{"id":43,"date":"2011-02-23T02:22:22","date_gmt":"2011-02-23T02:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fanagrams.net\/blog\/?p=43"},"modified":"2019-10-31T16:23:02","modified_gmt":"2019-10-31T21:23:02","slug":"my-life-in-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/my-life-in-song\/","title":{"rendered":"My Life in Song"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have inherited many gifts from my father, both genetically and by example – reasonable looks (except for my fleshly earlobes), brown hair that just refuses to go grey, kindness, loyalty and commitment to family.\u00a0 But among my siblings, there is one thing my father and I share exclusively \u2013 our inability to carry a tune.\u00a0 While this would seem to be a minor setback, it was aggravated by the rich musical talents that my mother bequeathed to all\u00a05 of\u00a0her sons, who all married similarly talented wives, so my father and I emerged as real outliers.\u00a0 This became painfully apparent during the musical skits for family occasions that my mother created for all of us to perform in \u2013 family birthdays and weddings, where you would have the additional stress of performing in front of the bride\u2019s family, all of them total strangers.\u00a0 The skits would typically involve some sort of recurring refrain, like Alouetta, where you had to sing your two lines over and over again.\u00a0 Both my father and I would struggle mightily \u2013 on the first go-round I would sing too high, and then when it came around to me again, I would overcompensate and sing way too low.\u00a0 In addition to being off-key, family members would comment that my voice was too \u201cbreathy.\u201d<\/p>\n

I first became aware of my deficiency in grade school; in fact my first formal rejection of any kind involved music.\u00a0 There were tryouts for the grade school choir, and I marched in full of confidence since I had been told multiple times, “You Browns are such a musical family.”\u00a0\u00a0 The teacher asked me to sing along as she thumped away on the piano.\u00a0 I still remember the music abruptly stopping and the teaching calling for the next applicant.\u00a0 I was stunned when I did not make the choir, since with a handful of exceptions \u2013 me, Kathy Washburne, Emily Clow, Peggy Huber and Nini Swift – the rest of the class was in.<\/p>\n

The initial sting of rejection became a scab that would not heal as the choir was consistently shown preferential treatment.\u00a0\u00a0 During my childhood in the 1960s, everyone rode their bikes and arrived at school early, a scenario that seems totally improbable today.\u00a0 The school did not want students entering the building before 8 AM, so they set up crossing guards in front of the entrance, and everybody had to wait until the appointed hour.\u00a0 It was a seething mass of bicycles, except for choir members who would break free from the crowd and gaily sing out, \u201cI have choir practice so I get to cross early.\u201d\u00a0 The crossing guards always seemed to be the cute boys who would theatrically open the gate and let the singers cross.\u00a0 Since the choir was almost the entire 8th<\/sup> grade, I felt like a loser behind the gate with all the younger kids.<\/p>\n

Later that year we had tryouts for the school play, one of the social highlights of the 8th<\/sup> grade.\u00a0 The play was a musical called the Thirteen Clocks.\u00a0 There were limited speaking parts, so most of the class was housed in the chorus.\u00a0 I was insulted when the cast was posted and saw that I was assigned to the chorus.\u00a0 I already knew that I could not sing, so this casting meant that I was a worse actor than singer.\u00a0 I realized that my role in the chorus was really damage control rather than any affirmation of my singing ability.\u00a0 I was not housed, I was warehoused<\/em> in the chorus.\u00a0 I lip synched throughout the play.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, my mother exploited her musical talents to great success.\u00a0 \u201cI always like to add another string to my bow,\u201d she would say.\u00a0 She participated in a church choir tour and fulfilled her dream of singing in a cathedral, started a bell choir and a singing group that entertained children and shut-ins, organized and performed in community theater and wrote musical plays for grade-school children.\u00a0 My brothers had speaking and singing parts in their school plays.\u00a0 My father and I sat on the sidelines until we were mustered up for family skits.\u00a0 I was proud of my father\u2019s good humor as he repeatedly humiliated himself in front of an audience.\u00a0 However, over the years I did notice that he developed a serviceable work-around.\u00a0 He managed to learn the one tune that my mother always used for her skits, creating some sort of muscle\/ear memory so that his singing was not entirely wretched.\u00a0 I continued to struggle.<\/p>\n

As an adult, I tried a different tactic and followed my mother\u2019s footsteps by joining a bell choir.\u00a0 This seemed like a perfect compromise, since I did not need to sing and was only responsible for four notes.\u00a0 All I had to do was\u00a0recognize when to play them.\u00a0 Fortunately this wasn\u2019t too hard since I was tenacious counter and could usually figure out where we were in the piece, especially since I circled all of my notes in colored coded markers \u2013 red for right hand and blue for left.\u00a0\u00a0 All the other choir members recognized their notes by sight alone and actually knew the names of the notes.\u00a0 But this has been a tremendous experience, a great team effort, particularly when we get some applause at the end of a piece.\u00a0 I was getting just a whiff of the joy and comraderie my mother experienced in her musical life.<\/p>\n

