My Thing

We read Jonathan Livingston Seagull in L.A. and.., it was interesting. If you haven’t, I would recommend it. Its a pretty funny book, but I was entertained. Basically, the book is about a seagull who just wants to fly, whereas everyone else is busy trying to survive. Bach’s message is you need to find your thing. So, today’s post is about my thing, music.

Both of my parents are teachers. One teaches math, the other science; and are no doubt the best teachers in their field on their campus. So when I started middle school taking both choir and band, my STEM parents were a little surprised. After my 6th grade year, I was hooked on fine arts. I had an abnormally low voice for an 11-year-old girl, so my choir teacher took me under her wing and really helped mature as a singer. My private lessons teacher too. Because I had such a low voice, I was the center of attention of my choir classmates. I was popular (not really), and I was good. I had a knack for music, and with my abnormality and my talent, I became extremely overconfident. I stuck to my guns and did what I knew how to do best. Singing loud and low. And because I had potential, my teachers wouldn’t let me go too waste. Being as good as I was, I had an issue. Singing above a ‘b’ in the staff. For all you music people, you’ll know that that is an issue. And it’s not that I  couldn’t, I just didn’t want to. You can read my aversion to “high notes” as me just being difficult, but it goes deeper than that. You see my voice had given me a reputation. I was a walking party trick for God sakes! I challenged all the other 11-year-olds to a “low off”, and I won every time. There was one kid in band who didn’t know my name and just called me ‘low voice girl’. My voice became part of me, and I was afraid of losing it. You see, I thought that if I sang in a normal octave, the special gold star that I had earned by birth would be torn away. Before middle school, I didn’t really have friends. Well no I had friends, but I wasn’t really a part of the group, you know? And know that I had all this attention, I didn’t want to lose it. Even with this fear, I did expand my range. I expanded it enough that My choir director told my Alto 2 self to go to Soprano Land for the day. Why? I can’t tell you because you do not question my director. So I rolled with it and survived. Not to brag, but I even hit a few notes that even the Soprano ones couldn’t.

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned band. I am still in band. Ironically enough, I dropped choir. Surprise! But no I dropped it against my will. I made Varsity Women’s, but it conflicted with band. After reading that beast of a paragraph, I bet you’re wondering why I didn’t write about band. Well, I absolutely love band but, choir had more of a hand in shaping who I am today. My choir teachers made more of an impact on me than my band ones. And I will always have memories from choir to look back fondly on. And whenever I get bored or hear a song I like, I can just sit down at my piano and sing.