Deep Throat #7: On Being and Unbeing a Singer
He knew what he was doing when he looked at me and said, “Sing for me.” Had I been nude in his bed I would not have been as naked as I was then, stripped down to my brand new skin.
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Join NOW!He knew what he was doing when he looked at me and said, “Sing for me.” Had I been nude in his bed I would not have been as naked as I was then, stripped down to my brand new skin.
...moreThe gulf between the place where I sang Mozart and Debussy with people my parents’ age and the place where I went to public school and tried to make friends with kids my own was vast.
...moreThere is nothing I have experienced that is so physical, nothing that resonates in the bones and meat of a person like it does to make music with other people at that sort of level.
...moreIt is not a coincidence that among the synonyms for “practice” is “ritual,” and for “ritual,” “practice.” When you do a thing over and over—even if it is only so banal and small as lighting a cigarette—it will assume a shape and a meaning, a weight and a force.
...moreIt would be easy and satisfying to say that I stopped singing because of the crack in my throat. It would be false. It’s true enough that there was one. There was a fight with a lover that turned ugly, a forearm pressed hard across my throat
...moreMy face burned with rage, with shame, with humiliation. I was failing openly, blatantly, at the one thing I still somehow, in the back of my mind, expected to be perfectly capable of doing after more than a decade’s silence.
...moreWhen I shut my mouth I lost a part of myself so ingrained, so accustomed, so integral I had not even known it was possible to lose it.
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