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Something to shoot for
Okay, let's get the negatives out of the way right in the beginning so that we can concentrate on the important stuff.
The first two notes that the singer sang (they were the C and B above middle C, so they weren't all that high) were squawks -- veritable screeches. The fellow who has a tendency to jump through the roof whenever there is any loud sound was sent into uncontrollable spasms and had to leave the room. Another resident would not stop laughing and so had to be escorted out.
You would think that the singer's teacher/accompanist would have caught that problem and worked with her to correct it. If it was too early in the program for her voice (why he chose to begin a concert with notes in the upper part of her range is a mystery to me), he should have put the song somewhere else in the concert when her voice would be warned up; or eliminated the song altogether. After all, those were the opening notes of a whole concert, and first impressions are important.
Luckily, the next few notes were lower in the singer's range and so she was able to sing those with a modicum of accuracy. And at that point we could tell that the song was "As Long As He Needs Me." So, all in all, she did not sing the song too badly -- that is, if one were willing to ignore the fact that those two opening notes, with their attendant squawks, kept reappearing.
(Last year she started off her concert with "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair!" That was a much better choice of opening song, since it began way down in her register and worked its way up, so that her problem notes were approached stepwise.)
The concert consisted of light show tunes, and things got better as she went along. In fact, as her voice got more warmed up, she actually added notes to her top range. So the only song that gave her any trouble later on was "What's It All about, Alfie?"; and that was because of the jump of a fifth up to the problem note C on 'Alfie'. (I began to suspect that this is where the 'break' in her voice is located.)
Perhaps the most revealing song was "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better!" from "Annie Get Your Gun", which she sang in duet with her accompanist. This piece has many verses (Irving Berlin wears out his welcome, in my opinion; but that wasn't the singer's fault), of which the most notable for our purposes was the last. This is the one where Annie claims: "I can sing any note longer than you!"
The concert lasted about forty minutes.
The thing that disturbed me most about this concert was not the singing per se; rather, it was the complaints about the singing -- hence the singer (though never to her face) -- from the other residents both before and after the concert. I would hear things like "Why does she have to do this? Doesn't she know that she can't sing, that she doesn't have a decent voice?" Indeed, more egregiously, I even saw evidence of this attitude during the concert as certain aides, rolling their eyes, shaking their heads, and smiling superciliously, walked out of the room.
That was when I started to think about the painters.
This vocal concert by a resident is the only one of its kind here. There is, however, another outlet for artistic expression: watercolor painting; and this is undertaken by about fifteen residents, each of whom has MS or a similar disease. With help both physical and aesthetic, they meet once each week for ten or so weeks; then their works are beautifully matted and framed and entered into an art show which includes artists from outside the Institution. Last year every resident's painting sold -- at $150 each.
Interestingly enough, I have never heard so much as a peep of disparagement of any visual artist here. From this, one might be led to conclude that all those painters, without exception, and despite their disabilities, are qualitatively better at their painting than the singer is with her singing.
That seems highly unlikely. What is most likely true is that those fifteen painters form a continuum of artistic and physical abilities, from those who can do virtually nothing on their own, to those who have a fair degree of independence; and from those who have little or no artistic sense, to those who have a highly developed one.
So why all the dumping on this poor lone singer, while all the painters get a free ride? I think that there are a number of reasons for this.
One reason, I suspect, is the nature of the song recital itself. Most of the residents here probably regard a vocal concert as it is most often portrayed in the popular media: an ego trip by some portly older woman who is too full of herself and who sings wobbly tones in a pompous pretentious way. Certainly the song recital is overt in the way it involves putting oneself forward, foisting oneself onto the public. Then too, singing itself operates in a visceral way upon the human organism; and when there are people listening to it who already have a disease of the central nervous system, it might have a tendency to, well, get on their nerves.
By contrast, an art show is muted (unless it is a one-person show, in which case the art fairly screams to be noticed; but there are no one-person shows here at the Institution.) It is also diffuse, since each individual's work is subsumed within the larger whole. This is called safety in numbers. If you're going to be critical of artists in this medium, where would you draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable, especially when you have uncertain mixtures of artistic and physical talents?
It is also true that, at the vocal recital, there is no escape for the residents, every one of whom is in a wheelchair. Each person brings him/herself in or is brought in by an aide, and they are seated closely together in a big clump. Those who can move themselves cannot do so because they are hemmed in by others who cannot. And so all are stuck, trapped there as captives in an acoustical hell, forced to listen whether they want to or not.
