Friday, August 03, 2007

To Sing

Folk music is a wonderful thing. Ponsa ponsa time, people set stories to rhythm to make them easier to remember. Tunes followed. Instruments followed the tunes. They travelled across Europe, across the Channel, across the Atlantic, the Pacific, the world. Vocal and instrumental harmonies are a universal language.

A language that I cannot speak.

For many years, I spent all my spare time with people who played acoustic guitars, banjos, mandolins, dulcimers, fiddles, flutes, penny whistles, pipes, harps and drums. And they sang. Harmonies that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck and tears flow down my cheeks.

But, in order to preserve the beauty of the music I had to stay silent. You see, I can't sing. I don't exactly have a tin ear, because I can hear the music, and I can tell when it's right or wrong. It's just that something happens between my ear, my brain, and my voice, and that something is not pretty. I can't carry a tune.

It is the biggest disappointment of my life. I can sing when I'm alone (and I mean, really alone), but I will never know that wonderful feeling of blending my voice with another to create that sort of communication.

To you who do this all the time, it probably seems like no big deal, but to me, it is a huge hole in my life.

4 comments:

  1. Oh, you and me, both, Ronni. That is the thing I remember most about my mother....you knew she was around because you could always hear her singing. She had the most beautiful natural voice and my dad was a trained singer. My brother thinks he can sing but he can't. I can hold a melody but have no voice.

    My daughter, on the other hand, has a rich, natural voice. Do you think it might skip a generation?

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  2. Hope you have a good weekend, Ronni.

    The weather is supposed to get rainy on Saturday and Sunday. "They" have been wrong before, though. Here's hoping....

    Big kiss for Ethan and Vanessa. xx

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  3. A good weekend to you, too, Mgt!

    My parents were both singers, too. My handicap was a grave disappointment to them, too.

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  4. Ronni, I too felt the way you do..
    but i decided i wanted it so bad that i took a chance, and took lessons.
    Now first i had to call a teacher and she sort of interviewed me by phone first. And (reluctantly though i didn't at that time know) told me to come for a first lesson to see if there was anyway she could help me.
    Two years later and a lot of work (daily).a lesson a week, and two open nights at her house with a bunch of teenagers learning too, and i became from what i am told quite the singer!
    Now your probably wondering WHY the reluctence?..it was because when i called the first time my voice was gravelly..i had just had an asthma attack and my throat was sore LOL !
    (btw the singing has stregthened my lungs!)
    she didn't tell me till moths later that she was going to tell me no on the phone..but what i said in that interview told her to give me a shot.
    So i guess what i'm trying to say is Ronni YOU CAN do it..it just takes the courage to take that first step and a lot of work!..
    What have you got to lose? GO FOR IT!

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