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Thank you for your interest in At the Top of my Lungs. This blog has now moved to www.bythelionarts.com/atthetopofmylungs/. Thank you!

The Magic Meatball vs. the Numinous Nugget

I have possibly the most phenomenal day-job in the known universe: I office-manage a small company that provides technical design and production for theme park attractions. In layman’s terms: if you walk into a theme park (or museum or aquarium or other entertainment venue) and see something magical, chances are if we didn’t do the work ourselves, we know how it got done (or, in some cases, how it could have been done better.) One of the many perks of this job is that virtually every year, I get paid to go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. (Marketing research is a beautiful thing if you do it right. And by “right,” I mean “with Butterbeer.” Sometimes when the concept of gratitude feels far away and impossible to me, I can summon it a little closer to where I live when I recall the existence of Butterbeer.)

A few years ago I was taking meeting notes for a design charette on a proposed new theme park somewhere in China, and the minds around the table were trying to come up with a basic story structure for one of the attractions. One of the story concepts someone brought up was the “Quest for the Magic Meatball.” It’s a common enough story structure. You set out seeking a particular artifact that will grant the bearer… something. Power. Protection. Parsnips. Other things beginning with P.

In my day-to-day life, I am constantly on the lookout for the Magic Meatball. I have this semi-subconscious belief that someday, I will watch the right movie / Oprah special / TED Talk, or listen to the right song / podcast / NPR segment, or read the right book / article / blog post, or attend the right conference / church service / party, and then I will wake up the next morning and my life will have fallen magically, effortlessly into place, meaning that any or all of the following will be true:

·         I will prefer kale salads and fruit smoothies to pasta and cheesecake.

·         I will arise magically before the sun every day and joyfully launch myself into a vigorous exercise/ writing / apartment cleaning / personal grooming routine strenuous enough to convince anyone (even me) that I have earned the right to live on this planet today.

·         I will have a magnetic, effervescent personality; everyone will love me; I’ll throw great parties and be a paragon of hospitality and a witty and gracious conversationalist.

·         I’ll be the kind of office manager through whose fingers no detail, however minute, would dare to slip.

·         My to-do list will be, and will remain forever, 100% under control, and no item that could be accomplished today will ever, ever, ever be put off until tomorrow. …or a week from this Tuesday. …or possibly a year from next Arbor Day.

·         I will have a literary agent, a small fortune, and a man.

·         Etc.

Spoiler alert: I have not found the Magic Meatball. I still prefer pasta to salads most of the time (although I did recently eat a kale-quinoa salad wrap thing that was spectacularly delicious.) No matter how many times I tell myself that I really do function better when I get up and get moving early in the morning, eight or nine times out of ten, the alarm goes off and sleep just seems more important than whatever else I could (or arguably should) be doing. I’m still socially awkward and chronically behind on about four dozen tasks (and those are just the ones I have written down.) I make mistakes in the office; I’m still unpublished, in debt, and comprehensively single.

Rationally, I know that there is no Magic Meatball. Neither Oprah Winfrey nor Jillian Michaels nor Brené Brown nor any pastor; neither my own competence nor someone else’s ingenious new system nor the hot new fad diet nor anything else in all of creation can totally insulate me against the reality that life is hard.

I think sometimes I hang onto the Magic Meatball delusion because it’s easier to believe that there is a Magic Meatball and everyone else has already found it, and that that is why I always feel so tired and inferior… than it is to accept the fact that life is hard. It’s hard for me. It’s hard for you. Research (by which I mean “my own intuition;” “research” just sounds better) indicates that anyone who says they have their life handled and everything is easy and perfect is a big fat liar (and will probably not be invited to any of my Fabulous Parties once I acquire a magnetic, effervescent personality). Sure, I can always find someone else whose life sucks more than mine. Actually, in my case, lots of peoples’ lives suck more than mine. I have a job, a car, and an apartment; those things alone put me ahead of the vast majority of the human populace in terms of ease of life.

And how many times has knowing that information made it easier to get out of bed in the morning?

Never.

