#1 

Every winter there comes a time when I feel, I am, grey. The dreary days lap over me like waves, seeping into my skin, drowning me slowly in winter’s bleak unending expanse. Today is one of those days. Swimming inside my oversized sweats, also grey, I listen to my recording from a season past, and a gauzy image emerges. I close my eyes and remember…

Lying on the bed upstairs in my family’s Cape Cod cottage, it’s history a hazy cloud of facts, like the night critters chirping away outside. Grandma would rattle off this history at odd intervals throughout my childhood, names and dates that leak through my sieve-like brain. I have 3 odd jobs and no friends; this is my first real independence at age 19, abandoned on Massachusetts’ flexed bicep. I am alone. I read voraciously and right now am about half way through my second book of the solitary summer – Catch 22. Its pages are inexplicably both dry to the touch and moist with humidity. I relish it. I know Heller is making witty and biting commentary, this I know, but I am not a critical thinker with explanatory powers, rather I allow myself to be satisfied with the knowledge that it is clever satire, enjoyable to read yet honorable to have read. This I never outgrow.

The hot air covers me like a blanket. I could sleep downstairs where the air is less heavy, but I’ve adapted to sleeping naked, sheetless and belly up so I can analyze the knot-holes in the steeply sloped ceiling. Dad always jokes about seeing through these thin painted walls of our lean-to turned summer getaway. He refuses to rent it to anyone who asks but occasionally lends it to close friends. We aren’t able to explain that our “summer cottage” is not what their mind’s eye has conjured: a Country Living magazine version of the word “cottage”: outdoor patio, floral cushioned wicker furniture, maybe a blini on the table inside a tall crystal flute – a ruby raspberry waiting at the bottom like a Valentine’s kiss.

When Mom is out here she spends a full day with a rag and a bucket of bleach water, scrubbing the walls in a losing battle against mildew so Dad and I can survive with only limited allergy attacks. I’ve contracted lymes disease twice here, shooting my small plastic bow and arrow at countless Ritz crackers boxes perched on the side of the “sand dunes”, the place where teenagers go to party because nobody can hear them. Even now, when I’ve had a taste or two of liquor, the shattered budweiser bottles puncture my world, littering it with reality .

But not in the dream, with my eyes closed during the grey of winter. In the dream I am still on the threshold of womanhood, though I don’t know it yet. I am playing pretend, pretend loneliness, my jobs, my self righteous vegetarian diet of the cheapest Stop&Shop staples; these are each triumphant symbols. I am languishing in the hot chirping soup of a sweltering summer’s rite of passage.

I cannot tell a lie. The only aural media that I physically put on my ipod recently has been This American Life, The Moth, CoffeeBreak French and Stuff You Should Know. I’ve been out of the music scene these last years despite generally loving music. From oldies to punk to emo to hard core, I spent years of my life coveting cds, then my vinyl; I even accrued an impressive ticket stub collection. For awhile I refused to admit that my first big concert ever was The Backstreet Boys (AND I LOVED IT) , while my second was Z100′s Jingle Ball (saw Shaniah, BoysIIMen, Brian Setzer, 98º and so many more un?forgettables). Neither would I tell you that I generally enjoy skanking at a ska show or belting out all the lyrics at a They Might Be Giants more than I enjoy shoegazing to Arcade Fire or glazing over during Sigur Ros. Don’t get me wrong, I have an appreciation for it all, or most of it anyway, but I suppose my core nerdiness is unavoidable.

That dork within me was inescapable this month as well. Dragging myself to a show or trolling the internet for new tunes felt like a chore and not a joy and despite loving WFHB’s music picks and opening my ears to world music, a genre I never through I’d enjoy, I fell short of the goal. My memory of the things I did hear lapsed and I only ventured into one live show, a house show, for a friend of a friend’s bachelor party – and even then I found myself lying flat on the pavement watching the sky and listening to the thunder as a storm rolled in in the parking lot of the apartment building next door. In fact, skinny dipping with the musicians was by far the best part of the evening.

But over the months following this challenge I have paid closer attention to the harmonies that invade my world. I began to sing in the shower again, to whistle en route to most destinations and even picked up my guitar for a bat of an eye. I love to sing, I realize. Why have I become so distant from it?

Imagine a young scrawny girl, 13 and awkward as can be. She is an epic 3 years shy of her first real kiss. And like many dweeby middle schoolers she is in the school musical. She gets a solo, possibly the smallest most insignificant solo ever awarded, but it’s a fucking SOLO…during the FINALE! The song is, “I Believe I can Fly;” you know it. And there’s that spot at the end, just before the reprise; all she has to do is raise her arms in glory and, on an off-beat, “because I believe in yooo.oo.”  On the night of the show her parents sit in audience as the only musical member of their family strides down the aisles and on stage. She performs wearing her mother’s wedding dress. The show goes well, energy in the house is palpable and in the cast files for their last song. There she stands, her solo debut minutes away. The key change approaches, no problem, she knows she’s in tune, her time comes and she steps to the front of the stage, radiant. She counts the measures of 4/4, all she has to do is wait one beat, but she is nervous, her breath comes too soon and by the time she hits that glorious “yoo.ooo” she realizes her mistake – she is a half measure off. It is a traumatic failure, and no adult’s forgiveness will outweigh the scowling and disappointment of her own pimpled peers.

It is the last time I really sing in public – exiled to the stage crew for the rest of my days. Ten years of church choir fades into the background, I practically give away both my clarinet and saxophone in a garage sale. My piano sits in another person’s house, a stranger to my fat fingers.

So I guess this month, originally to me, was about getting back into being on top of the music scene in a place where music is hailed, where concerts are copious, where everyone you know plays an instrument, has a band, is a recording engineer, works for a record label. And it brought me back, back to where I did not want to be…embarrassed of my lack of musicality and frustrated with chasing the caboose of the pretension train. So I gave up about as soon as I started. I blame myself really, I’m too sensitive about such matters, have let too many boyfriends make me feel bad about myself and generally make too big a deal myself out of other people’s tastes…call it an ego problem; I’m working on it.

But I did follow through on a few accounts; I started to sing, whistle and dance again. I don’t even think I knew until this month that most of the songs I truly have memorized are Beatles songs, songs I sang in church choir and songs from the many musicals I’ve seen. So in the shower, grappling for the day’s aria, there I’d be belting, “Moses supposes his toes are roses.” Riding my bike, to and fro, I whistle Edward Elgar, Frankie Carle or, admittedly, Disney’s Alice in Wonderland soundtrack (a movie I too often quote as well). And the dancing! LotusFest here in Bloomington (a festival of which I have been shamefully remiss) satisfied an urge I forgot I had. There is nothing like twisting, jumping, jiving and generally letting loose with your friends, especially to a little ska-infused swing. For hours we danced until we sweat, our toes hurt and calves ached from jumping. And in that crowd-pulsing moment I realized that I do still love music, but, like with most things, I hate the judgment, I hate the pretention and I despise the incredulity at that which I haven’t heard. So I end this with no recommendations (except maybe my new love – Macklemore – in a onesy!), no top ten, and little success according to the outlines of my June Jingles challenge; but please, if you would, feel free to join me with this highly lofty piece of musical art that me, you and all the shirtless frat boys can jam out to: