The Importance of Singing Off-Key
When I was growing up, there was a man at my church who'd had a stroke, some time before we'd moved there. It had left him, most noticeably, with no vocal control-- his timing was off, tonality unexpected, sometimes the words would even come out wrong (once he said "I shall not be healed" instead of "I shall be healed," which was so appallingly wrong I couldn't keep a straight face about it), and his volume was ALL OVER the place, especially if that place was "loud." Yet he insisted on raising that voice forcefully into every song, every chant, and every prayer. It was more than a little distracting for any tactless kids in the congregation, like my sister and I. One day on the way home we were giggling about it-- not making FUN of HIM so much as just laughing at the weirdness (I can at LEAST claim that we had no cruel intentions), and our dad gave a sympathetic but sort of sad smile and said gently, "I've heard he used to be a wonderful singer, with the most beautiful voice." You could hear that, when you thought about it-- the richness behind the technical flubs. The PASSION. The man LOVED to sing, loved to raise his voice in prayer, and he wasn't about to stop just because he couldn't get it to WORK as well as he used to.
This morning at church we sang a song that we'd sung frequently at my childhood church-- it's "Like a Shepherd," if you know it-- you know that random sustained high note in the third verse? That sudden six-step leap that your average untrained singer is NEVER going to hit right no matter how often it's on the program? I've been battling laryngitis all week and could barely sing as it was, so I looked ahead to that note a LITTLE warily. And then I heard, in my head, the way that man had always sung that note when I was a kid-- the sudden huge slide to a blaring off-key finish. It made me smile and get teary at the same time, and I got over the nervousness and dove right onward-- and actually managed to hit it okay. Inspired by a now-dead man whose name I don't even know, whom I heard sing this song, poorly, decades ago. The music continues.
It reminded me-- and rather proved the point-- of something I read just last night. I've been MEANING (but too busy) to tell you about this book ever since I started reading it (if you're my Facebook friend you might have noticed a cryptic reference to an exercise I was doing from it a few weeks back, when I needed your opinions on me and swore I wasn't fishing for compliments but actually doing a writing exercise, and I SAID I'd explain eventually but in all honesty I don't think I'm going to get to explaining that part today, either). The book is The Soul Tells a Story by Vinita Hampton Wright, which I read about at Kristi Holl's Writers' First Aid blog. She'd (Kristi Holl) pulled a list of questions from the book for this post, and I thought, "Whoa. These questions are WEIRDLY HARD." So I knew I'd have to track the full book down, because it surely had something to teach me (and in my journal I actually DO tend to call it "The Hard Questions Book").
The subtitle is "Engaging Creativity with Spirituality in the Writing Life," and it's published by a Christian press, which I suppose is the only reason the book is not more well-known in the mainstream writing community (although Walking on Water is, and that's got possibly even a MORE spiritual bent, but then Madeleine L'Engle is a bit more well-known a name. And Bird by Bird and If You Want to Write are, like, THE writers' inspirational titles, and neither of them exactly shy away from spirituality, either. Which is basically the whole point of THIS book, so let me get out of this parenthesis). The premise is that creativity (not just writing, not even just art-- CREATIVITY in general) and spirituality are intrinsically linked, and developing one will help to develop the other and vice versa.
This book is GORGEOUS and WISE. I keep wanting to post quotes from it, but then it gets to the point that there is TOO MUCH I WANT TO QUOTE, and I'd basically be quoting the ENTIRE BOOK. Basically, it's LOVELY. It's got ALL these quotable moments, when something wise and deep that you didn't realize before is said in a way that you know instantly is Truth and it's also beautiful. But I haven't got time today to tell you about all of it; I just want to focus on this bit I read last night:
I like to think of creativity as a celestial drama in which each of us walks on and off stage at various points. It's a huge show with trillions of acts, big and small, scaling the centuries and the cultures, informing humanity constantly and at multiple levels. You and I dip into the action as we respond to the smaller dramas in our own soul. We answer single soft voices, never knowing where our individual efforts fall within the overarching story line.
When we delve into our creativity, we are responding to something that's bigger than us.... When you respond to your creative calling, you are doing something that is necessary for the world. It may be necessary in a big way-- say a series of newspaper articles that can help shape the consciousness of a generation. Or it may be necessary in small ways-- perhaps a charcoal sketch that brings you, the artist, healing.... Creative works are called out by cultural and personal needs that are too deep and intuitive to be obvious every time....
...If you've ever participated in [a creative ensemble, like a band or a theater troupe, where everyone's individual efforts combine into a whole bigger than its parts], remember them as you begin a project on your own. Just assume that there are other voices, images and phrases joining your own work, somewhere and somehow. ASsume that whatever you do will rhyme with what others are doing and will do, or with what others have already done. In someone's life your turn of phrase will make a difference, simply because it follows another turn of phrase by another writer at another key point in this person's life.