Not even once.

Know why?

That’s right.

Because life is hard.

One thing I’ve been learning lately, from Brené Brown as a matter of fact—okay, so she can’t fix everything in the universe and organize it and put it in a Bento Box, but she’s still a phenomenally wise and winsome person whom everyone should listen to—is how critically important it is to admit that life is hard, and to let the people who care about you know when life is just especially hard, even if the reason why life is just especially hard seems colossally Stupid and Embarrassing to you.

(Such as, to offer a real and recent example, the fact that a friend and I both recently applied for something and she’s getting it and not me. And I know I should mostly be happy for her because arguably she needs it more than I do, but mostly I feel like a failure and I kind of just want to curl up and die, especially when I remember the (half joking) things I said after both applications had been submitted. And no, it doesn’t help that I know that she’s not gloating; not even a little bit, and that she doesn’t think I’m a failure, and that she didn’t think a thing of anything I said after the applications were submitted. In fact, knowing all of that makes it worse because it makes all my feelings even more irrational and Stupid and Embarrassing.)

Actually, the moments when life is hard for Stupid and Embarrassing reasons are the moments when it is, perhaps, especially critical to admit that life is hard. Because people who are willing to put themselves out there over things that are Embarrassing and Stupid help other people to feel they have permission to put themselves out there over things that are Embarrassing and Stupid. And if you can reveal your Embarrassing and Stupid enough times, eventually you might find yourself able to divulge—to the right person, at the right moment—your Shameful and Terrifying. (Yes. I have Shameful and Terrifying. And so do you. And anyone who claims not to have Shameful and Terrifying is definitely not going to be invited to any of my Fabulous Parties.)

And having the right people to whom to divulge your Shameful and Terrifying—not being alone with it, in other words—actually does make it easier to get up in the morning. And to sleep at night. And to put one foot in front of the other on the days when life is just especially hard—even for reasons that are Stupid and Embarrassing.

And that’s something else right there: Brené Brown may not be able to fix everything and put it into a Bento Box—she neither is nor has the Magic Meatball, in other words—but she does have many nuggets of wisdom to share. In the interest of extending both the alliteration and the meat product idiom, I’ll call them Numinous Nuggets. And partaking of Numinous Nuggets can make all the difference when life is hard. Learning to be; pushing myself to be; giving myself increasing permission to be vulnerable (like admitting that I feel rejected and small that my friend got this thing and I didn’t) is making a big difference in my life. Learning—painfully slowly—to accept love and grace from somebody once I’ve offered them my vulnerability (such as accepting my friend’s words of comfort and affirmation about this thing she got and I didn’t) is making an even bigger difference. Learning to cultivate gratitude for that love and grace instead of feeling awkward and weak for accepting it will probably make a huge difference once I actually get to that point. I’m not quite there yet.

None of these things can make all my problems go away. They can’t change the fact that life is hard. In fact, living this way tends to open me up to feeling the pain of all the problems even more keenly than I did before.

But.

It also makes it possible for me not to be alone with them.

No matter how many places I search for it, I’m never going to find the Magic Meatball because it doesn’t exist. I’m still not managing to get up at oh-dark-thirty every day like I’m getting off the bench at a basketball game, but the Numinous Nuggets that I glean from good books (like Shauna Niequist’s Bittersweet; just started it and I already love it); good TED talks (like Brené Brown’s); the wisdom of good friends—all this makes it possible for me to get up at some point and put one foot in front of the other, and to go to bed that night and sleep, and then to get up the next day and do it all over again, even in the midst of living out the reality that life is seriously hard.

There is no Magic Meatball, but it turns out there are a lot of nourishing nutrients in Numinous Nuggets. And thanks to the people from whom those nuggets come—and other bright spots like my job—sometimes, I even get to wash my plate of Numinous Nuggets down with a flagon of Butterbeer, and I get to eat that nourishing and delicious meal in good company.

Which is a pretty spectacular antidote, when I can remember to / bring myself to take it, to the poisonous gases of despair and bitterness that can be released into the soul when life is especially hard. 

