Title:

Author: Nom D. Script

Distribution: just fictionpress.

Rating: Not too scary. Actually, probably pg-14. not thirteen.

I can’t remember a time without music. You know how sometimes you know you did something when you were little, but honestly can’t remember? I can’t remember being without music. Call me a freak, but besides some vague memory of rolling down some grassy hill in Kentucky, with a babysitter and her Labradors (black, huge, and slightly smelly, but I loved them. This was before my morbid fear of dogs. I’ve gotten over that fear now, but sometimes I have to remind myself “oh, you won’t freak.” This actually means that I am a freak…but…right.), all I can remember is just dancing around in my sister’s old Yankee Doodle ballet costume, feeling a two-year-old’s equivalent of damn sexy, while singing.

Ok, singing in a very loosely defined way. More like yelling words more or less in tune.

There’s also this random memory of washing crawfish in a stainless steel kitchen sink, with some woman wearing a flowered shirt (probably mum going through her perm phase).

But the point is, I don’t remember a time without music. It’s like those equestrian people who have bumper stickers that say “born in the saddle” or how reporters claim that Tiger woods was born with a golf club in his hands.

……….or not.

Anyways.

Music is a big deal in my family. For me and my sister. Also for mum, with her perfect pitch. At least I think it’s perfect pitch. If not, she has a remarkable gift for making the out of tune sound in tune……..never mind that the piano hasn’t been tuned for two years and my alto sax was tuned in class and set where the mouthpiece should be and………

Right.

Anyways (why do I get the feeling that I’ll be saying that a lot? Don’t answer that.)

My dad can’t sing worth the proverbial beans, but he has great taste in music. Jazz, Classic Rock, classical, if it’s Yo-Yo Mah (I really consider Yo-Yo Mah as taking classical way too mainstream, though. Didn’t he do a duet with Lauren Hill or something?) and the Beatles. Good stuff. Tasteful stuff, despite his tin ear. I think my sister and I tried to teach him once out of our primer books, and God knows he sits through my sax lesson every week, so he does pick up stuff. But we kinda stopped teaching him piano because he felt ridiculous playing songs like “El Burro” and “monkey Jingle” or whatever James Bastien inflicts on level Primer A (why don’t they have songbooks for grownups at that level? It’s always idiotic at the beginning.) And it probably didn’t help that my sister and I kinda went overboard with the sticker system (you master a song, you get a sticker on that page. All we had were carrots and glasses of orange juice stickers from my Magic Schoolbus Club subscription). But you get the point. My dad can’t and really doesn’t sing (except when he’s joking, and that is as hilarious as it is scary). And I have a sneaking suspicion that one of the reasons he likes Yo-Yo Mah is because he’s Chinese. (My dad has whole bookshelves dedicated to “Asian-American Fiction”. Did you know that there’s actually a genre in Barnes and Nobles dedicated to it? Of course, I hate going there because it makes people think I’m some sort of heritage fanatic, but………yeah.)

Then there’s my sister, Eileen. She’s a pianist. I think she considers herself a bit of a singer (alto and a bit of a Soprano II range) but she really isn’t that great. Not bad, but not great. She doesn’t sing in a chorus and hasn’t for a very long time, so her voice has gotten thin and weak. She’s a pianist, and a damn good one at that. So good, in fact that she auditioned for Governors School and got in……..with three years of training. I think she took with another teacher for a couple of years before that, but we don’t talk about that. She has this dedication thing going. She works hard at everything, and I’ll be damned if she doesn’t get it.

And then there’s me. Cursed with a name that rhymes with “prissy” (my name is actually Christine, but no one really uses it. Annoying.) I do the piano. I also do the sax, and sometimes I double on bells and xylophone for band. I used to sing in the chorus and made districts twice. The third year, I ate McDonalds before the audition and it kinda wrecked my voice. Also, I was trying out as a Sop II (Soprano II for non-chorus geeks). I’m normally an alto I. And they threw in a high G in the Sop II part. This was completely pointless. The reason people try out as a Sop II is because their voices sound crappy in the upper register. But did they realize that? Nooooooooooooo. I missed the cut off by four points. Yes, I had a cold. Yes, I ate a burger and fries before going. Yes, on the high G my voice suddenly turned into swamp-monster-hack-and-die.

No………I will NOT go further.

So yeah. I do band and I’m an alto sax player. This rocks because there are practically no girls that play the alto sax, but there are might fine guys….

Er………yeah.

Of course, Piano. Right. It’s the biggie and it’s always been there too. In fact, I remember Eileen giving me pseudo-lessons on our keyboard when I was three. Polly Wolly Doodle. Good stuff.

I just can’t stand practicing. It’s horrible—boring, repetitive, no outside stimuli. I remember hiding under the piano when I was six, crying, and refusing to come out and play “El Burro” one more time. I’m a performer, which is a bit skewed because to perform, you have to practice; it’s a given. But honestly, I can only take so much. Especially new pieces. Those are the worst, because you can tell how much you suck.

Practicing is all about control. Controlling rhythm and tempo, etc. Dynamics.

But I hate it. I love that free feeling of just PLAYING and singing loudly. Just losing the control. Music IS a patter. Music is weaving. Music is surprising the hell out of everyone by playing a four page piece in under a minute.

But for me, music is my power. I mentioned weaving. I weave the notes into a net and catch well……..I’m not exactly sure what I catch.

That’s the thing.

I’m pretty sure being a siren entails catching attention and lust.

Right?