At the art show, however, no one is ever trapped. Several lines of people, both walking and in wheelchairs, move fluidly through the exhibit. It is easy to escape the art show itself at any time by simply leaving. And if any particular work is offensive to you (or, worse, doesn't engage you at all), you need only look away, avert your eyes -- it takes but a moment. Don't worry -- there are plenty of other works of art to feast your eyes upon. And poof! The very memory of being offended or disengaged slips from your mind.
But I think the biggest difference between how the residents respond to a vocal recital versus an art show is found in the kind of knowledge the residents have, or think they have, about the two disciplines. A singer sang show tunes for forty minutes? It turns out that virtually every one of those residents, myself included, grew up hearing most of those tunes; moreover, the renditions we had heard were by famous performers and recording artists. The songs accompanied our lives on radio and record while we were growing up. As a result, everyone is an expert and has his/her very strong opinion on the subject of pop music. What is a paltry singer in a nursing home compared to those other famous singers and crooners?
By contrast, most of the residents here at the Institution probably have decidedly vague notions about the quality of a painting -- certainly I do. Unlike pop music, visual art was not an integral part of our lives growing up. Then too, there is the sheer breadth of the painterly art, as exemplified by such names as van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, and Pollock. And there has always been folk art, which ignores rules of perspective and distance and which distorts features. In an art show, one might well feel oneself to be like the little boy in "The Emperor's New Clothes" -- very much suspecting that one is in the presence of charlatans, but not being completely sure one is right. In such a situation, it is best to keep mum and pose as a connoisseur.
Now I am going to tell you what was really good about this voice recital. And in expounding on this, I find that it is impossible to separate talk about her singing from talk about the underlying disease that most of us here suffer from.
What physical skills are often compromised by the effects of MS? One thing is memory. For example, there are plenty of residents here at the Institution who cannot remember where their room is, even though they have lived here for years. Yet right in front of us was a woman with MS who gave a public concert of forty minutes length without using words or music or any other prop. And that thing alone seemed extraordinary to me.
Another skill often compromised by MS is breathing -- the use of chest muscles to project speech and other sounds. That is why one often hears residents here (including myself) speaking in forced, clipped parts of breathy sentences. Yet here was a resident who deliberately performed a verse ("Any note you can sing, I can sing longer!") which put her breath control to the most public of tests -- and in a most humorous way. In that song, the man sings a note (on the words "No you can't!") for a certain length of time; then the woman sings the same pitch (on the words "Yes I can!") for a little longer. This little game of one up-womanship continues, not once but twice more, with longer and longer sung notes. In all of these, the singer was able to steadily hold the notes she sang, no matter how long they were, without fading or failing. And that was a significant accomplishment for her.
And then there was the character of the sung notes themselves. In general, good singers should have three essential things: a slight vibrato to give the voice warmth; a supported tone using the diaphragm; and a 'ring' in the tone to give it vibrancy. Granted, our singer's voice had none of those characteristics: the tones were absolutely straight, unsupported, with no trace of vibrato, and with no ring to them. What they did have, however, was a true sense of pitch. But there was more: those notes, unlike those of most residents here (including myself) were unclouded by phlegm or hoarseness or shortness of breath. They were pure.
I will also tell you something that this resident didn't do with her singing of show tunes: belt them out, as so many singers of that sort of music tend to do. She didn't attempt to force anything; that is, she didn't try to sound like Ethel Merman or anyone else. She was, quite simply, herself.
Finally, there was the singer's total lack of pretense. She was sitting in her wheelchair singing, and that was that. Slightly tilted back, and periodically reaching back to grasp her straw in order to bring it forward and take a sip of water, she was utterly natural.
So what those carping residents missed was a truly heroic act: one of their own who was able to demonstrate, in the most public way and without shame or apology, what she was still able to do with her limited skills. In other words, what they missed was a bit of a miracle.
They also missed a good example of the sort of thing that keeps us residents going here at the Institution.
For example, writing is what helps to keep me going (it's not the only thing, but it's right up there.) When I awake in the morning, I am itching to get up -- why? So that I can wheel out to the foyer and gaze at the human comedy until Coffee and News? Or watch TV for a few more golden hours? Hardly! I get up in order to write. The act of writing, if you will, gives me something to shoot for. Each morning and often part of the afternoon, I work on my writing. This is done by voice (with my diminishing vocal skills) on a computer in my room. When I judge a piece to be finished, I send it to my daughter to publish on my website. Then a handful of friends, carefully chosen to preserve my fragile ego, read my writings and give me feedback.
You might say that the writing is my rehearsal, and that the publication/reading is my public performance.
Just so the singer: the voice recital provides her with something to shoot for, something to give her life meaning and direction. The other residents could learn a thing or two from her.
(19 April 2008)
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