Para Cantar Es Vivir

To sing is to live. And I’m singing again – so it follows that life seems a little richer.

There have been times in my life when I just couldn’t sing. When the act of making music brought too many emotions to the surface; when I would sit and stare at my guitar with longing but know that a single chord would make me weep.

One of my life’s deep ironies though is that the physical act of making music, singing and playing, is also the only thing that can sweep that emotion away; make it manageable; make it dissipate. Once you get through the initial fear of your own feelings and the first physical reaction to their surfacing – your strength comes back and rescues you.

It’s something that Tim Winton captured perfectly in Dirt Music; when Luther Fox first reconnects with music through that lone plucked fishing wire. He plays and plays it until all of his emotion has surfaced and he throbs some wild dance full of years of pent-up feeling.

I haven’t felt quite that bad this last year and I have been playing music for myself – but I recently found a group of people here in the Sols who play the sort of “Dirt Music” I like (anything you can sit on your verandah and play) – and more particularly anything you can find a harmony to blend with.

It’s magic. And better still, I have found someone to sing with whose voice seems to blend perfectly with mine; quite a rare thing in this world and something I have missed since my best singing buddy embarked on a career not quite so conducive to drinking and late-night backyard guitaring; motherhood.

There is something almost indescribable in the pure pleasure that accompanies singing in harmony. It’s what I imagine the cognitive process of flying feels like; an effortless soaring – your being in tune and resonating with everything around it. And sometimes you hit a sweet spot where you could just curl up and stay forever. For example, I discovered what I think is the sweetest spot in all the world when I was about 15 and encountered Vivaldi’s Choral piece “In Memoria Aeterna” for the first time. There’s a bit when the altos are mimicking cellos and singing sweeping chords to the words “erit – Justus – non ti – mebit “ and the sopranos mimic violins and sing melodic runs on top of that harmony to “Ab auditione mala non ti mebit.- non ti mebit- non ti mebit”. I know it doesn’t come across well in my description but trust me – it’s always felt for me like my feet are lifting of the ground. You can download it from itunes and you really should – but there’s nothing that compares to singing it. In fact, if any close friends who are reading this happen to be around when I pass from this life, please remember that I’d like that played at my funeral!

So yeah, the power may continue to go out regularly and the water turn off too. And it may be frustrating and challenging and far away from home (if not in actual distance then in every other way) but singing has made the world of difference. Again.