the listening that did come naturally to me. Once a friend, after a chorus performance in front of the school, did an impression of me with open mouth, slack jaw, glazed eyes: I looked like a lobotomy patient. I started standing behind a taller tenor. Actually, they were all taller; as is generally true of tenors, the rest of them were all boys.

So the thing I remembered while watching American Idol was this: As a freshman in high school, new to the school, certainly not bursting with confidence or bravado, and knowing already--although my stint in the chorus was still to come--that I had no talent, I auditioned for the school production of Oliver. I remember waiting outside the theater space where the auditions were held. I remember the older, confident, talented students who were already known to me as the theater kids, the ones who got all the parts in all the shows. I remember feeling small and scared on the middle of the huge dark stage looking out at a few unfamiliar businesslike faces in the audience. I don't remember singing for them. I don't remember what I sung. But I did it, finished an entire song. I knew as soon as I'd started that I would never get cast in the show. I did not get cast in the show. I think I got a kind, if patronizing note from the musical director thanking me for "giving it my best shot." I'm glad no documentation exists of the experience.

I did not feel proud of myself back then for being brave, for giving it my all, for putting myself out there even though I knew, on some level, I would fail. I felt pretty crappy about it, at the time, to be honest. I was jealous of the freshman who got the lead in the show, and I even felt a little bit glad when I got sick and couldn't see the actual performance. But you know what? Now, now when I get pleasure from singing to Lily and Annika, who aren't tough critics and like my voice because it is mine, and a lot of pleasure out of singing loudly when I am alone in the car, I kind of do feel proud of that skinny kid with the wobbly tenor who tried out for the big show. I can almost even remember her.