Tuesday, May 09, 2006

In Search of the Lost Chord

I got a book/CD the other day: You Can Read Music! Actually, the cover is typeset YOU CAN Read Music! Everyone repeat after me!...

I have a very modest goal: I just want to be able to sound out simple liturgical musical notation. I'm not looking to play Bach or Chopin. So maybe the author is right, and I CAN do this at some point. (Although I'm still figuring out how to work this new objective into my calendar -- somewhere between replacing the atrocious cold air registers around here, organizing what I am discovering are my mother's increasingly confused financial records, blogging and dog maintenance.)

Of all my educational deficits, this is the one I regret the most: never learning how to read musical notation. Oh, back in my college days I did teach myself enough guitar chords to fake my way into an inter-Lutheran folk group -- if anyone out there remembers the old Chicago Folk Service, I used to be able to play a low-down bluesy Agnus Dei. But I joined the group mostly because my friends were in it, and my guitar was more or less a prop; I was like the Stu Sutcliffe of Lutheran campus ministry.

Unlike most of the children I grew up with, music lessons were not a part of my growing-up. My father, who made the rules at our house, came from a family where music, like anything else related to education or the arts, was considered effeminate and a waste of good working time; where the kids had to hide library books from school and read them surreptitiously, like the Bronte sisters hiding their writing under their mending. My mother's family was so poor that the idea of owning a musical instrument like a piano, much less taking lessons in how to play it, was relegated to the world of wish-dream.

One day in fifth grade we all took a musical aptitude test -- a lot of listening to trios of notes and selecting the one that sounded "off." I liked taking tests, and thought this one was easy. Several weeks later, on a Saturday, there was a knock at our door. It was the band director. He told my parents that I had scored the highest of all the kids in our class; that I appeared to have almost perfect pitch; and he was excited at the prospect of my joining band in September.

Now, in most homes I suspect that parents would be very pleased indeed to hear this good news about their kid's newly discovered talent. Here's what happened at my house.

"She's not joining the band," snarled my father to the startled band director. "It's too expensive, and I work all day, and I'm not going to come home from work and cart my kid all over to play in a band." I felt my blood curdle. I looked over at my mother, blushing crimson.

The band director started to protest. My father showed him the door.

Then my parents had a fight -- a huge, screaming fight. I should say, my father did the screaming -- "I earn the money around here, and goddammit I make the rules!" -- and my mother did the crying. I locked myself in my room and wept into my pillow. Eventually my mother came into my room. Her comments to me were, "I suppose you're going to blame me because I'm not like those mothers who can drive," and "Now that teacher is going to tell all the other teachers about your father's bad temper." So the issue of my joining band or taking any other kind of music lessons became one of the many Issues That Dare Not Be Spoken Of Again at my house.*

(For anyone who can relate to this scenario, I'd suggest reading Jean Shinoda Bolen's Ring of Power, where she uses Wagner's Ring cycle as a framework for exploring patriarchal family dynamics -- overbearing fathers, submissive mothers and rebellious daughters. I thought that my experience was somehow unique to my own family until I read this book and realized that a far more universal, culturally conditioned Bullshit Paradigm was at work at my house.)

For some reason, once I got away and got to college (another big, extended fight at my house but one in which I engaged and I won), where I could have studied anything I wanted, I didn't take advantage of the opportunity to take one of the beginners' music classes offered, even though I lived right next door to the music buildings. Looking back, I'm not sure why. I was in a fog during my 20's anyway. But I think maybe I'd figured it was too late; that I'd missed the window of opportunity to do anything with my interest in music other than become an educated listener.

Twenty years later, I've come to the conclusion that I've got to finally do something to make things right. Not just right for me; right for my parents. You see, my father's blowup at the junior high band director was a mirror image of his own experience. He'd gotten the highest score on his 8th grade graduation exam, the big test that kids in one-room schools had to pass in order to go on to high school. He wanted to go to high school. His teacher wanted him to go to high school. Instead, his father unceremoniously yanked him out of school to work on the farm -- no arguments. My mother was valedictorian of her high school class and won a free ride to Wayne State. Her parents said no; she had to go to work and support the family. Her own mother was pulled out of school in the 4th grade by an evil stepmother right out of Grimms' fairy tales, and sent into domestic service.

My family tree is one sad history of persons having their talents smothered and their dreams dashed in service to the preceding generation.

Well...the buck stops here, I've decided. Maybe it takes the last, queer, quirky twig on the family tree to somehow redeem the lost dreams and squandered potential of ancestors who played by the rules they were dealt by their families and cultures, and lost. My musical ability may be limited to picking out Psalm tones, but each note will be a vindication of what I believe is the Spirit's moving in the world to bring the shalom, one way or the other, and will sound all the sweeter because of it.


St. Cecilia Posted by Picasa



*I shared this story with some trepidation, because I was concerned that any Christian homophobes and misogynists reading it would point to it and say, "See? That's why she's a lesbian. She comes from an unhappy home. If she'd just grown up in a good Christian family with a father who was a servant leader and a mother who was graciously submissive, she would be normal." Neat trick, that combination of gay-bashing, sexism and faux psychology in one treacly-Kristian-luv swoop; and I've actually heard this argument from socially conservative evangelicals. Of course, taking it to its logical conclusion, most of the world should be as gay as Castro Street, and no one from a Christian household operating under kinder/gentler velvet-gloved patriarchal power dynamics would ever be gay; obviously this is nonsense, but since when has rationality ever gotten in the way of dedicated bigotry? Anyway -- sometimes the necessity of telling the truth trumps concealing it in the interests of "representing." And I felt it was time to tell the truth.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

The timing of this seems not accidental to me. I think God is at work in you in a amazing way right now. Through all the pain and disappointment of the past, I can hear your soul singing.

