If I had to pick one of my absolute greatest disappointments in life, it was realizing that I would never be a great musician. I wanted so much to be a great singer. But by middle school my total loss of my voice and my vocal nodes ended that dream. I felt the music so deeply in my bones, but my body couldn’t express it. Even in band, I made my name by knocking myself off the risers with my own horn in a bit of passionate playing. I was never that good at the sax, but I sure loved playing it. First my size and inability to Reach the keys held me back, then my many tears and injuries in my fingers, my tendons that would sometimes stick in one position. The scar tissue that made my fingers move slowly and clumsily.
I wanted so, so badly to give the wildest, most passionate performances. But if I did my voice would be gone, my fingers would lock up. It broke my heart. I blew out my voice again and again for years, struggling against that wall of my own physical weakness. And eventually even just mild casual singing began to take a toll on me and I had to do it less and less. And one of my greatest, purest joys and dreams slowly sank into painful forgetfulness.
I wasn’t born to have a beautiful voice. Even I can tell that by listening to myself. I’m a competent singer, I can make myself approximate things that are really a long ways from what I should be able to do or sound like. But that quality of power and beauty is something you have to have the raw materials for. And my materials collapsed. And it still pains me. I still have that fire in my heart that yearns to be united with a song to find its ultimate expression. I wish so so so much I could have a voice like Josh Groban. I would give almost anything for it. But I don’t. I can just barely conserve what I have. I can only let it out occasionally or briefly, restrained. I can’t give voice to my passion. My heart would just ache along with the music when I would listen to my mother’s cds. Richard Clayderman especially. I could tell they were songs of great feeling.
I feel like somewhere on the other side of reality there’s still that dream, that different world where I was as I dreamed I was meant to be. Tall, unbroken by asthma, allergies, joint problems, a strong and pure voice without pain. Confident. Without all the memories of struggles. Able to lay the world before him. Ha. Probably a total jerk who’s absolutely full of himself. Me as I wish I had been. Me as I wished I would grow up to be. I never imagined that I was at my strongest and most unbreakable then. I was glorious in my own way. I’m not sure what happened to me. Sometimes when I listen to the music I can still remember what it was to be that way. I remember a heart on fire, unbroken. A passion nothing could dampen, no matter how much it was stamped upon. But somehow my fires died down. All our fires die down, in time. Mine were just ahead of the curve.
Mr Nobody's Patented Blog 