This might come as something of a surprise to you, given my
chronic tendency to be standoffish and blend into the woodwork but for most of
my life, basically as long as I’ve been conscious, I have wanted to sing. I
can’t necessarily say that I’m drawn to any one specific brand of music because
I am an equal opportunity musician; I love almost all genres of music except
that scream-o nonsense and to be fair, I’m actually relatively talented. I was
born with a sort of natural talent on top of being classically trained on a
bunch of musical instruments. And I’m totally not bragging. I don’t know that I
could go multi-platinum or anything but I could probably fill a few seats. I
just struggle with the confidence to actually open this up to people. People
tend to be so judgey about such things and it’s terrifying.
Music can be a difficult thing sometimes because it’s so
subjective. What might sound incredible to me could sound absolutely terrible
to someone else and that’s the kind of pressure I just couldn’t handle. For me,
music is just so serious and life threatening that if I ruined a song or
someone else’s experience, it would severely affect my wellbeing. I live
vicariously through all my favorite songs and sometimes, even for an amateur
writer like me, I communicate better through song. I can much easier tell you
what I’m feeling through the songs of Muddy Waters and Sister Hazel rather than
by actually sitting there and trying to verbally communicate it to you. I think
most people would better understand me if I spoke to them through mixed tapes
rather than my own words and voice. Like my grandfather would say, “That’s why
God made Frank Sinatra.” That man would say it better than I ever could. I make
everything so awkward and I just seem to jumble everything up.
I just always wanted to move people, to give them chills, to
give them an awesome entertainment experience that they wouldn’t give back for
anything in the world. And honestly, every time I’m somewhere and there’s live
music, I stare up at the stage and think to myself: These people are so lucky. They’re living the dream. Maybe playing
the same sets every night seems repetitive and uninteresting to some people but
for me, that stage just cries out to me. That microphone is begging to be held
and the words are just asking to be sung with sweet melodies.
I’ve always wanted to live in the song, to really make
people convey what I feel, to make them feel things they didn’t know existed.
I’ve always wanted to provide people with the comfort that I’m there for them;
I wanted to let them know that this proverbial song was written for them, to placate them and to let
them know that I’m here to get them through whatever heartache they’re feeling.
I want them to know that I feel enough for the both of us.
To this day, I can’t sing the song Stay by Sugarland without getting emotional. It reminds me so much
of my childhood that it almost physically hurts. The last line when she says, “So the next time you find you want to leave
her bed for mine, why don’t you stay? I’m up off my knees. I’m so tired of
being lonely. You can’t give me what I need,” gets me every goddamn time.
All I see is my mom driving me home one night on 951. I was about eight. It was
dark and raining and she had this long, bohemian skirt on that had bells on it.
I remember it jingled when she walked. She was crying, trying to hide her tears
from me because he had chosen to stay
elsewhere and she was slowly learning that she deserved better. Whenever I sing
that song, especially when I’m alone in my car, I cry for the both of us. It’s
everything I feel about that moment and every moment that it’s come up since
and I can barely get through it without my heart twinging.
I just wanted to be beautiful and classy, someone with a
voice like velvet (my sweet uncle always tells me I’ve long since achieved that
but I also know he likes to make me feel good) who could melt your heart behind
one of those old school microphones. I wanted to be that voice of reason
crooning through the speakers in your car, willing you to turn around and
forget that woman who broke your heart. I wanted to be the solace serenading
you after a long, hard day, after you just found out she never loved you. I
wanted to be the woman you pictured while you took long road trips, my voice
keeping you company in the dark.
Those winding roads in Tennessee are frightening once you
get into the mountains. This all sort of reminds me of a Stephen King short
story. You know, you’re all alone in this dated vehicle, maybe something like a
powder blue ’64 Chevy Impala convertible. The slippery rain is somehow leaking
through the convertible top and the windshield wipers just can’t seem to keep
up with the apparent monsoon you’re driving through. You’re gripping the
steering wheel so tight you’re white knuckling. But only you know where you’re
headed.
