All my childhood and teens I sang, sang all the time. Played guitar. Music was the thing that brought me to life, and I wanted nothing more than to buy a PA system and join a band. The singers I listened to shaped my style. Grace Slick, Tina Turner, Ann Wilson, Janis Joplin, Janis Ian, Joni Mitchell.
My dad always encouraged me in my music, always asked me to play and sing for him, always got happy when I learned a new song or wrote one. He especially loved that. He gifted me my Harmony Sovereign for Christmas when I was twelve and paid for guitar lessons twice a week for several years. He was my biggest fan.
When I was fourteen I won a school wide talent show singing the 59th Street Bridge Song by Simon and Garfunkel and accompanying myself on my Harmony Sovereign guitar. That was the kind of kid I was. Music was where I lived.
I would watch the street musicians in Harvard Square, hungering to be playing, but too damn self conscious to even consider it. Then one day I was really high on weed and very relaxed, and I started singing along with a musician who was playing John Prine's Angel From Montgomery. The reaction of the other people listening, and the musician asking me to join him in more songs, opened the floodgates and made me feel like performing publicly would be a fun thing to do.
I set my future ambition to be a professional musician, to sing, to play music, to share the joy of melody with the world.
In my mid teens, I would play music in Harvard Square. I never put my guitar case out for donations because I was too self-conscious about it, I just played for me and my friends. Sometimes, though, somebody would walk up and hand me fifty cents or a dollar. That was coffee money!
Patti and I usually just hung out with our friends, smoking joints behind Out of Town News, getting coffee at the Mug and Muffin, playing music in the Pit, and generally having a good time. Those were the years when I thought music was going to carry me forward forever.
Then came the car wreck when I was seventeen. I went through the windshield and took three hundred stitches to my forehead. My throat slammed into the edge of the dash. Paralyzed one of my vocal cords. I couldn't sing for more than one or two songs after that before my throat would hurt bad, and I would start hitting bad notes. Me, who has perfect pitch. It was devastating. My hoped for future career was up in smoke, I had an immense scar on my forehead, and I had no hopes any more.
Over the years, I gave up singing for the most part. It was too emotionally painful.
As my voice got rougher and weaker, I fell into depression about singing and wouldn't even try, which probably resulted in helping my voice get progressively worse, along with the pack a day habit. Heavy smoking, injury, never using my voice, it went really bad. I was croaking when I sang Happy Birthday or whatever. It was bad. It felt like something that used to be mine had slipped away and I could not get it back.
Well… lately I have been singing along with the radio. I am also singing while I practice ukulele. And my voice is improving. I have my projection back. I am on key. I can sing a little longer every day.
And I am blown away.
I am not going to be a big rock star, not at 61 years old and in poor health, but I have my music back.
Yesterday, Sam told me I was sounding pretty good.
My heart soared.