Paris: City of Lights, Love, and Vulnerability

Have you ever had one of those seasons of life where you hear the same word or phrase so many times from so many different directions that you start to think it’s not an accident and maybe you’re supposed to pay attention?

To my great consternation, the word in my life that currently fits that description is vulnerability. If you haven’t seen Dr. Brené Brown’s brilliant Ted Talk about vulnerability and shame, I urge you to watch it.

Here’s her position in a nutshell.

1.   I have to be willing to be embrace vulnerability in order to really live.

2.   Vulnerability means showing up and being seen for who I am regardless of what anyone (including myself) expects me to be. 

3.   That coin has two sides. One side of that coin is living authentically with my shame; not trying to make everything look perfect, or to numb myself to the reality that it isn’t perfect… 

4.   …and the other side of that coin is giving myself, and those around me, permission to believe that I am / they are worthy of love and belonging in spite of my / their shame, and indeed because of my / their vulnerability. 

I think I do pretty well at living authentically with my shame and being honest about it. But I have never been comfortable asserting my own worthiness of love and belonging, and as a result, I’ve spent a lot of time contradicting people who have tried to assert it for me—and worrying that anyone who doesn’t try to assert it for me doesn’t believe I have it.

I went to Europe in November 2013 to see C. S. Lewis memorialized in Westminster Abbey, and after all the Lewis events ended, I went to Paris. I went to Paris because I had already been to London and Oxford, where the Lewis events were, and while I love London and I adore Oxford, it seemed a shame to cross an ocean and a continent and not go anywhere new. So I went to Paris.

I’ve said before that I take preparation very seriously. I prepared for Paris, in part, by acquiring and using a language learning CD. Here’s a real French sentence I learned from this program:

Voulez-vous boire du vin avec moi chez moi?

Translation: Hey, big boy! Wanna come back to my place for a drink?

I will admit that I have exaggerated the flirtatiousness of the sentence slightly, but only slightly, and the whole program was like that. Lots and lots of sentences you might use if you’re trying to pick somebody up in a foreign country, but no help whatsoever with things like “restroom” or “museum”… or with transport words like “taxi,” “train,” or “subway.” Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Without question the most useful French phrase I learned from this CD was:

Pardon, je ne comprends / parle pas très bien le français.

Or: Excuse me; I don’t understand / speak French very well.

I used this phrase constantly. I opened nearly every conversation with it once I was there. I was told countless times before I went that Parisians tend to be slightly more accommodating to Ugly American Tourists who at least attempt to speak French before diving in with English. So I held this one phrase up in front of me like a shield, and prayed that whoever I was speaking to would immediately switch to English once I said it, and many of them did, but by no means all.

I started feeling vulnerable as soon as I got off the train at Gare du Nord. Mercifully, almost right away, the signage offered me the following very welcome cognate: Taxi. And I thought, Merci, mon Dieu, and began practicing what I thought might be a good pronunciation of “Pardon me, where are the taxis?”…in case the answer wasn't obvious when I got to the end of the signs. Whether the phrase I had worked up was right or not I’ll never know, because I lost my nerve when I actually came face-to-face with the official-looking guy directing pedestrian traffic, and what actually came out of my mouth was, “Er… taxi?” in as close as I had to a French accent in that moment’s state of mental acuity. He immediately gave me very precise directions in English and I said, merci, monsieur and did what he said.

When I actually got into the cab and gave the driver the address of my hotel (I may or may not have muttered vingt-neuf Rue Cler under my breath for the entire duration of the taxi queue) he had never heard of the street in question. He punched “29 Rue Cl” into his GPS and then asked me how to spell the rest of the word, and I froze, because yet another thing my language learning CD had failed to teach me was even a single letter of the French alphabet. I could order wine or coffee or something to eat; I could offer wine, coffee, or something to eat to a handsome stranger; I could invite that handsome stranger back to my place after the wine, coffee, or something to eat had been consumed, but I couldn't say, “…e, r.” After a couple seconds of embarrassed silence, I said it in English; he punched the letters in and off we went.

I have never in my adult life been so happy to see a tiny hotel room with serviceable dead-bolt, and I threw it as soon as I was inside and collapsed onto the bed.

The four-point-five days I spent in Paris were an unending exercise in vulnerability. I was alone. I was stripped of verbal communication and knew not one soul in a city whose reputation can be summed up as follows: 

1.   Paris: City of Love.

2.   Paris: City of Lights.

3.   Paris: City Where You Really Need to Watch Your Bags, Especially on the Metro.

Not surprisingly then, one of my most vulnerable moments came on the night I took the Metro to the Opera. Alone. After dark. I couldn’t even find the Metro station at first. But a kind stranger showed me where to go and I did make my way onto the right train (where one hand white-knuckled it on my purse strap and the other on the vertical pole that was the only reason I didn’t sprawl into the dozens of potential muggers all around me) and eventually made my way to the Palais Garnier. My ticket was for the opening night of La Clemenza di Tito, a lesser-known Mozart opera—lesser known possibly because it somehow managed to get around the seemingly universal stipulation that opera must be tragic.

Here’s the plot in as few words as possible: Sesto is in love with Vitellia who wants to kill the emperor Titus, so she convinces Sesto to do it for her. Sesto—described by Wikipedia as Titus’s “vacillating friend”—reluctantly agrees and attempts to kill the emperor. He fails, is caught, arrested, tried, and sentenced to death (pending the emperor’s decision to sign his death sentence.) Titus signs it, but changes his mind and tears it up, choosing instead to show clemency (hence the title, which translated from the Italian is The Clemency of Titus.)

There’s more to it than that, and if you care about the more that there is, you can read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia.

I had read about La Clemenza before travelling, but I had failed to take in that a couple of the male roles, including that of Sesto, were to be played by women. I found this to be both distracting and fascinating, and it contributed to the fact that ultimately, Sesto was the character I most identified with (indecision; unrequited love; crippling feelings of agonizing guilt… what’s not to identify with?) But I didn’t recognize this until Act II. I might have made the connection more during Act I except that:

1.   I was sitting in a seat that was approximately the width of a knitting needle.

2.   The space between my seat and the seat in front of me was little more than the length of an average knitting needle.

3.   When I sat down, the man already seated on my right gave me a dirty look and began speaking rapidly (presumably in French) to the people on his right in a tone that clearly bespoke, “Can you believe this fat Ugly American Tourist sitting next to me with her giant bag full of Paris Opera House swag? UGH.”

So there I was feeling enormous and unwanted; my hips were aching from being pressed against the sides of my seat; my legs were pressed so hard into the back of the seat in front of me (which came to about the level of my shins) that I was seriously concerned about knocking the person in front of me in the back of the head, and my feet were taking turns falling asleep.

I felt sad to have come so far and been disappointed—and then I felt guilty for feeling disappointed because I was in the Paris Opera House for God’s sake; lots of people go their whole lives without seeing such a spectacular place and all I could think about was the fact that my feet were asleep?! Who does that?!

Then, two things happened.

1.   An angel of mercy disguised as a member of staff saw me massaging life back into my shins during intermission and moved me to an empty seat in the back of someone’s private box. I’m sure that an ordinary chair has felt that miraculous to me at other times in my life, but I can’t remember what times those might have been.

2.   The art started speaking to me.

In Act II, there’s a scene where Titus is alone with Sesto after the failed assassination attempt, and Sesto is basically pushing a pen and his own death warrant into Titus’s hands because he feels so guilty for trying to kill him that death has become preferable to life. He basically talks Titus into sealing his fate—against the emperor’s initial inclination. The emperor is standing there offering him mercy, but Sesto would literally rather die than accept it.

I would say that this is insane, except that I do the same thing all the time.