Maybe you’re delivering something to a secret someone and
like the Transporter, nothing can dissuade you from your mission. Maybe you’re
deadheading into the next big city because you’ve just murdered your cheating
girlfriend and her sleazy car salesman lover and leaving is the only escape.
Maybe someone died and you’re left in charge of their estate which just happens
to be somewhere in the scary, jagged Tennessee mountains. (I don’t know why I
do that: always jump right to death.)
It’s raining and you’re frightened, reeling from the night
before. It’s unknown to the reader what happened to you but you know. You’re gray from exhaustion
and fear and you’re left alone with all your terrible secrets. Now it’s the
early moments in the morning, the bewitching hour, and it’s just you and the
road ahead of you. There’s no way you could possibly look back now; there is
absolutely no way. I’m stepping out into
the great unknown, I’m feeling wings though I’ve never flown.
Don’t worry; I’m right here with you. I’m the old timey
singer with the red dahlia in her ear, holding the microphone stand seductively
as she sings. My voice swirls around the car and somehow blends with the rain
pelting on the convertible top. I’m here to comfort you, to condone whatever it
is that you’ve done, and I won’t let you go through this alone.
Envy is the religion
of the mediocre. –Carlos Ruis Zafon
Basically, I wanted to be a tiny, European mix of Faith
Hill, John Legend, Amy Winehouse and Joss Stone. I think, if I could ever
achieve such greatness, the world might actually explode. I mean, could you
even imagine? I guess I just wanted to express it all through song and I didn’t
really even care about being famous (although that does come with its own
perks). I just wanted to play. I didn’t care about big concert halls, meeting
various celebrities and wearing fancy clothes; I just wanted to sing.
But you know, things just don’t always turn out the way you
plan them to. It happens all the time, right? People go to college and major in
journalism or international business and they wind up small business owners or
bartenders. Things sometimes just go the way they go. Honestly, I thought I had
all this time. And I guess that’s something that is commonly experienced when
you’re young: time just has no power. I thought back then, when I would sing in
my dad’s office with the microphone and amp he provided me with from his music
store, that I had tons of time to get all this accomplished. One day I would
play out in quaint little coffee shop or an arty little bar like Bohemian Blue.
Maybe no one important like a talent scout for Columbia Records would be there
but I would feel it: that sensation I
feel when I know I’m living in my own little moment. I would recognize that for
once, I was truly living. I wasn’t doing laundry or taking the dog out, I
wasn’t writing up case notes, selling an Angel Card or guiding troubled parents
away from corporal punishment. I would understand that for once, I wasn’t doing
all those things that I have to do
every day but instead, partaking in the sweet, savory things that I want to do. For myself.
But when we grow up, our goals change. Maybe our dreams
don’t change but we have to develop more realistic adult goals in order to be
successful at life. It took me awhile but I finally narrowed it down to one: I
was going to be a social worker and I was either going to work in prisons
providing rehabilitation to prisoners (don’t laugh; I was so serious) or I was
going to work with victims of domestic violence and their families. But I still
have moments when I feel that pleasure, when I’m all alone and I’m singing
harmonies while I do the dishes or belting some Joss Stone while I’m flying
down Belcher. That dream to sashay across the stage singing something that I
wrote with Ken Block one day while we were reworking harmonies for one of
Sister Hazel’s latest hits is something that probably won’t be realized but
it’s not forgotten. I may never play Wheel of Musical Impressions with Jimmy
Fallon but I can fantasize about it. (Actually, no I can’t because that seems
terrifying and I could probably only impersonate like, maybe two people tops.)
But for all my musical gifts, the reality is that I will
just never be good enough. It was made clear to me a long time ago. And you
know what the worst part is for me, personally? My sister was born with this
absolutely insane musical gift. And I
mean, I won’t lie: We are an entire family of musicians, all the way back. Both
my grandparents on my father’s side were in the music business for a brief stint
in New York City and my grandmother actually contemplated running away and
singing lead in a swing band instead of having children. My dad is a literal
musical genius and has even played piano in the White House twice. I’ve obviously been extremely successful
with music (in high school) and I probably could have done something with it if
I had pursued music in college.
