It's the honest truth, no exaggeration! This is one of the greatest nights of my life, and one I will remember and cherish eternally. I don't recall ever feeling more pure joy regarding something in my life than I have felt tonight.
You see, tonight was the first time in my life I have ever sung karaoke. I've been in several karoake places or parties with karoake machines before, but this was the first time I ever had the nerve to do it. I've felt such inferiority regarding my singing in my life, and truth be told, I was pretty inferior, even worse than I realized, given the feedback I've received from my extremely competent, gifted, and wise vocal instructor, Stacy Walker. However, over the past 3 years or so, I've received singing instruction from her, and grown tremendously, despite generally not having the time or discipline to practice like I ideally should. There have been numerous times, though, that I have perceived that God has moved me beyond the level of my human efforts. I am not even undergoing the training mainly to be able to perform well in public, but because I am a songwriter, and I've found I need to sing my own songs at some level so I can communicate them to someone else decently. I was so broke at the beginning that someone else, who wasn't too well off himself, paid for a half hour lesson each week for several months until I could take over (although still then and now financially strained). Until now, the only public singing performances I had ever done were in her studio's recitals, and believe me it was very nervewracking to do so, and a few practices hoping in vain to sing in a Christian organization. One leader who heard me even said he was phrasing things nicely when he told me that singing was not my gift and it would take me five years of training to be any good. I mean, I sang in church and stuff, but I hoped I was quiet and blended in enough that nobody clearly heard me. I rarely wanted to take any lead, and never for a whole song, especially one I hadn't sung before or even heard in years.
Tonight changed everything, though. There were about 10 of us who, after attending a dance (which was awesome too), went to Happy Karoake (that name became an understatement for me!), on Buford Highway near 285, got a room just for us, and sang for about 3 hours. I largely went because I wanted to hang out with these folks and hopefully have some fun, even if I couldn't contribute much. At first I was content to observe and sing along with the group. There is a huge list of songs available, so eventually I picked songs that I liked, or thought everyone would like, or were popular pop/rock songs at least in my mind, and I wanted to sing them on one of the two microphones in the room - in some cases having secretly wanted to sing them competently for even a decade or two or more. After each song is sung, you are given a rating, which tended to be pretty generous. The first song that I sung, a song that I had loved since childhood, perhaps because of my intense love for dance (and I have finally been taking a class there and achieving wonderfully), is Dancing Queen. That song has a pretty high melody line for me, because I have a low voice but fortunately a lot of range, and I have been emphasizing my chest voice and not my falsetto in singing lessons for the past couple of years. Also, the song is over 30 years old, so I haven't exactly heard it often since my elementary school years. However, much to my pleasant surprise, I found that I could largely hit the pitches, and I got a score in the high 90s. It was even comparable to the other person who sang with me, a lady friend who is a music educator who performs in an orchestra.
As time went on, I continued to grow in confidence and desire to sing out. Sure, I clunked some notes and phrases at times, but at least I could recognize when and basically how much I was botching them, which I could not do when I started music lessons. Mind you, I don't remember ever singing any of these songs completely through in my life, if I'd even actually sung a few phrases at all, and most were from the 70s-90s, so I hadn't heard them much in a decade or more. Given that we sang pop/rock songs, I found myself largely in falsetto when singing with the group. I proposed something, especially given this trend, that would challenge me, and I had nowhere to hide if I messed up: to sing, with the previously mentioned musician, a duet of All I Ask of You, from Phantom of the Opera. I was able to adjust my voice and performed fairly competently in my mind, not having the greatest tone but hitting many pitches, and got a similarly high score. This thrilled me, and over time I found myself wanting the microphone and even singing on it for several consecutive songs, although I don't have the greatest vocal or lung stamina and my throat was getting kind of raw. Then again, there were numerous times I held notes on pitch for long times, even longer than the original music does to, well, show off what I could now do after years of work! At times I danced simultaneously as well. I sang Purple Rain, Unforgettable, Unchained Melody, and many others decently, and actually got a perfect score of 100 singing Footloose. Two ladies took the microphones to sing My Heart Will Go On, saying it is too high for me, but I found that I could even sing that (an octave below the melody line I think). The high point of my singing in my mind came on the last song I sung, which was actually after 3:30 am and after everybody else had left the room. Heaven was listening though! I sang the Alan Parson Project's song Time, which I always wanted to sing. Given that it wasn't tremendously popular and was released 27 years ago, I likely had not heard it hardly at all in the past two decades or more. However, I essentially nailed it, except that my voice cracked some because the chorus melody is at the top of my vocal range, ands the song is slow. I got a score of 99. It sounded so good to me, especially after having to really pull on the memory banks to remember how the music precisely goes, that I am immediately considering it as a possibility for my next recital.