I mean, okay, I haven’t killed anybody (yet) so the parallel isn’t exact. But per my admission a couple thousand words ago, I have a tendency not only to deny my own worthiness of love and belonging, but to refuse love and belonging when they are offered. Vulnerability happens. Sometimes it’s that someone sees more of my real self than I intended to show. Sometimes I hurt or anger someone by my words or actions. Sometimes I try something new and find that I’m not immediately good at it. Sometimes I just… fail. There are lots of ways vulnerability happens. And when it does, I’ve seen myself over and over again push the pen into peoples’ hands, asking them—if not explicitly then certainly by my behavior—to write me off. Not because I want to die, as Sesto did; nor because I want be estranged from people (I don't) but because it’s a way to retain control. More often than I’d like to admit I live in fear that others will write me off. So I push them to it. Like Sesto, I deny that I'm worth keeping around and I refuse to let anyone else contradict me because if at some point someone decides that in fact I'm not worth keeping around, I will feel as though I have some measure of control of the situation if I intentionally did something to instigate the loss.

At least, that’s how it works in my head.  

Except that really it doesn’t work. It’s no way to live. It means playing into the hands of the people who don't want me around—and treating those who do want me around as if their opinions are worthless. Quite apart from being no way to treat the people who really matter to me, this approach makes no sense. 

It turns out that the price of invulnerability, at least for me, is a life of self-perpetuating misery: I feel alone; feeling alone makes me feel worthless; feeling worthless makes it almost impossible for me to accept that anyone else thinks I have any worth; if I spend enough time insisting that I have no worth people will either start believing it or stop wanting me around because let’s face it: if I don’t want me around, why would anyone else want me around? And then I feel alone, and the whole thing starts all over again.

But vulnerability changes things.

In order to enjoy Act II of La Clemenza, I had to admit my shame (admit that my seat was indeed too small for me) and then assert my worthiness of love and belonging (let somebody help me find a different one) in spite of it. And when I did, the story opened up for me in ways it hadn’t before.

In order to experience Paris at all, I had to embrace vulnerability (accept the pain and fear of being alone and without words.)

On a certain level, you could say I never did this while I was there because I basically walked around broadcasting that I can’t speak well instead of just trying to say what needed to be said and letting the chips fall where they would.  

But life imitates art (thank you Oscar Wilde), and sometimes Titus just shows up out of nowhere and gives you your life back. I know this because I did experience Paris. I did see Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre and the Seine; I did drink superb coffee and eat croissants and really excellent cheese and the best apples I’ve had anywhere. I did all those things. And when I wasn’t holding my lack of language ability up in front of me like a shield, I also had some fun and interesting conversations.

Could I have done more of that if I’d been willing to be vulnerable? If I’d been willing to let the Parisians see for themselves that I didn’t speak their language well and draw their own conclusions about whether or not I was an Ugly American Tourist? Probably. It wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t perfect. I was pretty neurotic, actually. But even so, je suis digne d'amour et d'appartenance. I am worthy of love and belonging.

And so are you.

When has vulnerability paid off for you? When has it been painful? What has it cost you to resist it?

Details... and the Matters that Matter

Westminster Abbey was the first significant thing I saw in London when I spent a semester in England during my junior year of college. I got off the tour bus with my classmates and was immediately accosted by the Abbey’s West Towers. It was the first time a building quite literally took my breath away. As everyone else streamed past me off the bus, I stood still and whimpered, “OhmyGod. Oh, my God. Oh. My. God.”

2013 marked the 50^th anniversary of the death of C. S. Lewis—an author and thinker who has perhaps had more influence on my inner world than anyone else save people I’ve actually personally known. To mark the occasion, a stone was placed in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey in his honor. I will confess that before this event I had not been aware of the existence of Poets’ Corner, but knowing that Lewis was going to be honored in the Abbey was enough for me. I requested and received permission to travel with a wise and wonderful friend, and I began to make preparations for the both of us.

I take preparation very seriously. My preparations for this pilgrimage involved hours of poring over various web pages seeking lodgings, hunting down public transportation options, using Google Maps for things I had never before known it could do; exchanging emails and phone calls with people thousands of miles away to make sure that every detail was as close to being in place as I could make it from another continent.  Those preparations boiled themselves down into a spiral bound book—nearly sixty pages of plane tickets, bus tickets, maps, walking directions, hotel confirmation pages, and the addresses of a dozen good restaurants within walking distance of each venue.

