singing for joy

sorry i can't make this all doom and gloom - its meant to be looking at, and working out how to live with, two very difficult and negative elements of my life. And it will, and one day I promise i will tell you what is this horrible unmentionable condition that is making (bits of) my life a misery.  But so far I can't bring myself to say what it actually is, even to you who don't know me and will never meet me.

but first to share with you something that sends me off on duty visits to my difficult, depressing and controlling mother on a cloud of happiness. I sing.  For 58 years i would die rather than have anybody hear me sing - i was brought up to know i was tone deaf (at home "no you can't have piano lessons you are tone deaf, it would be a waste of money" and at school "you there, third from the left at the back, don't sing, don't make a sound, just pretend") and because my upbringing rendered me terrified of ever getting anything wrong i just didn't have the balls to sing anyway.  Oh as an adult I sang in my car, for hours on end at the top of my voice, but that was it, nobody could hear me you see.  Then when I was 58, after 2 years of psyching myself up, i went to a little workshop which claimed to get people singing - and it changed my life! Now I sing, and sing with joy and gusto and it is quite simply wonderful.

So, dropping into a community choir on the way to my mother's and having a good sing means I can get through the visit to Ma with at least some equanimity, and no longer need to allow myself that one g&t on the train home.  Win-Win!

One of my abiding nightmare memories of school was music lessons.  We sat at individual desks and one regular exercise was for the teacher to give us a piece of music on paper, she would start off singing the first note "la" and then point at each of us - when it was our turn we had to sing the next note.  I used to watch it getting closer to my turn.  I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me, anything, anything, but have to do this, to show myself up to everybody, to have her walk up to my desk and loom over me, waiting, waiting. there was no escaping it.  there would be a long silence.  I would look at the note and not have a clue and wanted to die rather than expose my awful voice getting it wrong. Again.  Eventually, realising there was no escape I would mutter, speaking, "la" and she would move on.  Now I realise that everybody else either felt desperately sorry for me, or more likely were too worried about their own imminent turn, but at the time it was traumatic.  Hell, i still feel traumatised thinking about it now.  And even now, knowing i can sing, and am absolutely not tone deaf, i still can't sing on my own.