Me And The Night And The Music

So, I've tried to write this post more times than I care to think about, each time coming up slightly short or slightly out of tune, feeling as though I was singing the wrong words to the song, feeling the hesitation of 4 against 3, knowing that chords have been left hanging with their 7ths or 9ths reaching out for some sort of resolution. The true story of me and the night and the music is a lifelong story, one told in proper prospective, with intense periods of involvement, a constant background soundtrack, the never ending feeling that any teenager has in the incomplete movie of his life, in which he is always the star and always the focus of attention. I've started from when I was two years old going forward, from today looking back over time, from any number of midpoints blossoming out in all directions...not a single start has found its way to completion in any meaningful or satisfactory way.

There's some much to say and tell, and I'm only a lowly blogger...my skills at wordsmithing and storytelling are suspect, my capabilities sometimes falling below even what I might deem adequate for the purpose at hand, and so I constantly start and delete the story of me and the night and the music. Perhaps the only way to get through the story is to just jump in and start telling it, and see where it goes. The process sounds comfortable, soft, friendly, forgiving of errors in style or content, accepting what is proferred, allowing me to get where I want to, to get to where I need to get to.

And so I shall---jump right in. I hate auditions, I lose focus, I lose attachment to the real world and seem to be operating on autopilot. I have sung pieces in the wrong language, omitted the last page of the sheet music for the accompanist (who politely left me hanging in an unresolved cadence), started sightsinging on the wrong note and floundered through a whole piece without hitting many correct notes, gone to the wrong room at the wrong time, shown up for auditions where I wasn't qualified to audition, you name it and I've done it. And yet, I've managed to pass every audition I've ever sung. I know it's partially because men in any chorus are desirable, partially because I really do have a good voice (jesus, such ego!),and partially because although I may screw up mightily, I never actually overstep myself and try out for a chorus I'm not reasonably sure of getting into. I'm a second bass, and can sing down to a low D comfortably, and up to an F above middle C without making dogs howl in the moonlight.

Next Monday I audition for a new chorus, a chorus that will do eight major performances in NYC next June, and as always, I'm petrified with fear. No prepared music is required, only a voice test, a follow instructions test, and the dreaded sightsinging requirement. I can learn the music, follow the conductor, show up at every rehearsal prepared, but I just don't sightread that well, and I'm hoping, praying, beseeching the almighty, that I can dazzle them with footwork and blind them with prestidigitation, once again passing the audition and giving me somewhere to go on Monday nights so that I won't have to keep company with David Caruso any longer.

Please, please, please, pray for me.

Earworm-Miles Davis, Porgy and Bess