Day 133 - Sing Pub Songs at a Pub Sing

Date: May 19th, 2010

Let's talking about singing.  I don't do it.  Not in front of people anyway.  Why, you ask?  For the good of society and our children and our children's children.  God blessed me with a fair number of talents.  Which He traded me for my singing voice.  That is the only logical explanation I can come up with.  Generally speaking, in church, I've adopted a practice of humming, on the belief that using my singing voice in a house of worship may or may not be an actual affront to God.

That is the place I was operating from when I accepted my friend Louis's invite to the Ann Arbor Morris Team's vaguely semi-annual Pub Sing.  What's the word for "once every couple months with some regularity"?  That's what that Pub Sing was.  They meet up at Conor O'Neils (the place I didn't realize was amazing until just recently) and sit around singing old Irish, Scottish, English, Welsh, and random songs.

I went for a couple reasons.  Partly because it sounded cool, despite my civilization ending inability to sing.  Partly because I figured I could get away with humming (if I can get away with in in church, surely I can get away with it in a bar).  And lastly, because it was so far outside my comfort zone I might've gotten lost trying to find my way back.  That's a feeling I used to avoid - now I relish it.

I got there shortly before they started singing and took a place between Louis and his brother Jacob, who are both incredibly neat people.  They would not, however, let me get away with humming.  Since when did bars have a higher singing security level than church?  I'm not sure if I should tell the bar community to step down or tell Jesus to step it up.

He handles criticism well, despite, you know, being perfect.

The songs were amazing, actually.  Some of them I simply couldn't sing along with, because they told this complex story and didn't really repeat themselves.  Those were the minority though.  For the most part, the songs that were sung had a chorus that repeated several times and short verses sung by one person to lead to the next chorus.  Some were sad, others deep, others hilarious.  

About halfway through, I had a moment of deeply missing church.  I know, I was just teasing about it.  The thing is though, I haven't been to church in a couple years.  I've struggled to find a place that would allow me to, well, argue, as much as University Lutheran Chapel did under its old pastor.  He was very open to my hippy liberal opinions on scripture and I felt like I grew so much because I was able to work to prove a point instead of just reading and accepting it.

What I didn't realize I would miss as much as I do, though, is the singing.  Yeah, ok, so I used to hum.  But when all of the people around you are singing the same song, the energy in the room changes.  I forgot how it felt to be completely enveloped in the sound of unified voices.  I forgot how it felt in my throat and chest and lungs to at least be humming along.  Its human connection and spiritual expression at the same time.

By about the fourth song in, with just a little polite goading from Louis, I was singing along as much as I could manage and humming the tune during the verses.  Jacob had brought a couple songs he wanted to lead so I snuck peaks at his print outs to follow along.  I knew it was off key.  I always am.  That's like knowing the sky is blue.  It just... is.  But I also knew that it didn't matter.  The fun of the Pub Sing was that we all sat around and enjoyed the sound of unified voices.  The harmony made jagged voices like mine seem smooth and smooth voices like those of the people around me linger in the air between songs. 

They are having another one in July.  Assuming this project hasn't taken me extreme ironing in Timbuktu by then, I intend on going back.  And in the meantime... maybe its time to start dragging my lazy butt out of bed on Sunday mornings again.  Can't hurt, right?