Stuck on repeat.

Singing, talking and audiences.

One Sunday when I was three years old, my dad’s side of the family got together at his sister’s house for lunch. Sometime after we had eaten, and while the adults were sitting around the table and chatting, I found a stool from inside the house, stood atop it, and demanded everyone’s attention. I then sang what my mom calls Opera, though I doubt my performance very closely resembled the likes of Puccini. Regardless of the quality of my operatic performance, I lapped up the attention the adults were lavishing on me. At the age of eight, I would routinely stand in front of the full-length mirror at the end of the passage in my parents’s home, singing to myself. Most often, right before climbing into the shower. Dramatically side-lit with the warm glow that spilled out of the open bathroom door and wearing nothing except for Spiderman underpants, I rocked the house with hits from all eras; Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror and Elvis Presley’s Hound Dog were among the crowd favourites. As I had when I was three, I sung with heart bared and at full volume. I would get up close to the mirror and watch my facial expressions, studying what it looked like when I felt the music. This study was usually interrupted by my mother reminding me to get into the shower for the seventeenth time.

This week I had dinner with some new friends. I knew the hosting couple, but the five other people that sat with me were strangers in the beginning of the evening. As is often the case, I got the conversation rolling. For the first few minutes the room was stiff and frosty, but as the stories began and jokes were shared, the atmosphere warmed. Aware that I had spoken quite a lot in the beginning of the evening, I made a point of engaging everyone in the conversation. (I hope you’re proud that I’ve learned to share the spotlight, Mom). It would be near impossible to guess based on my chatty disposition, but I was nervous on the walk from the bus stop to my friend’s apartment. I’ve struggled with social anxiety at certain points in my life. In my year in Berlin, I’ve found it tough to make friends. This was my first dinner, my first anything, with new friends in quite some time. Needless to say, I felt the familiar tug of anxiety pull at my stomach as I neared the building.

I terrorised more than just my family with my deep need to express myself musically. While I took guitar lessons for some time in fifth and sixth grade and got a chance to perform the songs I learned, and though I took place in all the musicals and plays my school offered, and despite my weekly choir attendance, I still sang up and down the hallways of my school. I sang Stevie Wonder on the way from Chemistry to Computer Science. I crooned Frank Sinatra on the way to refill my water bottle. It was a habit that stuck with me throughout high school and followed me into university. I met my best friend because I was singing in class. One day in first year, after all of our lectures were finished, a handful of students and I were sitting at computers, trying to figure our homework out. When I caught myself singing out-loud, I turned around to the people in the room and told them I was quite happy to quieten down if my singing was disturbing them. Most were cordial. One was cruel. Another asked me for my surname. A second later I got a message from him telling me not to worry about the girl in the room who had turned my offer into an opportunity to be unkind. He told me to sing the chorus of Shake it Off where it goes, “the haters gonna hate, hate, hate.”

I had a bit of a shock somewhere in the middle of that dinner with new friends. I had been talking and sharing in the way I sing: enthusiastically, and with an open heart (and probably a little too loud at times). After an hour or so of conversation, everyone at the table began complementing me on how well I speak, that they felt I could speak about anything, that they wanted to listen, not only because the way in which I phrased things was sensible and the topics of which I spoke were interesting, but they even insisted that my voice itself made the listening a pleasant experience. I hadn’t acted abnormally in order to earn this praise, and I felt a bit uncomfortable at the table of almost-strangers all complementing me at once. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard my voice praised. A friend I made while working in the States complements my voice every time we speak. Other friends have said that they wanted my voice to accompany their every day, I was told that I should narrate bedtime stories, GPSs and even cookbooks. At university, our lectures were usually thought provoking. The lecturers often asked their students for their impressions, and moved by the lecture we had been given, I once gave a passionate, impromptu speech about the topic we were covering. After my five minutes were up, the whole lecture hall applauded me. This happened twice during my three year study.

Oddly enough, speaking, despite the praise or encouragement I receive, is not often something I am drawn to do. I do not despise it, and I recognise that I can do it well and I enjoy a chat, but don’t long to give speeches or lay awake at night with words stuck in my head. Contrarily, I have not often been encouraged to sing. Truthfully, I have heard more complaints than compliments. My mom, quite understandably, wanted me to get on with my evening routine. The kids in my high school told me that I was annoying. The teachers told me I was disruptive. The kids in uni were barely tolerant, they mostly questioned my habit, thinking me odd. And yet, I long to sing. I often find that I am singing out loud, especially when in a good mood, simply overwhelmed, compelled by the music. I desire, almost constantly, to sing, to bathe in music, to serenade. How odd, that my will and the wills of those around me might be so diametrically opposed. I find it sad, sometimes. But then I just start singing…

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I have no clue how I knew songs from both the King of Pop and the King of Rock at the tender age of eight, especially considering neither were very popular with my parents. What a mystery… If you enjoyed this journal, please subscribe.