The Child Returns
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005I had a strange event happen this weekend, one that brought me reeling back to a time when I couldn’t drive and liked basketball cards more than girls. One day in the fifth grade I was sitting in music class bored to tears. Shocking me out of my stupor, our teacher Mrs. Thompson called us all up to the front of the room to form a line at the piano. She had each of us stand *alone* in front of everybody else and sing a tuneholycrap. Everyone managed to squeak out the song, and she passed over them to move on to the next person. When it was my turn, my nervousness was only tempered by the fact that I really just didn’t care how I sounded. I opened my mouth and to my great astonishment a wonderfully melodious song drifted out, pure and clean and somehow in tune. I think everyone in the room stopped and stared, including Mrs. Thompson, but perhaps that’s just my unreliable memory, altered after so many years, because after that I remember people lifting me up on their backs and singing “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow”, and then they all turned to frogs and started cleaning up a hazardous materials spill. Anyway, a few minutes later we were at lunch, and I was sitting on the steps in front of our classroom to avoid the mess when Mrs. Thompson came up to me threateningly and demanded that I join her choir, the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus (LACC). Several of my friends were in it already, so I accepted on the spot.
The first year was excruciatingly painful, as I had to devote the last four hours of every weekend to singing practice, a task which would be at the bottom of my list of things to do on a Sunday night. But one day, in practice, she had us all line up at the piano and sing by ourselves again. Sure enough, that sweet sound emanated from my throat once more, and I was asked to be a part of a thing called a Carmen. I wasn’t quite sure what a Carmen was, so I asked my mom later. She said that it was an opera, and asked more about it. All I knew was that it was with some group called the Los Angeles Opera Company, and that we would be starting the following week, giving up yet more of my weekend. She rather flipped out, understanding at once the implications of the invitation. I most certainly did not until I had walked out in our first dress rehearsal onto the stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion. There were thousands of seats that stretched up for miles above me, and suddenly I realized that I had most certainly gotten into something that was WAY out of my league. Nevertheless, it was good times, I made a lot of friends, and the performances went surprisingly well. The place was so big and the lights so intense that I pretty much forgot how many people were out there watching.
The following four years brought more operas, movies, commercials, famous weddings, and a tour of Europe, not to mention cementing friendships that would last for many years. It was a sad day when my voice had changed so dramatically that I had to tell them I must quit. They threw a banquet for me, my friend Nikhil, and my other friend Phil. By the time we left the three of us were the social leaders of the group, the village elders if you will.
In the ensuing years I have continued singing off and on, a bit in high school, a lot in college, and some more after that, but I always missed that close bond I had with my fellow choir kids from way back when. It was therefore with great enthusiasm that I greeted the opportunity to get back together with LACC alumni for a concert celebrating the choir’s 20th year of existence. The first practice was this weekend, and it was everything I had hoped for. So many of the friends I had not seen in 10 years were there, including Nikhil and Phil. Nikki (as we all used to call him) is the guy I mentioned in a previous blog. He has his own band that is not only successful but very entertaining. Phil went through the USC voice program with Nikki, and is now a professional opera singer.
I can’t begin to explain the feelings I had sitting there next to these guys, as though more than a decade had not separated us. We were just as rowdy and funny and professional and serious as ever.
I start graduate school next week, and have had to give up singing with the Angeles Chorale (the choir I’ve been in for the last few years) for perhaps ever. I lamented not being able to sing anymore, as I have been told to expect 20-22 hours of each day to be devoted to architecture. Hopefully I will be able to make the next practice with LACC in six months and the concert next year. If I can’t, however, this weekend’s reunion provided a wonderful sendoff for me, completing a circle of song and friendship 15 years in the making.