Eventually, these manic preparations gave way to actually getting on a plane and going to England. After getting settled in London, my wise friend and I spent a couple of hours wandering the Abbey the day before Lewis was to be honored so that we could be overwhelmed by one thing at a time: first by the Abbey itself, and then by the momentous event. So we paid 18£ each and slipped inside. I wandered west down the nave, passing tombs or memorials to people like Neville Chamberlain and Isaac Newton. I examined the famous grave of and monument to the Unknown Warrior from World War I; I sat still for a few moments before the choir screen.

Then I followed the nave back the other way, passing the choir stalls and the altar to the eastern end where the monarchs are buried. Edward the Confessor; Henry V; Elizabeth I; Mary I; Mary Queen of Scots; myriad others. As the voice of Jeremy Irons (who narrates the audio guide) told of the horrors and excesses and intrigues and births and beheadings and conniving political maneuverings of those interred there, I shivered and was so grateful not to have lived during their lifetimes that the whole great bubble of my gratitude wouldn’t fit inside me, and I had to walk on.

I turned into the south transept, and there before me was Poets’ Corner. Geoffrey Chaucer’s tiny coffin on my left. On my right, the marble statue of William Shakespeare. A memorial to George Fredric Handel on the opposite wall. And affixed to a pillar at my side, a glowering bust of William Blake kept vigil over a place on the floor covered by a tarpaulin where something was being installed.

It was only then that the full significance of the event really hit me, because it was only then that I really took in what Westminster Abbey is. As presumptuous as it may be for an American woman with barely more than a quarter century of life under her belt to offer an opinion on the purpose and identity of what is arguably the most magnificent gothic cathedral in the world, I do think I have a sense of what Westminster Abbey is. Westminster Abbey is the repository of the crown jewels of British history and culture. Yes, the actual crown jewels are kept in the Tower of London. But the crown jewels of, as it were, the corpus of quintessential Britishness—the best and brightest and wisest and most influential; the most famous (or infamous) of leaders, thinkers, writers, artists, scientists; the cornerstones of the palace of the history of that proud and ancient and magnificent nation—those jewels are memorialized (if not actually interred) in Westminster Abbey.

And therein have they now memorialized one Clive Staples Lewis.

Many Americans’ reaction to this revelation of mine might easily be, “Well… duh.” But I suspect that relatively few of the many Americans who have read something of Lewis really have a sense of the antagonism much of Great Britain has exhibited toward Lewis (during and after his lifetime). I heard a story in the midst of the proceedings at the Abbey about an author who, at first, sold remarkably well in Great Britain, only to have those sales plummet when a critic referred to him as “the next C. S. Lewis.” So truly, his memorialization in Westminster Abbey—this jewel box that holds and represents the best of the best of what England has offered the world—was (and still is) a miracle. A miracle I crossed a continent and an ocean to witness—only to realize I hadn’t understood its full significance when I set out.

I’m beginning, just a little, to recognize how true this is of absolutely everything in my life. I set out thinking I know what’s going to happen; how I’ll deal with it; how I’ll get from point A to point B; thinking I actually know what point A and point B are. Thinking I have some degree of control. And then, sometimes, I get a fleeting glimpse of the big picture. And sometimes the big picture has very little to do with all the details I’ve been trying to have under control.

Getting the details lined up is not a bad thing. To the contrary, it’s a thing I would like to continue doing as much as possible, thank you very much. But I’m learning that in life, as in Westminster Abbey, it is important to slow down and suck the marrow out of what’s right in front of me. And to do this often enough to make a pattern of it—and to leave enough space in my life for those things to be used to clarify my understanding of what’s real and what matters.  