I told the front desk worker at Happy Karoake what a thrilling, breakthrough experience I had, and left the place absolutely on cloud nine. I even danced around alone in the parking lot across the street some, and called a couple of friends and told them about what I felt. This is absolutely a breakthrough in my life, and I can build on it from this point. I feel confident to pursue other singing opportunities that I have previously been afraid to do. I feel like a "would be singer" who just got the "would be" removed! I know I do have a long way to go to become a truly excellent singer, but I have had real victory tonight, which may just be a realization of what is already there but what I could not discover until I stepped out to see what I could do at the risk of doing lousy in a public situation. In a few hours, retreating from something in fear has turned into wanting to run toward something in confidence. Actually, all these intense positivity comes less than 12 hours after being in a state of grief, even frankly in a state of questioning God. Friday evening, I had found out that Rasha, who is age 21, lives in Egypt, and is a sister of a friend's boyfriend was pronounced as having less than 48 hours to live due to a severe case of yellow fever that had shut down her liver among other things. A number of us prayed, with a huge amount of faith and inspiration, for her healing. At about 4 PM our time, I got word that she passed away. My faith for healing has grown drastically in the past few months, even the past couple of weeks, and I've seen amazing healings happen, in person and on the television, so I, and others too, had real faith that something would happen too. So when I got this news, I felt so grief-stricken at this tragedy, even though it was someone I did not know and had only heard of less than 24 hours before, because I had never had so much faith before that someone in such a desperate situation would be healed by my and others prayers. I couldn't help but question why this happened, and sought counsel from someone who has trained me in healing ministry. I still don't know, and don't know when or if I will.
Ironically, but perhaps not coincidentially, when going over the words in my head, I realized well after singing Time tonight that the song would be a good one for a memorial or funeral song. However, it would not entirely be appropriate for a Christian memorial/funeral because of lyrics such as "Who knows when we will meet again, if ever". Those who are Christ's know that we will all meet again in heaven and live forever. Therefore, I have done some modifying so the lyrics can be in accord with Christian truth, and I present it to you at the end of this communication and dedicate it to Rasha, who a few others will see again and the rest of us will meet in heaven. Death is frequent in this world, but new life is even more frequent, and one day death will be eliminated forever.
Let this be a reminder, if not a lesson to us, to listen to the messages that our hearts repeatedly send us to pursue something that gives us life and joy, even if others, or even we, believe that we will never achieve much - not that high achievement is required to make a pursuit worthwhile. Those messages might very well be from God, given as a clue to His purposes for us. What happened tonight could not have occurred without me finally pursuing, in the face of my own lack of human ability at first and my lifelong cloud of discouragement in the area, costly training over a period of years, then daring to believe and take action to hopefully find out that I might do something halfway decently despite all that was against me, and then discovering that I could perform at an even higher level, with help from God who "is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think, according to the power that works in us" (Ephesians 3:20). I mean, I go in the span of hours from the sorrows of tragedy to the thrills of triumph, and then apparently realize that the latter has a connection and can minister to the former, even to people who are half a world away. Who can do this but God? Praise Him, love Him, and serve Him forever!
Well, now "tonight" has become "tomorrow morning" (Sunday), so I will end this and attach the lyrics:
"Time" by the Alan Parsons Project, with some changes by Matt
Time, flowing like a river
Time, beckoning me
I know that we shall be again
Together
But time
Keeps flowing like a river
To the sea
Goodbye my love, it may seem like forever
Goodbye my love, The tide waits for me
I know that we shall meet again
I'll see you, my friend
But time
Keeps flowing like a river (on and on)
To the sea, to the sea
Till it's gone forever
From the world forever
Gone forevermore
Goodbye my friends, But not for forever
Goodbye my friends, The stars wait for me
We know where we shall meet again
In person
But time
Keeps flowing like a river (on and on)
To the sea, to the sea
But it's not lost forever
It's gone into heaven
Where we'll live forevermore
Sunday, June 15, 2008
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