How Can I Keep From Singing
I’ve joked with Alex, Peace music leader, my friend and music partner, that he has to promise to tell me when I stop sounding “right.” I’m only half joking, since I hope sincerely that he’ll have the hard conversation with me when my voice begins to wobble, or the notes at the top end of my range (probably about an octave lower than when I started gutting out pop music a couple of decades ago) turn weak and forced. That was far off in the future when we first started playing music together. I can remember growing up in church, singing in all kinds of choirs, and hearing what happens to many, not all, voices as they age. I gotta say, it scares me. After all, singing is a big part of who I am.
On a recent late summer night, I had the opportunity to hear one of my favorite bands at the famed Red Rocks amphitheater outside of Denver, Colorado. The two women who front the group are brilliant songwriters and phenomenal guitarists, and they’re singers. We’re the same age. One of them sounds exactly as she always has, tough and kind of angry, but almost indistinguishable from the CD’s I’ve had since college and live shows I’ve seen in recent years. The other, my favorite, well… she just doesn’t sound the same. There is a wobble that wasn’t there before, the top notes are strained and faded. Through tears, I sang along with the crowd. They play in arenas and I sing in church, but it’s a roll of the dice any way you figure it.
As the set went on, I worried that the band might have become a nostalgia act, that people were giving them a “pass” to relive a little of their youth. There was probably some of that, but the real truth is that the music is still great. The old songs are as powerful and meaningful now as they were when they were written, and fans are still connecting with the words and with the women on stage. Live music, whether at a spectacular venue or in your home church, isn’t an exhibit in a museum. It isn’t meant to stay the same, and it isn’t fair to expect it to. That’s true for so many things–relationships, talents, aging bodies. If you are open to it, you can see that there is beauty in the new thing, too, shaped by wisdom and made richer by experience.
Dear One, thank you for the wonder and mystery of music, for shared experiences, and deeper understanding. Help us to be gracious and patient with ourselves and to see the beauty in change.
Eli is a founding member of Peace, where she hopes to be singing every chance she gets for a long, long time.