See, I could just keep going. It was HARD sticking to the right-here-relevant bits and not typing out the entire section of chapter. But here's the point:
A quarter-century ago there was a man who loved to sing, even though he couldn't do it technically well. A little girl heard him giving it his all anyway, and a quarter-century later, that now-woman remembered, and she sang a little louder herself. The music grew. Who knows what effect each bit of song has on the whole? Who can say that even the most off-key note can't help the eternal music of the universe keep playing?
This morning at church we sang a song that we'd sung frequently at my childhood church-- it's "Like a Shepherd," if you know it-- you know that random sustained high note in the third verse? That sudden six-step leap that your average untrained singer is NEVER going to hit right no matter how often it's on the program? I've been battling laryngitis all week and could barely sing as it was, so I looked ahead to that note a LITTLE warily. And then I heard, in my head, the way that man had always sung that note when I was a kid-- the sudden huge slide to a blaring off-key finish. It made me smile and get teary at the same time, and I got over the nervousness and dove right onward-- and actually managed to hit it okay. Inspired by a now-dead man whose name I don't even know, whom I heard sing this song, poorly, decades ago. The music continues.
It reminded me-- and rather proved the point-- of something I read just last night. I've been MEANING (but too busy) to tell you about this book ever since I started reading it (if you're my Facebook friend you might have noticed a cryptic reference to an exercise I was doing from it a few weeks back, when I needed your opinions on me and swore I wasn't fishing for compliments but actually doing a writing exercise, and I SAID I'd explain eventually but in all honesty I don't think I'm going to get to explaining that part today, either). The book is The Soul Tells a Story by Vinita Hampton Wright, which I read about at Kristi Holl's Writers' First Aid blog. She'd (Kristi Holl) pulled a list of questions from the book for this post, and I thought, "Whoa. These questions are WEIRDLY HARD." So I knew I'd have to track the full book down, because it surely had something to teach me (and in my journal I actually DO tend to call it "The Hard Questions Book").
The subtitle is "Engaging Creativity with Spirituality in the Writing Life," and it's published by a Christian press, which I suppose is the only reason the book is not more well-known in the mainstream writing community (although Walking on Water is, and that's got possibly even a MORE spiritual bent, but then Madeleine L'Engle is a bit more well-known a name. And Bird by Bird and If You Want to Write are, like, THE writers' inspirational titles, and neither of them exactly shy away from spirituality, either. Which is basically the whole point of THIS book, so let me get out of this parenthesis). The premise is that creativity (not just writing, not even just art-- CREATIVITY in general) and spirituality are intrinsically linked, and developing one will help to develop the other and vice versa.
This book is GORGEOUS and WISE. I keep wanting to post quotes from it, but then it gets to the point that there is TOO MUCH I WANT TO QUOTE, and I'd basically be quoting the ENTIRE BOOK. Basically, it's LOVELY. It's got ALL these quotable moments, when something wise and deep that you didn't realize before is said in a way that you know instantly is Truth and it's also beautiful. But I haven't got time today to tell you about all of it; I just want to focus on this bit I read last night:
I like to think of creativity as a celestial drama in which each of us walks on and off stage at various points. It's a huge show with trillions of acts, big and small, scaling the centuries and the cultures, informing humanity constantly and at multiple levels. You and I dip into the action as we respond to the smaller dramas in our own soul. We answer single soft voices, never knowing where our individual efforts fall within the overarching story line.
When we delve into our creativity, we are responding to something that's bigger than us.... When you respond to your creative calling, you are doing something that is necessary for the world. It may be necessary in a big way-- say a series of newspaper articles that can help shape the consciousness of a generation. Or it may be necessary in small ways-- perhaps a charcoal sketch that brings you, the artist, healing.... Creative works are called out by cultural and personal needs that are too deep and intuitive to be obvious every time....
...If you've ever participated in [a creative ensemble, like a band or a theater troupe, where everyone's individual efforts combine into a whole bigger than its parts], remember them as you begin a project on your own. Just assume that there are other voices, images and phrases joining your own work, somewhere and somehow. ASsume that whatever you do will rhyme with what others are doing and will do, or with what others have already done. In someone's life your turn of phrase will make a difference, simply because it follows another turn of phrase by another writer at another key point in this person's life.
See, I could just keep going. It was HARD sticking to the right-here-relevant bits and not typing out the entire section of chapter. But here's the point:
A quarter-century ago there was a man who loved to sing, even though he couldn't do it technically well. A little girl heard him giving it his all anyway, and a quarter-century later, that now-woman remembered, and she sang a little louder herself. The music grew. Who knows what effect each bit of song has on the whole? Who can say that even the most off-key note can't help the eternal music of the universe keep playing?