sour notes

When someone teaches you to sing, there are a lot of things to keep in mind. Sit up straight. Allow air to fill your diaphragm. Support the sound. Drop your jaw. Don't spread the sides of your mouth when you sing "meee." But like all training, when it's not explained properly, attempts to follow good advice can still produce bad results. Like that whole diaphragm thing. What do they MEAN by that anyway? If you've never had it explained, it means nothing to you. "Sing louder!" they say. Simple enough, if you want us to lose our voices over the next hour or two. Even the concept of matching your sound with the rest of the group can be problematic. For example. (I'm gonna try and bring you to my point, I swear) When I sing along with Wicked, if I match their vocal quality, which of course has been painted over with the personality of the character the singers are playing, I necessarily put strain on my voice because that's not the way I sound when I sing naturally. It's also nearly impossible not to sing loudly when you're singing songs from Wicked, and I'm not loud when I sing naturally. Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenowith are FABULOUS singers. I want to be a fabulous singer. Why can't I sing like them? Well, actually, I CAN, but not for very long. My voice gives out. Somewhere in the process of matching style and volume, the music moves from the comfortable places in my mouth and throat to very uncomfortable places. So am I a bad singer? No, I'm not. Could I ever play the part of Elphaba? It might be that I never could. Not because I can't sing but because that character needs to be sung by someone with a voice that sounds different from mine. Here's my point. There are a lot of things I wish I could do. Singing like Idina Menzel would be one of them, to be honest. But I also wish I was more confident. I wish I had more defined goals in life. I wish I was smarter. I wish I was quicker to process ideas and conversations. I wish I learned job skills faster. I wish I didn't get so distracted and lazy. I wish I was more motivated. I wish I didn't think about what I wish all the time. I see these things in people I like, people I look up to, people I think are worthy of imitation. And I look at myself and feel like a hopeless wreck that no one will ever want to hire, date, or get beyond the protective walls around my heart... because I fail so miserably at all of these things. They'll see me... and go and find someone else who's got those things in line already. But I can sing. I have a very nice voice. It goes into uncontrollable spasms when I try to sing solo in any sort of formal setting, and it's not very loud, but it's actually very pretty in its own way. When I try to sing more like Imogen than Idina, I do all right. I have a mental block when it comes to accepting myself the way I am. As I said not too long ago, "approving" myself. I see all my failures and I feel like I have to make up for them... but all I end up doing is making up a solution that seems to me barely more substantial than plastic wrap - you can see right through it. And the longer I try to keep it up, the hoarser I become. So rather than crack, I claim I've sung enough for one night... and retreat to heal. I push people away, reminding myself I obviously don't have this lesson down yet, so I must hold them at bay again until I've got it. I see the sort of girl who's caught the eye of the sort of guy I'm looking for... and I'm nothing like her. Can't be like her even when I try. I see the sort of secretary that the bosses like to see in their office... and I'm nothing like her. Can't be like her even when I try. It'd be a brittle shell, a make-up job done by a five year old. But maybe I'm not supposed to be like her. There's no reason not to try to mature and grow into some of those things the right way, but I am what I am now, and I can't do anything about that with short notice... and shelling and making-up only puts off the real work, delaying any real results. I need to learn to be okay with Jessica, August 30, 2009. Lots of people love her just the way she is; love her voice just the way it is. I'm not good at everything and I can't play every roll or get every guy or do well at every job... but I am good at things in my own way, and I forget that people love me the way I am anyway. And besides that, even when I'm rejected and fired and forgotten, even when all those people judge me with good reason... God picked me when He knew what I'd be like today, 10 years ago, 30 years from now. He thought I was worth saving. I'd do well not to argue with Him.

point of view

The closer you look at something, the bigger it gets - moving in on a fine print book to read it, holding a mess of wires up to your nose to untangle them, dust on the counter. So don't look at yourself too closely. You start to appear exponentially bigger than you are. God really IS that big though - just a quick glance at Him and He'll fill your vision, even if He seems far away... or you think you've pushed Him far away. Remember, even if He could be moved, your arm span is inconsequential compared to His size.

When you love you know you've got to thank the Lord

There's a kind of love you can have for a person where they just... simply... make you happy. (It works for friend love as well as romantic love, by the way.) The kind of love where, when you get the chance to laugh with them over something completely inconsequential, it makes your day for like three days. Where you just *click* and you occasionally find yourself quietly dreading the day where it might be that they're no longer in your life. Where you feel like you're home wherever you are as long as they're with you.

Love like that isn't easy to come by, but I've been lucky enough to find it in a few people in my life... and the joy I experience when I get to interact with those people cannot by matched by much.

So especially when it's a co-ed relationship, I'm plagued by repeated warnings of, "Don't let your feelings become an idol!!" to the point that I fear to relish any relationships. How ridiculous! I've been given this rare, spectacular gift and I run away from it. So the last time I had one of these moments, I told myself just to enjoy it.

You know what happened? Far from being idolatrously consumed with the relationship that I so delight in, my attention was riveted back to the God who allowed it. The degree of joy, pleasure, satisfaction, what-have-you that I was feeling, rather than being self-contained and inward-focused, took my hand in a silly dance and sang, "This is the kind of love God has for you!" And as another shock, this thought brought not shame over my failings in that Relationship, but another wave of happiness. "It's true!" I'd forgotten what it looked like, so He gave me a reflection of His love that has skin on... and I remembered.

And then, what's left to do but rejoice?

I will sing.

