Tunes

Last night Daughter One, freshly back from the Land Of The Mouse, had Mary and me listen to the five or so songs she’s considering for an upcoming audition.  It was a succession of 32-bar clips from some really fine pieces from the musical theatre repertoire.  They were all pretty current - not a fringe on top of a surrey in the bunch.

Since my musical theatre education has been rather spotty since I stopped performing almost three decades ago, I don’t get far off the Les Miz / Wicked track. So it’s always fun to hear newer work.

What makes it especially enjoyable is that it’s my daughter doing the singing. I used to think I had a pretty good voice but oh man, the pipes on this girl! Even just singing casually without warm-up, she’s so powerful and expressive! And when she hits certain notes, it makes your head ring. I wish her well in the audition  but mostly, I wish she would put something on You Tube so I could listen to her whenever I want (Are ya listenin’, MeMe?).

So today, I drove the pickup over the bump to haul the daughter’s “stuff” back to school (you’ll recognize this as a minor victory for Mary and me if you go back a few posts).  Alone in the truck, I played an Oldies mix and one of the tunes was Easy To Be Hard by Three Dog Night.  The lyric got me to thinking about how we treat people differently in macro vs. micro. We frequently act more caring to a mass of strangers than to the one person standing in front of us.  I feel a future blog in the making.

I also got to thinking about how long it’s been since I really listened to a great lyric. I went through some Manhattan Transfer and Oak Ridge Boys during the same drive. Can’t imagine why I haven’t been listening to tunes as I used to. I’m talking about really listening – not just using music to distract me on the treadmill or to block out the loudmouth behind me on the bus or the plane. 

I quite enjoyed the poetry of the afternoon. I believe I’ll do more of this “listening thing” in the near future.