So none of this is a surprise, right? “We’re a musical
family,” my mom would scream at me when I would cry because I was tired of practicing
the clarinet. (And to be fair, I didn’t need to practice. And my mom is
probably rolling her eyes at this right now but I was really fucking good and
honestly, I had two to three band classes every day in school. I got more than
enough exposure. But private lessons are expensive and my teacher was extremely
tedious and always offered constructive criticism. Even if I played that shit
perfectly. You know when you guys were all out at the dunes partying, drinking
and having premarital sex on Saturdays? Yeah, I was driving to Ocala every
Saturday taking private lessons from a professional principal clarinetist. And
now people wonder why I’m neurotic. I honestly think I was always an adult…)
Today, as an actual adult, I’m
thankful for the way my parents encouraged discipline and music in our house
and to this day, I can basically out harmonize anyone except for my sister,
which I consider to be a pretty rare gift. But my sister, she has always been
on a completely different level.
She was ready for Broadway, no joke, at like twelve years
old. And because of this, my parents took us to tons of live shows. I mean, I saw Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Phantom of the Opera, and
Les Miserables all before I was like,
nine years old. (And to be real with you, I’ve probably seen a lot more than
that but recently turning thirty has dulled out my memory and I can’t seem to
remember shit.) And honestly, to this day I have nearly all of Andrew Lloyd
Webber’s music memorized because my sister had all the compilation disks from
the all musicals and played them incessantly. In fact, I just had to explain
the Starlight Express reference in an
episode of Family Guy to my husband
because he was like, “I’ve seen this episode a million times and I don’t
understand this.”
I envy people that
know love. They have someone who takes them as they are. –Jess C. Scott
I just always felt like I was in the shadow. And it wasn’t
anything that anyone did on purpose, necessarily. It was just the way it always
was. My sister is brilliant and even as a child, it seemed like she shined
brighter than everybody else. I wanted to be Faith Hill, with legs to my neck
and gorgeous hair and makeup. I wanted to sing from my heart, free of those
lame dance routines that a lot of country crossover artists insist on
incorporating into their shows. I wanted to be heard amongst all the other
voices, I wanted to shine, and I wanted to make people say, “Damn, that tiny
person has such a big voice.” When I was in high school, I remember I read this
article about Martina McBride and how they called her the “Living Room
Powerhouse”. When the journalist asked her why she simply stated, “I like to
sing like I’m singing in my own living room.”
That’s who I wanted to be. I wanted to sing like I was singing
in my own living room, like I was singing my kids to sleep, like I was singing
to my Aunt Theresa because she absolutely begged
me to sing just once while I was
visiting. “Do it for me,” she rubbed my arm and smiled at me with champagne
warmed cheeks.
But I just couldn’t be that person. My sister, on the other
hand, was singing at baseball games and All State when she was barely in high
school. My parents took her to see Heart live when she was about five and to
this day, she can do all the crossover leg stuff that Nancy Wilson does during Crazy on You. (Well, all of their songs,
really. To quote my sister, it’s “her signature move.”) She will sing anything
in front of anyone and I remember her senior year of college, she had a “final”
where she had to actually give a concert for her peers. I was there, of course,
as was my entire immediate family. And I remember she had this gorgeous dress
on that, at the time, I thought sort of resembled a curtain. I can’t really
recall if it was right before her portion of the performance (she ended up
sharing it with her ex-boyfriend and they sort of took turns) or during one of
the songs but that night, one of her straps popped off. Like, it literally just
popped off. My mom was a wreck and being the typical neurotic mom that she is,
was devising ways to assess and repair the damage to the dress. “This is your
biggest performance,” she told my sister, “we’ll fix it and it will go great.”
My sister did a hair flip, strategically covered her ripped,
unattached strap, and walked on stage. Later there were jokes about her
breathing, how she had to be careful not to do a full frontal on the stage but
honestly, she was unfazed. Her hair was long enough to hide the damage and the
show went on. I still remember afterward so vividly, when my mom insisted on
taking about 800 pictures of her. She kept holding her hand up, “Hang on; let
me cover up this strap!” It’s like, since birth, this woman has been a natural
born performer. She is eternally unconcerned, unburdened by performance and
social anxiety.
