Gadget-wielding ego-blogger

GADGET-WIELDING MOI
Tomorrow my hands and forearms are going to be very sore, in fact I can already feel the stiffness setting in. The reason is that I spent the morning gripping and manipulating something for an extended period of time. It’s something I’d considered for a while, but kept putting off, deferring to other tried and tested methods, like getting someone else to do it for me, but today the offer was made yet again and I decided, what the hell, I’d give it a bash.

What exactly am I talking about? Yes, you’ve guessed it – for the first time in my life I used a Weedeater! My whole backyard is now freshly cut, with unmistakable signs that the gadget used was wielded by a novice. It reminds me of when I used to cut my children’s hair, when they were toddlers. I’d stare in disbelief at the visibly skew fringes and wonder how I could justify keeping them indoors for a month, while the hair grew out.

EGO-BLOGGING
I discovered yesterday just how much of one’s (my) ego is involved in this whole blogging business; I checked my blog stats, and I realised that what I’d been interpreting as the number of times my blog had been read was in fact the number of times my profile had been viewed. That figure was 816. And here’s where the ego comes in – I beamed with joy when the number of blog reads came up as 3,363! The number of reads for last week alone was 253. Yes! That’s more like it! (I found it very interesting that the blog post with the highest number of reads was the one on Westerford High School’s 2009 prizegiving event.)

“Interesting” coming face to face with one’s fragile ego. This is not something I can escape or deny, so I’ve learnt to live with it and channel it. Let’s face it, everyone likes to feel noticed, acknowledged. That dynamic is an intrinsic part of being a performer, I’d say. In fact, performing is a very risky way to go about getting your strokes, because your audience is not always going to love what you’re doing. So many lessons I’ve learnt along the way I could only have learnt by experiencing. Every single time I prepare for a performance, I do some version of psyching myself for it, and I’m sure this is something I share with most other performers.

SING-ALONG AT OLD AGE HOME
Two days ago I went down to Douglas Murray Home for the Aged, about 5km from where I live, and did a sing-along with the residents. A friend had asked me to visit someone there on his behalf and sing to her, but that didn’t feel right to me, so I arranged with the Home’s management to sing to everyone, at a time that fitted in with their routine. While I was getting ready, I decided that doing a sing-along would make much more sense, which was what I did. There were some people who chose not to take books, for one reason or the other, but the general response was fantastic! A few of the residents are amputees, so they’re wheelchair-bound, and others just stayed in their comfy chairs (afternoon ‘chill’ time) all the time. This meant that no-one came up to sing through the mic, and I had to lead the singing for the entire session. But did they sing! Wow! I hadn’t done a sing-along in quite a while, and it was exciting to unearth my books, go along to a group of seniors, and just do it. Indescribably satisfying! I love singing and playing my guitar, people in institutions often have lifestyles that are bereft of pleasure and levity, music (I sincerely believe) is the ultimate universal language, so what an obvious thing to do. But the most important ingredient here is that I don’t sing TO them – it’s an inclusive activity, with them calling out their favourite songs from the index, and everyone singing together. I have no words for how that makes me feel.

This is not about leaving a gig feeling I sang well or got paid well – this is something else. My journey as a musician has led me to collaborate with people who GET this side of me. For many years, guitarist Keith Tabisher and I have gone to different churches and done these sing-alongs at fundraisers or Christmas lunches, mainly with seniors. We’ve also done a few sing-alongs at people’s houses, at birthday parties, etc. I put the first book together in 1997, and have since come up with three more, but the hot favourite is “the purple book”. We’ve done some sing-alongs where we’ve used two books, then we’d have people requesting, for example, “Number 30 in the yellow book”.

But this week’s visit and sing-along touched my heart deeply. Seeing people in their twilight years singing old songs (mostly love songs) with expressions on their faces that tell their own stories, brought a lump to my throat a few times. Occasionally, someone would say out loud, “This song was playing when my husband proposed to me” or “My late husband loved this song”, and I was made acutely aware of how raw and unbounded certain things are under certain circumstances. I’ve always been fascinated by group dynamics.

And so, with renewed belief in music as the ultimate stress reliever, happiness bringer and bridge builder, drawing people closer, regardless of age, class, religious affiliation or any other artificial barrier that negates our similarities, I end this post with a commitment to do at least a monthly sing-along, going to various places where old people live together in institutions throughout my city.

Maybe I should seriously consider reprinting the books in large print.