The Plaintive Cry Of A Working Man

David Johannsen--"We Gotta Get Outta This Place/Don't Bring Me Down/It's My Life (live)" (mp3)

I wasn't supposed to be in the house.

But I had left the garage door open so that I could come back in, check on the dog, get some things, maybe change out the laundry or put away some groceries.

We didn't expect to be ordered out of our house this late in the game, and certainly not on the 4th of July, but such is the nature of the home renovation business that when you get offered a "good thing," you take the pain and inconvenience. And we decided that another coat of polyeurethane on the wood floors was a good thing, even though it necessitated moving all of the furniture off of the first floor (again!) and our being out of our house for that most patriotic of holidays.

We were ready for them at 7:45AM. They arrived closer to 11AM, after a number of calls from me to my contractor. When I stopped at home the first time, I could hear the high pitch of the sanders and buffers inside. I saw the guy we had consulted with on Friday walking out to his blue truck.

"There you are," he said. "Sorry about not being here earlier. If you only knew the stuff that's been going on since I last saw you."
"No problem," I said. "We appreciate you being here on the 4th."
He continued toward his truck. "In fact, if you want to take a ten-minute ride with me, I'll show you."
"No, my family's coming to pick me up. We're killing time today."
"Where ya goin'?"

"Costco."
"Oh, Costco. Wow."

You never know what might or might not happen if you don't take that ride. I didn't. And Costco was closed for the 4th.

So there I was back at my house with a bag of groceries and ice and beer for a minimalist cookout. Just the blue truck was still there, the rest of the floor guys off to pursue their holiday. I walked around back, laden with my stuff, to the garage door.

Upstairs, I could hear the music playing while he worked as I started put my groceries in the downstairs refrigerator. But for some reason the overhead light was out, and then I noticed the refrigerator light was out, too, so I headed for the new switch box in the laundry.

And that's when I realized that there was no radio. He was up there singing as he swabbed the decks with potent chemicals. And so I stood there in the dark and listened. This guy, this floor refinisher, had one of the finest voices I have ever heard, probably a tenor, rich and strong. I couldn't recognize what he was singing, but it was a complex melody. There was even something lilting, Harry Belafonte-ish about it, as if it was kind of a call and response, but there was no response. So I stepped closer to the bottom of the stairs to see if I could hear better.

Oh, yes. The words I could make out were things like "those fucking assholes" and "they don't realize" and "full of shit" and "why don't they." I was a little shocked, not by the words so much as by the fact that they fit so perfectly into the melody and that there was no rhyme or pattern to it and he was making it up as he was going along. And it was beautiful. You'll have to trust me on that--an excellent voice singing a song of rage, but in beautiful, measured, thought out tones.

My human tendency, hearing that, was to wonder if he was talking about me, but that passed quickly when I remembered that he asked if he could come finish the job that day. That was everyone else's tendency to, when I told them the story, from my family to my contractor. But I don't think so. And that's not a bad thing, to wonder if you've heaped misery on what must be a difficult life. One of the other guys on the floor team lives in a motel because he has no family and no reason to have a house.

But it had to be bigger than that. This man had been singing for a long time. These were neither tentative notes nor tentative thoughts. He was drawing musical water from a deep well. I had intruded upon one of those rare moments of complete honesty, the things we do and say when we are certain that no one else is listening. I believe I stumbled upon the Monotonous-Job-With-Chemical-Fumes-And-I-Can't-Even-Believe-The-Shit-I'm-Dealing-With-And-How-Did-I-Get-To-This-Place Blues, a poignant variation on the song that we all have inside of us, at least some of the time.

I didn't write about the 4th of July this year. This is why. I keep trying to remember this song instead.

Singing in the Forest

A Praise Chorus - Jimmy Eat World (mp3)
How Can I Keep from Singing? - Enya (mp3)

Nancy Flanagan taught music for 30 years. She’s a successful consultant to schools. Her opinion deserves to be in Education Week, and mine is on a silly little music blog. Based on her post, Ms. Flanagan and I have at least one thing in common: neither of us are very fond of American Idol. From there, unfortunately, our opinions begin to diverge.

She’s a music teacher; I’m a music listener. And that, as they say, has made all the difference.

Some of the things she writes in "Music Teacher Hates American Idol" are painfully misleading. Much of what she says is true without being honest, or honest without being real. Something is missing in there, and it's either because she wears earplugs or because she wants a different reality than the one in which the entirity of humanity has existed since the dawn of man- and womankind.

Everyone who can speak can sing. Really. Singing is just extended, rhythmic speech.

True statement. But what is not true -- and this is important to most people with ears -- is that not everyone can sing well.

Does this mean people should be discouraged from singing? Not necessarily. Bad singing is why God invented showers and hard-top automobiles, so that bad singers like myself, who love to sing and love to do it loudly, can express ourselves musically without causing irreparable harm to those we love.

Ms. Flanagan is like most idealists. They refuse to see the forest for their own super-special tree of expertise.

Speaking of, if a tone-deaf person sings in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a bad sound?

What bothers me, as a music teacher, is that children watch American Idol, and have now developed this idea that singing is something that should be attempted only by the "talented." Children see judging singers as an amusing spectator activity, and making fun of imperfect singers as perfectly OK. Hilarious and justified, in fact: anyone who dares to sing in front of a camera deserves our scrutiny and scorn.

Poppycock, I say. This program is 10 years old. It has become one of the most-viewed programs in the history of television. Anyone who waits in that line, puts their mug in front of those cameras and tries out has no real excuse. I’ve only watched four, maybe five episodes in a decade, but I still know the name William Hung.

American Idol is not a classroom or an obligation; it is a voluntary talent show. (Her classes, on the other hand, were probably required.) Further, not once in my life or in the experiences of my children has watching this show created in us a fear of singing anymore than listening to Barbara Streisand or The Three Tenors, or anymore than watching Heathers made me scared of high school.

Seriously, what’s her point? Does she even like recorded music, or does the very act of deciding that some musicians are worthy of recording while others are not risk giving our precious flowers the impression that one kind of expression is better than another? Does she hate Mozart and Beethoven for taking all the good gigs away from the rest of the composing world? Does she despise Frank Sinatra for suggesting that you had to have oily hair and a slick personality to make it as a singer? Just how far down this ridiculous and slippery slope does she want to go?

Further, if we're really looking for all the ways something on TV can be translated as unhealthy for our children, I would like to think we'd worry more about the abuse of issues like sexuality before we attacked the crime of Vocal Prejudice.

If there is someone in your past who suggested that your singing voice is substandard, that person has done you harm, making you self-conscious about your primary expressive instrument... Nobody can tell you that you can't sing.

Can't sing? Agreed. No one should say tell you that. Everyone should be entitled to express themselves in such a fashion. Can't sing well? Yeah, that one is fair game.

And Ms. Flanigan, if you think American Idol has ruined our humanity and our ability to know about the power of singing, please explain this video (I get misty every single time I watch it):



One day, when advocates and idealists grasp the unfortunate fact that life isn't a Disney movie and live with the rest of us in the real world, they might actually make a positive impact.