I blame "American Pie" by Don McLean for first brushing my infant brain with a love for music.
My parents' upstairs apartment neighbor in Arlington, Va.,used to blast that iconic eight-minute ballad night and day while I slept in my crib. Perhaps this fellow provided the impetus for my parents to hustle into a suburban split level, while forever branding me with melody, pathos and the mystery of dry levies.
In my first elementary school, most of my teachers were burnouts who couldn't wait to retire. In this dreary environment, Mrs. Thompson, our music teacher, stood out like the Technicolor in "The Wizard of Oz." For Black History Month she taught us to create syncopated rhythms by clapping out the syllables in the names of famous black Americans. HAR-RI-ET TUB-MAN. Without shaming me, she made me redo my Scott Joplin report when I made up most of the facts. Most of all, Mrs. Thompson never told me I sang "Fame" too loud in chorus. In fact, she loved my enthusiasm for lyrics and music.
I desperately wanted to play and read music, so my parents bought me a flute, which is now covered with dust in our closet. I took lessons for three years, but I wasn't into practicing. My art suffered and I gradually gave up. Perhaps I was also discouraged when my mother told me I sounded "wooden." Around this time, I was having trouble adjusting to my new elementary school's music teacher, Mrs. Saldana.
She wore smooth leather boots, wide belts and her shoulder-length hair shone with perfection. Mrs. Saldana would announce in front of my classmates, "Alice, you're too loud and off-key. Try bringing your voice on level with everyone else's." I complied for about a week and then I was back to my old tricks. When she cast me as the witch in Hansel and Gretel, pitchiness was a requisite. Later in high school I tried out for a few musicals, but never got a part. As with my flute, I lost interest in public singing. Instead, I sang to music videos loudly in my room.
After Kurt Cobain's death late in my senior year of college, I felt lost on the musical landscape; then I heard folk singer Mary Chapin Carpenter. She sang about faded shirts, pens that ran out of ink and your boyfriend's ex-girlfriend who's back in town. Carpenter had a direct feed into my post-college angst, and for the next five years I only listened to her and other country artists.
When an opportunity came to sing a Mary Chapin Carpenter song at a Christmas work party, I jumped at the chance. I had never sung karaoke before but that didn't matter. My co-workers saw me in a new way and didn't boot me off the stage. I didn't have another chance at singing karaoke until I moved to Myrtle Beach, where I sang every Wednesday. My karaoke singing became my creative and stress outlet. I often thought about what Mrs. Saldana had told me years before, but what did she know?
I have sung karaoke in Raleigh, but it seemed every song I chose sounded off-key. Maybe I was finally hearing what everyone else always had, or maybe singing had fed my soul at exactly the right time in my life. Now I was full and ready to find something else.
Today I use music as a teaching tool, a la Mrs. Thompson, in my creative writing classes. Music has a way of showing up when you need it, and even when you don't think you do.