Now me? I was a loner. As I got older, I stayed to myself
and I enjoyed the quiet. I won’t say that I was a loser necessarily because I don’t think I was that but I certainly wasn’t memorable. Later on in life, I met up
with a boy who was deemed a “popular” kid by the masses and when I told him who
I was, he seemed confused. It was sort of like, how had he allegedly gone
through seven years of school with me and didn’t know me? He was like, “I don’t
remember you!” which I found both insulting and hysterical because we had
nearly every class together and he was really close with my best male friend. I
also found it a little hurtful that he remembered my best friend and fellow
party girl but couldn’t seem to remember all the time I spent next to her in
high school. Listen, this is neither here nor there. I could go on and on. The
point was, I blended. It’s something I’ve always done, a place where I’ve
always felt comfortable, and a trait that has never seemed to dissipate. I feel
comfortable in the corner because no one judges you there. Not to mention,
everyone looks beautiful in low light.
I always liked to read and write so silence and solitude
were my friends. I had a job and a few acquaintances that I was social with but
it never extended far beyond that. Like I said, while you guys were all out
buying Hollister clothes and getting laid, I was reading, writing fanfiction
about Carol Hathaway and Doug Ross (DON’T JUDGE ME), and practicing the
clarinet. But my sister, she was a lot different than me. She had a gazillion
friends and a pretty large portion of them were men who wanted to be with her.
This isn’t an exaggeration. She was (and still is) absolutely gorgeous, an
amazing, powerful and relatively locally famous singer (even back then), a girl
who didn’t take shit (which people actually find really endearing, even if
she’s putting them in their place), and this sporty little hottie, who was way
more beautiful than the average girl but still really laid back and genuine.
She knows more about football and hockey than most men do and she can drink
Ireland under the table (for the most part).
Our neighbor on Marco Island was in love with her for actual
years and she had so many boys after her that she just couldn’t be bothered.
They rode to school together and shared sandwiches; sometimes she would wake me
up in the middle of the night so the four of us (he had a younger brother)
could go play on the swings at my elementary school. My mom never knew about
this until we were much older (because she would have murdered both of us) but
I remember it was so exciting to sit on the swings next to her in the dark. The
stars were bright and the breeze was so warm it softened my nerves about being
out at night. I was in my homemade housecoat and she was whispering when she
cussed because I was a notorious tattletale. But little did she know, I would
have never told. She had given me my first taste of freedom. I always kept her
grounded and she let me fly. My sister, the wild one.
She’s my best friend and I love her more than basically
everyone but sometimes, it was really difficult growing up with someone so
great. No matter what I did, I would never measure up. And it wasn’t like my
parents didn’t worship me because they did. She was just hard to compete with. Whatever
accomplishments I made had already been achieved years ago by my sister.
Naturally, my parents were proud of me and happy that I had accomplished so
much but as my sister had already set the precedent for success, my achievements
were just expected. They had seen all this before only my sister looked way
better doing it.
Moral of the Crazy: Honestly,
I always kind of felt like I got the short end of the stick, being the second
child. I mean, sometimes I think that I always was and probably still am my
mother’s favorite. I used to think that it was because I was “the baby” and
since my mom always wanted a bunch of kids, she sort of clung to me. But now
that I’m older, especially in the way things turned out for all of us, I think
that she sees a lot of herself in me. I never have to explain anything to her
because she just gets me. She is me.
My sister, on the other hand, is a lot like my dad, who is a
gigantic puzzle. With my sister, she has to pull out information (because my
sister is super non-dramatic and not a shit talker and honestly, sometimes that
kind of bothers me because I like to gossip) and ask lots of questions to
attain anything of value. And even then, it’s all a mystery. Yet another thing
about my sister that’s absolutely fascinating: no matter how well you think you
know her, you never really do. She’s this beautiful, cryptic animal. Whereas
me, well, you all know I’m an open book. Friends, time is so limited; I think
it’s best to be translucent.