Another thing I’m learning is that, for me, part of how this happens is through writing. Flannery O’Connor once said, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” Putting the moments of life into words is one way to force myself to pay attention to what’s real and what matters; to find shining fragments of what’s real and what matters scattered throughout what would otherwise be a mass of black-and-white details. So while I set out to write a blog about music when I was preparing to launch my album (another detail, ha-ha) I think the purpose of these pages is changing. Music will still be part of the discussion, because the tapestry of my life is richly woven with music of many kinds, and music—and art in general—does fall under the umbrella of What’s Real and What Matters. But it’s not all that does. There are a lot of other fibers in this tapestry that are worth examining; a lot of other matters that matter. 

So to whatever degree I do this henceforth, I will hope to find What’s Real and What Matters in the midst of the details. And when and if I find it, I will announce it… At the Top of my Lungs. 

More Loud and Deep

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

God is not dead nor doth He sleep;

The wrong shall fail,

The right prevail

With peace on earth, good will to men.

My dad is a gifted storyteller. One of my favorite stories he tells is about his college roommate, Richard Zeller. As I understand it, Richard and my dad sat up late one night talking in their dorm room, and somewhere around 1:00 am, a disgruntled neighbor from three or four doors down banged on their door to complain that he had clearly heard every word Richard said for the past several hours, and could they kindly please shut up and go to sleep.

As you’ll know if you followed the link above, Richard Zeller is now “one of America’s foremost baritones.” He’s got a resonant and glorious instrument in that barrel chest of his. And that instrument is the reason his voice carried through three cinderblock dorm room walls to disturb his neighbors. One of the occupational hazards of having that kind of lung capacity is that you don’t always recognize when you’re emitting sound waves strong enough to knock out a musk ox.

I’ve been asked to lower my voice at least twice a week since I was a small child. Not in a nasty way or anything. But there were many occasions when I was asked to stop shouting when, from my own perspective, I obviously wasn’t, and it did happen often enough that I’m still pretty sensitive about it. Case in point: just yesterday, I was dropping something off at my parents’ house and was standing in the living room talking to my mother, and one of my brothers made a comment to the effect that he already had a migraine before I started talking. I may or may not have stomped out of the house.

Granted, things did get better for me once we all understood that, in my mother’s words, I have “Richard Zeller lungs.” In other words: my inherent volume issue it not just an obnoxious and useless personal trait. It’s an obnoxious personal trait which ensures that, most of the time, my voice reaches every seat in the house without a microphone. When the house is a theater or a church, this is a spectacular asset. It is a slightly less spectacular asset when the house is somebody’s actual house… especially when one of the residents of that house already had a migraine.

Another of the stories I’ve heard my dad tell is Grace Paley’s The Loudest Voice. In it, the loudest voice belongs to Shirley Abramowitz, a young Jewess cast as the narrator in her grade school’s Christmas pageant (because of her particularly resonant instrument) much to her mother’s consternation. There’s a scene wherein her father says to her mother, “Does it hurt Shirley to learn to speak up? It does not… she’s not a fool.” To which Shirley replies, albeit not aloud, “I thank you, Papa, for your kindness. It is true about me to this day. I am foolish but I am not a fool.”

I can’t help being naturally resonant. I can’t help being a bit foolish. But I try not to be an all-out fool. So about ten seconds after stomping out of the house, I went back and tried to patch things up… and lower my voice. Well. I did at least manage to patch things up. But rather than get discouraged at my inability to modulate my volume, I am making a choice right now to be grateful that my big voice, like Shirley Abramowitz’s, will soon be used to tell a story—a story that deserves to be told out loud. 

Let Nothing You Dismay

God rest ye, merry gentlemen

Let nothing you dismay

Remember, Christ our Savior

Was born on Christmas Day

To save us all from Satan’s power

When we were gone astray

Oh, tidings of comfort and joy;

Comfort and joy

Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.

My first paid singing gig ever is a month away. I’ve been hired to sing a dozen Christmas songs arranged especially for me by Jimmy Mac (who is the best ever) at my uncle’s church in Palm Desert. I will be, essentially, a headliner. Three hundred people will have nothing to watch or listen to but me… for forty-five minutes.

