And Let's Not Forget

I used to sing all the time, everywhere, anyplace. In college and in high school. I was completely unabashed and just sang. I played the piano everyday in high school and in the dorm at college everyday as well (story of me and pianos I'll save for another time). I played my clarinet fairly often too. I lived with these two wish-we-were-musicians metal heads (and my Muslim friend Fares---if you can believe that) my senior year in college. I used to pick up their guitars, and just play. It irked them that I could pick them up and just make something up.

Then I had this incredibly insecure wannabee musician boyfriend (I was no pillar of security at the time). He had a guitar (which ended up being my first one, and I still have it) that he tried to play, but really, he couldn't. The truth is, he just wanted it to be easy, and it is not. Even I, when I actually tried to learn the correct way, was very very very frustrated for a good three months---but I stuck it out. He did not. Anyway, he ended up playing the African drums. He was a big hippie. Now when I think about it, I get so mad that I put up with his shit. But I was young.

Anyway, we always had to listen to his African/Caribbean drum music wherever we went. Never anything else. Once, on our way to Ithaca he actually let me listen to some James Taylor (the reason I wanted to learn guitar in the first place---to play his stuff) (I wasn't well at the time, so it was his attempt to appease me). Of course, I began to sing. Charlie (I just have to write his name, I can't help it) said to me (nice, non-abusive man that he was...hrrrrmmmm)
Can you just stop singing? You're ruining the song. Your voice is too "perfect."

What?? But the worst thing is, I did stop. I never sang again in front of him, even when he'd try to get me to, to show me off to his friends (who, incidently, all told me later on that they told him he treated me like shit and that they hated it). In fact, because of that comment (and other serious things going on in my life at the time), I just stopped singing if anyone could hear me.

One day, my friend Melinda came over to visit. She was a fairly new friend I'd met at my job in a group home. She didn't know that I sang. Anyway, she heard me singing by accident as she came up to my apartment. She begged me to sing for her, but I just couldn't. This went on for awhile, and finally, I made her go in the other room, and I sang.

That was it. Melinda wouldn't give up until I sang for her, in front of her. She is the reason I started to sing again for people. Writing about the other stuff just reminded me of this. How I was so not myself back then (this is what oppression does to a person). She was always in my audience when I first started to play open mikes and coffee houses. She's one of my very finest friends. I am very lucky.