It was a new building to me. I'd never before visited this location and timidly opened the doors to step inside. The group of individuals in a recessed and walled area of the foyer that I took (at first glance) to be a group of quiet musicians turned out only to be a number of students working in what has to be the most unusual computer lab I've ever seen. But I wasn't looking for a computer... or a musician, for that matter. Across from the recess was a pair of doors that lead into what I (rightly) took to be a small auditorium that somehow reminded me of the school where my family attended church for many years. I couldn't tell at first if I had the right room, however - the material written on the board at the front of the room was related but not necessarily what I wanted, so I backed out to wander for a few more minutes before giving it another shot. A young, attractive woman was on the stage with a white board containing the name "Mrs. Ginny Hall" and some very basic music theory, a podium, and 20-something chairs arranged in two rows of semi-circles. Upon closer inspection, I could make out the text "Chorus" at the top of the board. So this wasn't Music Appreciation. I had the right room. I'm just not used to having an attractive Chorus teacher. They're usually old and pudgy.... As her students straggled into the auditorium, Ginny welcomed us warmly and invited us to sit on the stage with her. I think I will always have a twinge of pride whenever I step onto a stage. You have to take the secret side door and go up the steps - the door that's always closed and the steps that are forbidden territory for anyone who can only consider himself "a member of the audience." But not I. I have been given permission. I can walk up the stairs and take my place on the stage with no fears that anyone will call me out. Five sopranos, five altos, and 3 guys were present for tonight's first meeting and we're expecting a few more to appear next week. I was a soprano for about five minutes before one of the altos complained of not having a sufficiently deep range and I was bumped. Maybe next week will bring new altos and I'll get to move again.... It's a skilled group of students - folks who want to go on to major in voice and music and theater and the like. People who are there because they WANT to be there. People who have been singing in choirs for years. People who have my same need to sing with a group - to fill the space with complex combinations of notes that fit together like puzzle pieces and create sounds that dance in the air, the heart, the mind, in ways that cannot be achieved with one voice alone. It's going to be a great semester. You're invited to the Christmas concert, of course.

I have my approval

It seems to me that we're all aware, to some degree or another, that it's not good to go through life expecting and feeding off of the approval of others.

Granted, if you REALLY never cared what anyone else thought, growth and maturity would be difficult. If no one ever told me, for example, that my stick figures didn't look much like the people they were fashioned for, I might go on drawing them as I always had.

But at the same time, there is a certain value in simply doing things we love to do, and doing them well, and being pleased with the end result... the last of which is impossible if we only value our works for the judgments others give them. Why should I withhold satisfaction with my work just because I didn't get any applause?

What if I went to the gym, enrolled in a spinning class, worked my butt off, and left positively dripping from the exertion? If a seasoned biker had seen me, they might have had all sorts of pointers and directions and advice to right the things I hadn't done perfectly. And if a friend had seen me, she might have praised me for enrolling at all. But what if I simply went, got a good workout, and was proud of myself for trying something new, regardless of what anyone else thought about it?

What if I designed a website that served more as a place for me to store my online stuff than an entertaining, interactive website, and in the end was not good for a whole lot except that I'd been positively thrilled to play around with HTML and actually get a working product as a result? It might not be worth much to anyone but me, but I can give it my approval - it was something I did because I enjoyed doing it and it made my mind engage, and I am proud of the way it looks.

And in the end, my approval doesn't really matter either. It too is a means to an end of being content with myself in ways that are more directly developed by placing more value on God's view of things. In this case, I think that means that He created me with certain abilities, certain talents, and a mind that enjoys engaging in one thing over another... and so I should do them. I used to think that He made us to love doing one thing or another solely so that we could bring those talents to the table of the community of believers, making a well-rounded picture... but when I consider what (little) I've learned about His character, I think He values our OWN delight in doing things that we love, too. Do you ever sing when you're alone and enjoy it because you have musical talent? Do you ever act your heart out in front of the mirror, just because it makes you happy to wax theatrical? And when we acknowledge the fact that we have those talents at all, OR the ability to enjoy them, AND even sometimes the ability to share them, all because they are gracious gifts of God, that's when we come full circle and see the intent God had for placing passions in our hearts.

...

Maybe. ^_^

Lion King

"You have forgotten me." "No! How could I?" "You have forgotten who you are, and so, forgotten me. You are more than what you have become." I don't know about you, but I haven't seen this movie in a long time, and when I think about it, the first thing that comes to mind is "SEX" written in a bunch of flying flowers. So as I've been spending hours and hours trying to get music onto my iPod this afternoon (don't ask. suffice it to say that I have an incredible amount of patience and really ornery machinery.), I wanted some movies going on in the background and since I had not yet watched the VHS copy of Lion King that Joy gave me a while back, I thought it would be a good time. It really hit me afresh how much parallelism there is between that movie and the Christian redemption story. And then the aforementioned scene where Simba is speaking, praying, whatever, to his "heavenly father," really stood out. No, I don't forget God. How could I? His fingerprints are everywhere, constantly reminding me of His magnitude and (for lack of a better, non-Christianese word) glory. I think about Him a lot. I pray frequently throughout the day. He (and related subjects) enter my thoughts regularly. But I don't always act like I am who He says I am. I don't always treat others in ways that reflect the way I know He feels about them. Remembering Him involves acknowledging the truths He's declared about who I am and applying the truths I know about who He is to how I view my world. Deep stuff for a Disney flick. But I thought it was a good refresher.