Sing

People love to sing. Isn't that interesting? I was just watching the very charismatic country singer Kenny Chesney on Austin City Limits (which Micheal and I used to love to watch when we lived in Boston -- a touch of country in the middle of the big, sophisticated city -- but now the show has lousy rock groups on more often than good country musicians), and every now and then the camera would scan all the people in the audience singing along as Kenny sang. They all knew the words. They were happy, having a great time. And people are almost always happy when they sing. What do you suppose there is about not saying words, but singing them, that makes us feel happy?

Think about all the people who sing in choruses. They don't get famous, they don't make a lot of money, they may have to go to rehearsals after working all day at their mundane jobs. But they are doing something they love, that makes them feel happy. I reckon there aren't all that many things in life that do that; when you find one, you're smart to go for it.

Or think about the people on chain gangs, slaves in the fields, singing to ease the tedious, grueling monotony of what they were doing. Singing did that, but how, or why, that's what I wonder.

We also cherish people who sing at us; we love professional singers. That's interesting, too, if you think about it. People who act, paint, sculpt, dance, write, are comedians -- we may be full of admiration for them at least partly because we can't do what they're doing. But almost everybody can sing. Yet, we're full of admiration for profes-sional singers, too. Is it simply that they put joy into our lives, and you gotta love somebody who brings you joy?

Andy Williams was on the Tavis Smiley talk show last night. In his eighties now, but still handsome, a low-keyed charming, as he was in the '60s, when my family used to watch his T.V. show religiously. They showed clips of him singing on his show with Tony Bennett, and the two seemed to be having such a good time. But the thought occurred to me: why would men like this, why would any man, decide to become a singer, that is, try to make his living at it? Not aim for being a doctor, lawyer, banker, accountant, engineer, airplane pilot, truck driver, soldier, teacher, newspaper man, not even an artist, but a singer? Actually, in the case of Andy Williams he told us: he had, not a stage mom, but a stage dad, who was hoping the singing talents of Andy and his three brothers would take them all out of Iowa (apparently Mr. Williams was not crazy about Iowa). And it did; they did. By the time Howard Andrew could perhaps have decided on some other kind of career, I suppose he was pretty well entrenched in the one his father had foisted on him. But one wonders about others. Why did Tony Bennett become a singer? Why did Bing Crosby? Why did Johnny Mathis? Etc., etc...

Still, whatever their reasons, I suppose we can only applaud them -- as we do -- even as we sing ourselves, in the shower.

I'll leave you with a nifty lyric from one of Chesney's songs:

A bottle of wine/two dixie cups/3 a.m./I feel in love/
for the first time in my life.
That's somethin'/that just don't happen twice.