I’m just the tiniest little bit… terrified.

Don’t get me wrong. Performing is nothing new to me. I started singing in the eighth grade when, for no reason except that it sounded fun to me, I joined the school choir and went out for the spring musical. What I found out years after the fact was that this caused something of a stir with my family, who had no idea that I had a voice. But they never said anything until long afterwards, and the question of whether or not I could sing was not on my mind when I signed up.

That year I was voted choir president and got a lead in the musical, and I’ve been studying voice privately ever since (with a few breaks between teachers). I learned to bend my knees and elongate my neck and never move my shoulders when I breathe. I’ve played Fantine in a youth production of Les Miserablés, a nun in The Sound of Music in college, and, this past year, was a Narrator in a community theater production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I sang second alto in college choir and first soprano in church choir. I’ve sung in churches, schools, and theatres, as well as at weddings, memorial services, and once even a naval pinning ceremony.

All this to say: this isn’t my first rodeo, but I’ve never had to hold an audience’s interest on my own for this long. I’ve never had to come up with clever and engaging things to say between songs before. And I don’t have the kind of gregarious, larger-than-life, rock star personality that thrives in that kind of an environment.

After I agreed to do the Palm Desert gig—and after Jimmy agreed to play with me—the whole thing snowballed. What started out as “show up at our church and sing for us” quickly became three gigs, plus an album (In the Bleak Midwinter, available for purchase December 2013) and even something vaguely resembling a marketing and branding campaign. I’ve got coordinated fonts and images and art (designed by AlarmCat, which is the best ever); a carefully thought out CD table, mailing lists, emailing lists, a Facebook page, this blog, and a mongoose whose pelt has been genetically engineered to match the album art. Okay, maybe not that, but the rest of it is true. God help me, I’m even considering joining Twitter.

And then, about a month ago, as I made lists and wrote emails and spent hours in Jimmy’s studio recording, panic started bubbling up in me. I thought, “What am I doing here? I’m approaching this as though I have something to say to these people; something to offer them. I have nothing to say. Everyone is going to get there and take one look at me and know I’m a poser. Merciful God, why did I sign up for all this?!”

Then, about a week ago, I went to church with a friend and Jimmy Needham played during the service. He was onstage less than ten minutes. He spent about two of those minutes talking and played two songs and then he was done, and when the service was over, I all but ran to his CD table, paid no attention whatsoever to the way it was laid out, and bought every album he had to offer. I almost bought one of those rubber bracelet things too, but I managed to remind myself in time that those things look trashy on me and so saved myself the $5.00.

Why did I do this? Jimmy Needham has a great voice and excellent musicianship, but so do lots of other people. That wasn’t why. The reason I ran outside and dropped $35.00 for five CDs—an extravagant buy for a woman who takes eons to get into new music—lies within the two minutes he stood there talking. I started out listening to him thinking, “Good, this is good; maybe I can figure out from this guy how to talk to a crowd between songs.” But I forgot about picking up speaking tips approximately ten seconds later—not because Jimmy Needham is the last word in eloquence, but because he made me feel so comfortable in my own skin. He wasn’t some big rock star. He was just a guy talking about an experience he had—trying to earn God’s approval by doing stuff, failing miserably, and then realizing, oh, right; that’s not how this works—and then singing a song about it. He was gentle, soft-spoken, unassuming, and had me on the edge of tears in under two minutes.

Walking to the car with my friend, I realized that I had been thinking about this all wrong. Christmas music might well be my favorite music of all time. It is immensely meaningful to me and I get no end of pleasure from singing it—in the car, in the shower, on stage; it doesn’t matter. I love it. I do not need to approach any of these gigs in schmooze mode. All I have to do is stand up straight (with slightly bent knees and a long neck and unmoving shoulders) say, briefly, why I love the song I’m about to sing, and then sing it.

My mother put it this way. “If you can stand there and love people, you won’t need to do anything else.”

I may not be rock star material. But with the right help, I think I can do that much. And if nothing else, I know that if I remember why I’m there, I’ll be much less dismayed.