I
love my kitchen. And it's not just due to the ample storage and
counter space, or the Italian four burner gas stove my landlord
installed when we moved in. The wall behind the double sink, under
the overhanging cabinets, is ceramic tile - easy to clean, indeed,
but better still, offering great acoustics.
When
I'm washing the dishes, I sing. I always have. As kids, my brother
and I were responsible for this task. We used to sing duets, while I
scrubbed and he dried or vice versa. I remember teaching him the
first and only song I ever wrote (a romantic ballad entitled "I'm
Crying") while tackling some particularly stubborn spaghetti
sauce. He's a professional song-writer now; he tells me I inspired
him.
My
musical opus reduces to that single tune (which I can still sing),
although I've penned lots of poetry, which is music of a sort. Unlike
my brother, I don't play any instruments, but I have a prodigious
memory for lyrics, and to a lesser extent melodies. As a teenager, I
dropped piano lessons partly because I never learned to sight read
music. After playing a piece two or three times, I didn't need to
read it. By the time I got to more complicated compositions, this
talent had become a liability.
Anyway,
singing in my current kitchen is akin to singing in the shower -
better, because I don't need to worry about getting soapy water in my
mouth. The wall and the underside of the cabinet create a resonance
chamber. My voice sounds rich and full as I belt out my favorite
tunes.
Isn't
this rich?
Aren't we a pair?
Me
with my feet on the ground,
You
in the air...
Or:
You
want to know
How
it will be:
Me
and him
Or
you and me.
Or:
The
blonde in the bleachers,
She
flips her hair for you.
Above
the loud speakers
You
start to fall...
Or:
The
minute you walked in the joint,
I
could tell you were a man of distinction,
A
real big spender...
Or:
Desperado,
Why
don't you come to your senses?
You've
been out riding fences
For
so long...
Unlike
nearly everyone else these days, I don't go around with wires
sprouting from my ears. I do have a bunch of music on my phone, but I mostly listen to it
only when I exercise. Nonetheless my mind hosts an extensive and
rather eclectic mental play list. Torch songs from the nineteen
forties, folk ballads from the sixties, musicals and G&S
operettas, classic rock, blues - I sing them all. It's difficult to
sing rock and roll - you need the voices of the instruments as well
as the vocalists. But I try.
There
are many songs that speak to me, about love and sex, time and loss,
risk and reward: Melissa Etheridge's "Come to My Window",
Meatloaf's "Anything For Love", Bob Seger's "Night
Moves", Bruce Springstein's "Thunder Road":
Have
a little faith, there's magic in the night.
You
ain't a beauty but hey, you're all right
And
that's all right with me.
I
used to have a decent singing voice. I sang in my high school chorus,
even auditioned for a state-wide choir. My siblings and I won second
place on a TV talent show, doing a harmonized version of the Beatles'
"Misery". I've always been an alto. Now my voice seems to
have become lower and more gravelly with age. It's more difficult for
me to follow a complex tune these days too. The words are still
there, though, and when I'm singing to the kitchen wall, I sound
great.
Lots
of authors report that they listen to music while they write. Not me.
I'm such a word girl that the lyrics will distract me from my own
sentences. Even now, trying to pen this blog post, the songs I've
quoted are ringing in my mind, clamoring for my attention.
Our
love is an old love, baby.
It's
older than all our years.
I've
seen in strange young eyes
Familiar
tears.
I'd
better stop. I feel as though it's cheating to fill up my blog post
with lines and rhymes of other people. I could do it, though -
without doing a single Google look-up for the lyrics.
