Notes from a Solo Songbird
Featured Story
week of December 14, 2019
Notes from a Solo Songbird
by Chris Blake
In my lifetime, I have sung one public solo. This premiere took place during the Christmas season at our church in San Luis Obispo, where I was one of three unwise men to sing a stanza of “We Three Kings.” I wore a regal crown and a regal robe that covered my regal wingtips. However, though I had performed in choirs, I felt out on a limb in this trio.
My two kingly comrades and I had sung the first stanza, and Evan Harklerode, the guy with the best voice, had completed his second-stanza solo. The memory of my part still tastes as fresh as raspberries on the vine. I commenced singing.
“Frankincense to offer have I . . .”
Immediately following those soulful words, I noted a look very like shock smiting the faces of the listeners—people who once claimed to know me. My gracious wife told me later that their altered visages reflected astonishment that I could sing at all, but at the time that prospect didn’t surface for me. I saw only blank, ghastly, horror-stricken looks. Bravely and numbly, I pressed on.
“Incense owns a Deity nigh . . .”
Frankly, that line had never made a lot of sense to me, and by this time my head swam with fears and misgivings. Why are they staring at me? Can incense really own a Deity? What am I doing here?
All rehearsed words vanished from my thinly stocked mind. I didn’t have a clue what came next. So, being the type of person that I am, I started making up my own words. My habit of creating absurd, rhyming ditties for our young sons now came in handy. But you know how you tend to say precisely what you’re feeling?
“Ever reaching, thus besee-ee-ching . . .”
Though somewhat reaching and certainly beseeching, I would be finished with one more line. The expressions on the audience’s faces hadn’t changed, which could have been a good or a bad sign. However, my somersaulting brain, working feverishly to make a connection, had lost the original rhyme scheme. I actually needed to rhyme with “nigh,” which would have been a piece of pie. As in:
“Now we look toward the sky.”
Or, more appropriately: “O what a fool am I.”
Instead, I was attempting to compose on the spot a tough rhyme with “beseeching.” Leeching? Breeching? Screeching? I ended with this:
“We are all now . . . oh, I blew it.”
This might have destroyed the atmosphere of “We Three Kings,” but we kept on singing (“Oooh, OOOOOHHHH, star of wonder . . .”), and the horrified expressions in the audience never changed, I definitely took that as a bad sign.
Three morals emerge from this dirge.
Sing your song. Someone in your audience will make faces. Are you overly concerned with what others might be thinking and thus losing your place in life? Though you feel as graceless as a hippo setting up dominoes, be your own person. Sing your own psalm. God knows it’s worth hearing.
You can’t always “wing it.” Deep preparation pays.
Even when you blow it, life goes on. Chapter 15 of Revelation describes a “new song,” the glorious song of Moses and the Lamb, that no one in the universe can sing but we, the frail and faulty. The singers of that song haven’t been unduly swayed by others; they have deeply prepared so that they can literally wing it; and they understand that even though they have, on occasion, blown it, eternal life goes on.
The surprisingly good news about this new song is that we will somehow know the words, we will know the tune, and—befitting each of our life-songs—we won’t be singing solo.
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