But my inability to sing still gnawed at me, in part because I had inherited my mother\u2019s other gift for word play and writing ditties.\u00a0 For my mother\u2019s 60th<\/sup> birthday, my brothers and I created new words to the tunes of some of her favorite hymns, Fling Out the Banner, Once to Every Man and Nation, Onward Christian Soldiers, All Things Bright and Beautiful.\u00a0 However, the best hymn was Rock of Ages, which we changed to \u201cA Jock for the Ages\u201d in honor of her athletic abilities.\u00a0 The evening was a ripping success; my mother loved the irreverent humor, clever word play and singing, but most of all I think that she loved knowing that her talents would live on.<\/p>\n

I have used \u201cRock of Ages\u201d many times since then as part of birthday and family celebrations.\u00a0 It has a nice steady rhythm, a limited range of notes and simple rhyming scheme that make it easy to adapt.\u00a0 If I really want to slather it on, a birthday verse could go like:<\/p>\n

When you joined the human race<\/p>\n

The world became a better place,<\/p>\n

On this earth no one\u2019s more kind,<\/p>\n

You\u2019d give your eyeballs to the blind.<\/p>\n

Your loving friendship we hold so dear,<\/p>\n

So raise a toast of birthday cheer.<\/p>\n

\u00a0But singing remained a problem.\u00a0 You might ask, why not read it instead?\u00a0 Yes, that would be the easy choice, but the verse would fall flat.\u00a0 I have found that when sung, lyrics can be infinitely sappier and cornier than anything that is read, so I go ahead and continue to put my finger in the socket and try to sing it.<\/p>\n

All these thoughts were running through my mind as I took one of my brainstorming bicycle rides through the local Forest Preserve.\u00a0 I thought back to my father who found some success in mastering one song.\u00a0 \u201cPerhaps I could just focus on Rock of Ages and really learn how to nail just that one tune,\u201d I thought.\u00a0 I emerged from the Forest Preserve onto the corner of Rte 176 and Waukegan Road and noticed a sign stapled to a telephone phone.\u00a0 I assumed that it was some tragic plea to recover a lost pet, whose life expectancy would be minimal at this bustling intersection.\u00a0 Besides, there was no foot traffic here and cars would not be able to read the sign as they whizzed by.\u00a0 When I looked at the sign more closely, I was startled to see that it was a handwritten sign advertising singing lessons!\u00a0 I felt that we were made for each other \u2013 an atonal singer with a breathy voice and a singing teacher who advertised on a telephone poll.\u00a0 It was a deus ex machina.<\/p>\n

I committed the phone number to memory, but then it took me 1 \u00bd years to work up my courage to call.\u00a0 I recruited my friend Marion to accompany me, since this whole scenario seemed a bit sketchy; I didn\u2019t want to be the innocent victim lured into an evil trap on the premise of singing lessons. \u00a0Sofio answered the phone, and in a Russian accent that could have come out of a James Bond movie, he asked me if I sang in a choir or was a soloist.\u00a0 I explained that my goals were much more modest \u2013 I only wanted a couple of lessons to get some tips on how to sing one song, and one song only.\u00a0 I would bring the sheet music.<\/p>\n

There was a pause, and Sofio said, \u201cI am professional singer and only teach singers.\u00a0 I not teach you.\u201d<\/p>\n

What? I was indignant.\u00a0 It never occurred to me that I would receive such a resounding rejection \u2013 how could anyone advertising on a telephone pole afford to be picky about\u00a0his students?<\/p>\n

While I am sure that I could find others who would let me pay them, I\u00a0now appreciate the 45 year symmetry bracketing my singing rejections.\u00a0 Perhaps it\u2019s time to set aside my loftier ambitions and just go with what I\u2019ve got.\u00a0 A long time ago I bought a sweater, hand made by some hard working Peruvian.\u00a0 The tag on the sweater said, \u201cThe minor irregularities in this garment are part of its handmade charm.\u201d\u00a0 I took this aphorism to heart as I evaluated my amateur efforts at knitting or sewing, but over time the saying has become the life lesson that my father accepted many years ago.\u00a0 The irregularities in my quavering, breathy voice will just have to be part of its charm.<\/p>\n

(The missing words in the following poem are all anagrams (i.e. share the same letters like post, stop, spot, etc).\u00a0 The number of dashes indicates the number of letters.\u00a0 One of the words\u00a0will be at the end of a line and this word will rhyme with either the preceding or following line.\u00a0 Your job is to figure out the missing words.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Scroll down for the anwswers.)<\/h6>\n

In my family musical prowess is the talent that ——<\/p>\n

In skits, I struggle to\u00a0perform the multiple refrains.<\/p>\n

I am not a —— so no matter how hard I try,<\/p>\n

The first verse is too low and the next one too high.<\/p>\n

But over time I —— myself to my atonal voice<\/p>\n

And accept its irregular charm as the logical\u00a0choice.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Answers:\u00a0 reigns, singer, resign<\/p>\nFollow Liza Blue on: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>Share: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have inherited many gifts from my father, both genetically and by example – reasonable looks (except for my fleshly earlobes), brown hair that just refuses to go grey, kindness, loyalty and commitment to family.\u00a0 But among my siblings, there … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-my-life-in"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVc8-H","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2830,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions\/2830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}