Last night I felt like singing. It was my Friday night, and I didn't feel like watching TV, the kid was busy doing homework. I had already had some post-work snacks (I'm trying to not do that but that's a whole other blog post entirely) and I rarely like to sing after I've eaten (I'm definitely not a professional, just listen to any of my posts on my YouTube channel and that is clear, but singing on an empty stomach is my favorite), and when I'm at home and I'm going to sing a couple of songs I like to do it with a cocktail or a glass of wine (my home drinking is if I sing or I have people over or I'm on a Zoom with pals), but I never want a cocktail or a glass of wine after I've eaten (because I like that on a relatively empty stomach, too). All of this ridiculous rambling to say, that I wanted to sing was sort of unusual. Maybe it had something to do with a conversation I'd had with a friend earlier in the day about hobbies and expressing ourselves in a creative way and the importance of that. For me, it's always been something I've craved, whether it was sitting on the piano bench next to my dad when I was 6 or 7, my feet dangling as he played a song and I sang along. Or when I would sing along to a favorite on a cassette while my mom, my beloved captive audience, listened and applauded. Maybe it was writing a skit with friends to perform in junior high. Later it was writing screenplays that rarely left my bedroom but it was fun and it was fulfilling.
And that was a lot of rambling to say that I want to create and I want to perform but that is literally not even the point of this blog but you guys know me and you know that this is the way I talk. What was I saying? Where was I going with this? Because I went off on a tangent and now I need to get on track. It's literally like I'm in the room trying to tell you all of this and if you were just sitting there wishing you could talk to a flibbertigibbet (boy, if ever a word summed me up it's that one) then you're welcome.
Back to the point. Music. The fact that you can hear one song as you are immediately transported to such a specific time and place, to such a warm memory, or maybe to such a sad memory. What else do we have with this much power? Why can't I remember what I had for lunch yesterday, but I can put on a song I haven't heard in maybe fifteen years and remember every word, every change in the melody, all the specific ways the phrasing goes?
I hear Veronica (from the Spike album) by Elvis Costello or anything from the Bette Midler albums Some People's Lives or the For the Boys Soundtrack and I am in my Nissan Pulsar listening to these cassettes driving home from class at San Francisco State. I mostly hated my experience at the school; it was a ridiculously difficult time in my life (see my social phobia post for some of that if you're curious) and if you asked me to name any of my teachers I'm not even sure that I could. But I can so easily picture myself on the lower deck of the Bay Bridge letting these albums get me through the drive. Singing along with Bette and feeling joyful at a time that I consistently felt joyless.
The song I chose to sing last night was You Needed Me by Anne Murray. I don't remember how I was introduced to this song, I don't remember the first time I heard it. I just so clearly singing it at the piano with dad, and I remember buying the 45 on a shopping trip with my mom. I think the inner part of the record was purple. Before last night it had been many months since I'd sang that song, and before many months ago it had been YEARS. Why did it come to me to sing it last night, no idea. But singing it left me feeling like I'd nourished my soul. It also left me a little sad. I miss my dad. How wonderful it would have been to sit by him at the piano at my age. Our relationship wasn't an easy one. He wasn't an "easy" person. In a perfect world our time at the piano would have extended past my very young years, but it didn't because my world and life were (and are) far from perfect. But what a gift he gave me. So much of my love for performance is probably from listening to him play jazz on the piano, sometimes he sang along. From him checking out records at the library and making cassette recordings of them. I used to take his Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae cassettes to my room and play them and sing along. (By the way, typing this is bringing the tears and that's okay because sometimes they just need to come out.) I just now put Carmen on Amazon Music (how nice to live in a time where you don't need to go digging through your box of cassettes to hear a voice you miss, you kids just don't know how good you got it). I owe my dad so very much. I have always known this, but right now I am reminded of the truth of this and also to be thankful for what we get from people who are no longer with us, rather than mourn what we did not get.
I didn't follow any sort of straight line here (shocking), but music is amazing. It means so many different things to so many different people. It takes us so many places. If you feel the need to create or perform, do it. Do it today. Share it with people, if you, like me, need to put it out into the world. Or get your mom to sit on the couch and go sing for her. I know she'll love it. Write that story or that poem. Take those nature pictures. Just take time to feed your soul in whatever way works for you.
P. S. I went to post my video on my Facebook page and was struck by the thought that I could be conflating this song with You Light Up My Life because I definitely sang that with dad (and also Love Will Keep Us Together). Maybe I just sang along with the 45?! If only he were here to fact check me!
