The Courage to Sing (c)
By
Michael Casey
Well it’s 16th Feb now, and the Red Shoes Ballet at the Birmingham Hippodrome was great, the music induced a tear. Today the pain monster in my back/hips is inducing near tears, and loads of pain. That’s the sine curve of pain, totally random pain, on randomly chosen parts of my body. As I sit here in my chair, I wanted to write something new, and not just post a repeat, and as Celine Dion started to sing, the choice of subject rose its head from the barricades of pain.
You do have to have courage to sing, so as Les Mis comes to both our minds, you can start singing that to yourself, as I talk to you, above Celine’s voice. To sing is to doubly praise as Saint Cecilia says, though in S&G’s song was Cecilia a bad girlfriend or worse? Then Cecilia broke hearts, if you can remember the song. A good song sung well can break hearts, can touch as much as the music from The Red Shoes touched me yesterday. Or in a play, you can shed tears as the play unfolds. We saw the theatre version of The Lovely Bones recently and I was shocked to by core by the performance and sat with tears falling, I had forgotten the film version, so I was not prepared.
So Art, can and does touch the parts that only some lagers do. If you have a pint or three you will be inclined to sing, but otherwise you have to have a good spirit before you can sing. You cannot sing when you are sad or dealing with a crisis, just as I cannot write if I’m sad, or yet another USA shooting horror overwhelms us all, nobody wants to sing at a funeral.
Yes great songs can be sung at at funeral, and the Lazarus reading usually read at funerals is very touching, Jesus wept. Generally to sing you have to be happy. If you are happy and you know it clap your hands, if you are happy and you know it stamp your feet, and so on as the song goes. Songs are ways to defy tyranny, they unite and bind us, from union songs, to slave songs and all manner of songs, from sea shanties to songs of war. To rallying cries and more, from I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy to Over There to the Yanks are coming, or here in Britain We’ll Meet Again.
But Out of the Depths I Cry to Thee Lord, may be the start, when we are flat on our back, when we are crawling like worms in the dirt, when there is no hope, when we are battered and broken, and beaten. By life, by lack of hope, when we are at the end of our rope,, when we might be tempted to use a rope. Then a song, a noise, a hum, a voice might cut through our darkness and give a glimmer of hope, somebody or something offers a rope ladder out of our pit of despair. Then the only way is up, just like the song from years ago.
We have the courage to begin to sing, to hold that hand that reaches down to the gutter, and lets us look at the stars, Oscar or David, or whoever it is. We have the courage to sing, it can be anything, away in a manger, if it is Christmas, or a rugby song, a spiritual, or a really obscene song, it does not matter. The point is it lifts us up, there is a song that we love and whenever we hear it we feel better. My favourite song is The Windmills of Your Mind, from the 1968 Thomas Crown Affair. I just love it, and if you’ve read some of my 1,500,000 plus words you can understand. I was Sancho Panza and my master did tilt at windmills after all.
A song is a shock to the heart, it makes us skip a beat, or kick starts our emotions, our feelings, if we have no feelings then we are dead already. So a song, and being able to sing is evidence of life and hope and love. We sing to our children to reassure them, to keep the bedbugs away, or whatever. It brings joy and happiness to them. We sing in the darkness as we wait for the power to come back on. To sing is to have a heartbeat, they say you should keep on talking to a coma victim. But you should also sing to yourself to whistle while you work.
I have music surrounding me all my life, and now with Tinnitus coming out to play and attack me for 18 months and more, music and song is so important. In the dark of the night I have no Cecilia, just music playing till exhaustion gets me, then I sleep. You can make up your own Cecilia references. I hope you recognise that when you are down and nearly out, you do need a bridge over troubled water. And that bridge is song, a song will inspire, and ease your weary bones, it will come on baby light your fire, just little little embers being blown in the wind, but it is the answer.
So sing to somebody, have a sing song, whistle while you work, be the sparrow singing in your family, in your neighbourhood. Then rejoice rejoice Emmanuel, because you have learnt to love again. The shadows of sorrow and pain have been banished, by a simple song of sixpence.
