How Can I Keep from Singing?

Recently, one of my co-workers and I were chatting. He's in a band and I was asking about what he did in it, did he sing? And eventually it came up that I used to sing. Quite true, I did. I used to sing a lot in fact. My family has always encouraged it, especially on my mother's side, and I was in choir in middle school, through high school and college. After starting in our basic level as a freshman in high school, I quickly moved to our audition-only madrigal and jazz choir, as well as our larger SATB group. I got my first solo as a sophomore, joined our sweet adeline quartet, sang a lead in our bi-annual musical. I eventually lead the jazz octet I co-founded at one of the state's most prestigious competitions at which we took fourth place; the only student-lead group competing. I won an award when I graduated for all I'd done in the department. I sang all eight semesters in a women's choir in the conservatory at Oberlin and sang in the symphonic choir both there and at Sonoma State University. I felt like a liar the entire time.



I never trusted my voice, faked it until I made it, never believing, no matter how many auditions I passed or solos I won or competitions I sang at that I was anything much at all. That everyone must have been taking pity on me, going easy on me, laughing at me. I suffered terribly in the clutches of depression and uncertainty, agonized in near silence while I sang and sang. My first "serious" relationship was abusive; I lost my virginity and almost my life in a situation of emotional manipulation so dire I could see no other way out. I nearly missed that crowning jazz competition, for which I'd worked so hard, because I had tried to cut my wrists to get away from him. But I went on, in the arms of my lovely friends. I look back on those photographs and all those memories and I think of Jessica, my pal a year my junior who really did have a spectacular voice. She was so deserving, I felt, of the success and recognition she received--in my footsteps almost precisely, now I think on it--and she went off to a vocational school to be trained as a singer. She died in an accident during her first semester and I came to sing at her funeral. I kept on singing, emptier and emptier. My range shrank and I stopped challenging myself, tormented by the idea that I was finally "showing my true colors"as a bad vocalist while still afraid that I was losing something I'd never realized I had. I was jealous of my friends who sang in bands, knowing that confidence was perhaps the most important aspect of getting in front of the mic.

So when my workmate told me he could tell I was a singer, because of my pleasant speaking voice, that was the end of the story that came to my mind. "Why did you stop?" seemed the inevitable follow up and the truth was because I was abused, because I was traumatized by grief and my own crises of identity, because I was not a suitable chalice for Jessica's dreams. I had already incorporated the combination of trauma and voicelessness into Salt Spray and Fine Things:

There was a foot between me and Arlo; five minutes ago we’d been one person. His mouth was working, making sounds that were like words. I sometimes found myself staring at his mouth in conversation. I liked to watch his lips move and to hear the things he said. But I never would again. They had been stolen, the things he talked about. I could see them being taken away from him. His favorite color had been chartreuse, but that had ceased to matter. He would not put on the handsome muff I’d bought him, because it stood out in a crowd. He wouldn’t write songs nor strum his ukulay. Why should he, when he could no longer risk singing at the top of his lungs? It would be a victory indeed, if he could find his voice at all, beyond the repetition of “Look away. Look away. Look away.” he was pleading blankly to himself. Arlo was on his belly in a hayloft in Felding, but he wasn’t dragging himself to the ladder to climb down, not this time. He was dying, his spirit smothering inside him, because nowhere in the world was safe for him to let it free. There were oil lamps all over the bedroom and wall sconces and stacks of tinder in the hearth, but all the flames were out.

An oldie but a goodie, and a real treat to perform. 

But that isn't where I leave you. That isn't the answer I had to give. I went home that night after work and sang and sang. I've thrown on music I know and sung along, more actively than in recent years, sang in the shower. I contemplated, for the first time, letting my husband listen to some of my old recordings. He loves my singing voice, always has. More than anything, what I'm hearing is my strength coming back--not any particular skill, even if I must admit that given the option between a massive conspiracy or me actually having talent, I'm going to have to claim the latter. I may never be what I used to be, but I can be confident, the way I was before. Being a singer was not my disguise, it was my anchor, when all else was getting lost. I have a voice! And so do we all.

I want to put an embargo on the idea of "fake it til you make it." It makes achievement sound like deception, when at its heart, it has come from courage. I was not a fraud. I was brave, and bravery is what it takes. I was not alone, either, and neither are you.