Rachel Nguyen said...

LC,

YES!!!!!

I can only say that you can do this and it is wonderful.

I started taking Piano lessons a little over a year ago, at the age of 40. A friend gave us a beat up old Wurlitzer spinet and we shoe-horned it into our sun porch.

I have a teacher that comes once a week. I practice about 4 times a week. And now I can play simple arrangements of a Mozart minuet and Handel's Pastoral Symphony.

What is most cool about it is that I gave myself permission to really suck at it. And I kind of do. But I kind of don't, too.

But it doesn't matter. I can read music and plink it out and now I can PLAY the doxology.

I say YES.

Love+
Rachel

net said...

From one recovering dysfunctional to another: "The truth shall set you free!" How brave you are to share that with us, LC! Let the healing commence! Love you lots!

LoieJ said...

Sad story. My friend, with a gorgeous, professional quality voice, has a husband who never has gone to hear her sing, so this kind of thing isn't just in the older generation. She sang less and less through the years. Hide it under a bushel.......yes it was hidden, probably from her own children.

Yes, find a teacher who works with adults. You are not the only one who has wanted to try something new even when you are no longer a child. These days, one can buy a keyboard with decent sound for less than buying a piano. Just get good help picking it out because there are some features to AVOID. Ask me how I know.

I did take clarinet lessons as a child (we had a clarinet because that is what my mom had played) but I always wanted to play the flute, so I took flute lessons when I was 38 for two years. I enjoyed that.

I also sing in my church's choir even though I can't sing my part without lots of help. Reading music helps somewhat. Our choir has more spirit than great sound, but the Bible says, Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.

Rainbow Pastor said...

Oh, LC, you go, girl!

I was lucky to come from a fairly musical family (mom played cello in high school, older sisters took piano lessons, a sister and I played violin, I sang--sortof--another sister played flute and sings--incredibly well, almost professional quality).

My seminary offered a class I thought was inspired--Music in the Local Church. It taught basic music reading, what the notes at the bottom of the hymns meant (you know, like CWM RHONDDA and REGENCY and OLD HUNDREDTH). It was meant to give pastors who didn't read music enough knowledge that they could go to a piano and plunk out the melody of a hymn and say, "Why, yes, that's singable," or "No way are we using that one!"
Brilliant.

And even more I applaud your bravery. Wish I had a tenth of it!

Teri said...

we too had a music-for-beginners class in seminary.
I was a professional musician before going to seminary, and I can tell you that all I use of that now is my gift of sight-singing...so i can learn new hymn tunes. that's all. and let me tell you, being able to do that makes all those years of study (and all those student loans) worth it.
I promise you that reading music is quite simple, because there are only seven notes AND there are handy little acronymns to help you remember where they go on the staff.
I hope you love it...every little bit at a time.
:-)
Thanks for sharing your story...it means a lot to a lot of us.

Kathryn said...

Oh HOOOOOORAY for LC!
So pleased for you, and proud of you too...putting so many issues to bed. You are doing fantastically, you know.
Now more than ever I wish you were nearer...because I used, till ordination,to do a little piano teaching among my assorted attempts to make ends meet...and what I loved most of all was the adult beginners sessions. There's a book somewhere in a box called "It's never too late to learn piano..." Sadly, the contents are less exciting than the title, or I'd ship it off straightaway...but repeat that mantra morning, noon and night and enjoy yourself. xxxx

Cathy said...

Very interesting story, and I commend you for your taking on the task now of sounding out simple liturgical music notation. My thought is if you can find someone that is a cantor or person who reads this notation, it might be easier. MOst of that music is written on a clef, but is to be sung in the range of the person singing the liturgical music. Wish I was there to help you with it.

Mata H said...

When you said that it probably took you to somehow redeem the lost dreams and squandered potential of ancestors who played by the rules they were dealt by their families and cultures, and lost. it hit me somewhere between the soul and the heart. There is healing in those words for me, too. Bless you for that.

It strikes me that whenever any of us speak from the core of our own truth, that light is made to shine into the shadowy places of our brothers' and sisters' lives. That is how powerful the truth is. Truth, after all, is the home of the Holy Spirit.

LutherPunk said...

Good luck with the learning to read music part. I am a lot like you in the sense that I learned chords and progressions, but never to read music. Now in my 30's I am finding it tough. We should covenant together to just stick it out!

I also like your disclaimer about the unhappy home situation = gay kids. If that were true, then I should be as gay as...well...let's just say really really gay. But alas, even though I had all these dysfuntional stuff going on around me, I turned out heterosexual.

Anonymous said...

Great story, LC: thanks for sharing it---and good luck w/ the music lessons! Sing out, sister! :-D

[Was it Doesteyevski who said "Happy families are all the same, but unhappy families are each unhappy in their own way"? The parental dynamics in my family were not the same as yours . . . but dysfunctional in their own way. Making me, too often, an Unhappy Queer, instead of a Happy One . . . but I'm working on it! (being happy, that is) ;-)]