It’s just that my whole life, and almost even more so now, I
have envied her. Like crazy. I spent so much time wishing that I had her
beauty, wishing that men would look at me just once the way they’ve always
looked at her. I’ve spent countless hours wishing I had her intelligence, that
I could whiz through two books a week and recount tales of historic events like
they were my own memories. I have wished so many times that I could say that I
had gone away to college, that I had gotten on the Dean’s List, and that all my
professors from college still remember me. I have envied her over and over again
for her insatiable ability to just be free, get up and sing karaoke in front of
a bunch of drunks and be totally confident about it. You know why? Because she
sings every day for a living and it
isn’t that she knows she’s good or that people have gone out of their way to
tell her so. It’s that even if they didn’t, she wouldn’t give a shit. She
doesn’t hide her light under a bushel.
And my envy just stems from there, to be real with you. It
doesn’t help any that she can sing anything from Janis Joplin to Sarah
Brightman, from John Fogerty to Paul McCartney. None of it is fair, friends.
Because I was the one that always wanted it. And honestly, when I’m around her,
I don’t even raise my voice to sing when we hang out and listen to music
because I already know that I can’t compete.
I wish every time that my whole family is together that I
had the same bond with my father that she has with him; this sensational ménage
of music, red wine and Tolkien novels. Don’t get me wrong and please don’t
misunderstand, I know how much my dad loves me. I’m not blind to it. I see it
in the way he looks at me and the way he still calls me Little Miss Magic even
though I’m thirty years old. I also am aware of the fact that parents treat
children differently because kids are
different. Like my mom always says, “No two kids are the same.” But her
relationship with him has just always been a lot different than mine.
And you know what? Maybe that’s okay.
Maybe it’s okay that I will never be the same person as she
is. Maybe I don’t need to be.
Honestly, I think sibling rivalry is something that will
just always exist. I have this friend from a Latino family who is the only boy.
He has two sisters and honestly, while they’re pretty successful in general,
they’ll never amount to him. He’s the only boy, he’s named after his dad, and
he’s got hair so thick his barber probably charges him double. And it’s not
like he’s done anything in particular to deserve this preferential treatment or
even tries to seek it out from his parents and those other family members
around him. He’s just been this adorable little prince since birth and no
matter what the situation is, that’s how it will always be. No one will ever
get in the way of that; no one will ever be able to distract people from his
presence.
To be fair, I’m not happy about it. And it isn’t like I sit
around willing for my sister to get nodules on her vocal cords or anything like
that. I feel like an asshole for even being moderately jealous of her because
she’s my sister; plus, if I were to ever bring it to her attention she would
probably laugh and say, “Girl, please. I’m jealous of you. Your life is fucking
perfect.” (Which, by the way, is another reason that she is so goddamn
enviable. She doesn’t ever think she’s better than anybody even though she almost certainly is. Product of our
raisin’, I guess.)
Sometimes I think the reason that people get all snarky
about sibling rivalry is because when you’re someone’s sibling, you’re
literally given all the same opportunities. And as such, when you don’t measure
up to all the same things as your sibling, it can be disappointing. For some of
us, it’s like, we’ve obviously got the genes and we were definitely given the
tools; where did we go wrong?
The truth is that my sister and I are like most sisters you
know. We bicker sometimes, we tend to argue every now and again (not often
though, especially compared to most, I wouldn’t think). But at the end of every
day, whether she gets on my nerves or she doesn’t, I love the absolute shit out
of her. And like I always tell my mom, there is no one who has my back harder
than she does. My mom always laughs when I recount stories of our drunken
outings (of which there are many) and I say something along the lines of, “I
don’t care who it is or what the situation is: Nobody talks shit to my sister
but me.” Although she laughs about it, I think it warms her heart because she
knows that nothing can come between us.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that in actuality, none
of it matters. Maybe I feel it; maybe I’m a little sensitive to the sting of
how incredible she is but if anything, I should be thankful that I have someone
like that in my life. You know, I always feel sorry for people who don’t have
siblings because I literally cannot imagine going through life like that. And I
know they say you can’t pick your family but if I had to pick, I don’t think I
could have picked any better.
And maybe being envious is just a habit to keep in order to
keep bettering yourself.
Envy, after all,
comes from wanting something that isn’t yours. –Jodi Picoult, Perfect Match
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