is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Stealing your Off-Key Thunder.
It�s not that I don�t like karaoke. I love watching other people sing it, even though I�m a bit over-sensitive to off-key tones. I can deal with that, because I appreciate the spectacle, and the absurdity, and sometimes the really good singing, and good performances (regardless of singing talent). The reason I myself don�t like to sing karaoke is that I have a horror of hearing my voice amplified. We all know the experience of hearing one�s own voice tape-recorded and played back. It just doesn�t seem like that terrible disembodied voice could be �mine.� We tend to think, ugh, is that ME? How do people go on listening to me talk my way through every day, then, if that�s what I sound like? Ugh! (Well, perhaps some of us do not think that. But I think that, and I also think that many others think that as well).
Anyway, sometimes when I�m teaching, not amplified at all, I�ll suddenly become way too aware of my own voice, and then I�ll begin hearing it as if it were amplified, in that terrible alien register it takes on when tape-recorded and then played back to me� that same sound that you hear when you hear me speak (poor thing)! It�s terrible. When that happens, all I want to do is shut up, but of course it�s my job to keep talking. O! hardship.
I suppose it would be good if I could learn to get past hating that experience enough to sing some karaoke for Marco, who would love it if I would. But then there�s the other problem, that apparently my voice is so out of singing-practice that I simply cannot carry a tune anymore. As a child and young teenager I wasn�t so bad, and sang in lots of choral groups (I was a nerd, too, but you knew that). But it isn�t like riding a bicycle. And since I am, like I said, sensitive to off-key tones, I think hearing my own voice amplified and off key might kill me. So there you have it. I simply would not enjoy being the one singing karaoke, and it�s really not because I�m shy and just need to be encouraged. I do, however, very much enjoy hearing YOU sing karaoke, even if you�re Marco, and you�re singing �Glory Days� by Bruce Springsteen.
One time Evany sang �Eye of the Tiger.� That was GOOD. Also: Caroleen singing anything, of course. But favorites include Christina Aguilera�s �Beautiful� and �Genie in a Bottle� and �Lovin� Touchin� Squeezin�� by Journey. Also, the time that girl I didn�t know at the Mint sang �Baby�s Got Back.� Or when two frat/investment-banker types got up and sang �Easy Lover� and then one of them stayed on stage and sang �Private Dancer� by himself. All. Good.
Not a digression, though it seems like it is: You know how animals are very sensitive to weather changes, and how they always know that thunder and lightning are on the way long before dumbbutt humans do? The electrical charge of the atmosphere changes and the animals feel it all up and down their fur and go slinking off to hide in the bathroom behind the toilet or some other really uncomfortable place for nervous crouching. That is a bit how I feel sometimes when I hear off key tones. I want to melt into nothingness or turn myself inside out, or roll around in broken glass and not in a cool way like Iggy Pop. Of course, I can be schooled in hearing other forms of music that use a different scale, so it�s not that my ear is a colonizer. But when I hear notes that are supposed to be partaking of a certain scale but are not, it hurts me in a way that is not intellectual at all. It�s just the way it is.
Maybe what Evany and I sometimes like to refer to as our �aging-crazy,� some form of hobby or new pursuit you feel you can pick up because it no longer matters whether you are good at it and you�re not doing it to prove anything anyway�. maybe one of my aging-crazies will be singing again. Along with playing the guitar and the mandolin, or, hell, the viola. Why not? Perhaps I�ll start frequenting karaoke bars and belting out old standards, as if I were Ella Fitzgerald. But for now I�m going to stick with watching birds.
3:39 p.m. - September 11, 2006
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