My former partner was a musician with seemingly perfect pitch, his whole identity caught up in being a folksinger, which left a little room for me to sing. Though he didn’t actively discourage me from participating, he didn’t seem to want anyone to mess with his gig.
So I became the dog's body. The roadie. I was the one who did all the background stuff from advertising, and social media, to CD design to booth and merchandise design. And I was the one who researched the music, designed the jacket, bought, burned and printed all his CD media as well. I made thousands of CDs over the course of 20 years. We sold them at Highland games for petty cash, they never fully paid for themselves.
The problem is of course, was that folks were no longer buying CDs. They wanted to download everything—which changed our relationship to being able to make any money at all off of the music. CD Baby was a good idea whose time came and went. No one wanted to buy a business card with a code for a downloadable album.
Most Highland Games don’t pay unknown artists to perform. Neil found it was difficult to break into the game because established musicians were holding down their respective coveted stages, including Alex Beaton who was instrumental at establishing folksingers at the Highland games. But Neil was lucky in that he was hired to be an emcee at a few games. Especially for the Las Vegas Highland Games. But that fee barely covered the cost of travel across the state.
But we were valiant and determined. We began small, closer to home with the Pleasanton Games, and Arbor Day in Fremont. I enjoyed those days traveling up and down the coast to Ben Lomond, Seaside, Pomona, Costa Mesa, Preston, Arizona, and Enumclaw in Washington—even across the Mojave Desert to Las Vegas. I grew to love visiting the desert in spring. I liked being a booth wench and belonging to the Scottish culture circus of a larger roadie family we were all part of.
But it all came at a cost. And the cost was to myself, my art, and my own self-confidence. One could make a case that Neil was stingy, across-the-board—with his affections, his time, and certainly with money, I was never paid for my services, but I was expected to take on the burden of supporting his career. It was all about him. He was trussed up in his own evolving melodrama of self, exacerbated by attempting to cure his bouts of chronic depression with Siddha Yoga instead of medication.
He is, or should I say, was an actor, as well as a Scottish folksinger. So his whole identity is tied up with being THE performer. The star of the show. And when on the stage of life, the stage is all that there is. So I began to withdraw from him. Make my own way. I began to carve out time for myself which was met with gaslighting and resentment.
Luckily, I have always been a writer. Let me rephrase that. I have been a writer since I was in my 30s. I never stopped writing poetry. But it took creating a blog for me to become comfortable with writing prose. So, the word became my sole art form with occasional skirmishes into art, my first love.
How did we come to be a couple joined at the hip with our careers? In 1997, we were in a horrific car accident on his birthday, and I had a punctured lung. He was worse off than me, with a smashed face, so I moved in to take care of him and never left. It took an extremely long time for me to get my breath back. And I don’t think I ever fully got my breath back. So it is an oddity, here I am, singing at 70.
Recently, I accidentally got invited to a virtual Lark Music Camp by Celia Ramsey, who gave a delightful voice class. And she was so encouraging. I realized I could do it, even if I never sing again in public, though I do have a party piece that I whip out from time to time. Just keeping the breath alive, especially during these Covid times, is of critical importance. So here I am at 70, singing as if my life depended on it. This very breath, inspiration, this conspiracy, to breathe together.
Addendum: Because I am a poet working in the schools my voice is a teaching tool. So I think of this new venture as strengthening my teaching voice. Over Christmas, while housesitting, I made a small video of myself singing, called Weave and Mend. Lacking an audience, I sang it to the cat who seem to like it. But the point is, it’s now or never. We are on the slippery slope of the end of the world. You might as well jump into the fray, do all those things on your bucket list.
One of the things that really struck me that Celia said, was, Don’t compare your work to others, who have made a final rendition of a song because that is their very best, most extraordinary work. And singing is an exercise, you need to do a daily, it takes practice.
Luckily for me, having to use my voice as a teaching tool, I at least had some chops to pull out of the box. I took another class at the second virtual Lark Music Camp last weekend, an acapella sean nos singing class with another teacher, because I wanted to learn more about the form. It was interesting, I learned something, but I gained far more takeaway knowledge from Celia‘s second class. The idea that something is doable if you practice.
The other instructor leading the sean nos class was more interesting in getting us to say the Irish right than singing. Which is OK. But she was also bashing those of us who learned Irish in a traditional setting, whether academic or from tapes. I found that a little offputting. And her repertoire is from Ulster so I can’t really say anything about it, but she certainly didn’t pronounce every word right.
She certainly did not know anything about the mechanics of Irish, why something is pronounced a certain way. The only thing she latched onto was that H change the intervocalic sound. Which truly was a really good pointer for most people. And she was teaching to accomplished musicians, not to rank beginners.
I am not schooled in music. I have never really studied it. I played the guitar rather badly and sang to suit myself. True, I was in a high school chorus, and after graduation, I continued with the San Geronimo Valley choir, but I don’t have the music chops. I just love to sing. It’s also safe to say that after Neil kicked me out and left me homeless at the end of 2018, I could listen to any music at all so, the fact that I’m even interested in music is a major endeavor. That’s 5 to 6 years I have been silent. Long enough.
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