I am one of those people who does not sing in spite of the fact that some would consider them tone deaf if heard. I don't have a liquid voice, regardless that it is often replete with that annoying
sense of identity that teenage girls claim to have until they go off to
college and then find out that identity was reading
Tolstoy and
writing instead of getting a job.
But who can deny themself the freedom to sing? There are some forms of happiness, I believe, that can only be articulated to others by singing.
So, in turn, yes, I do sing. Or I did sing.
It was a rather calm night, cold, clear skies--stars everywhere. I was laying in the grass trying to find any constellation (and failing), when I realized--I was happy. It wasn't the kind of happiness that one experiences after a good day at school or after finishing 10,000 lines of code with no syntax errors. It was the most abstruse long-term happiness. It was knowing that even though in a less than a year and a half, I would graduate and move away from home and I have spent every night wondering what it will be like.. in fear, even though my family hates me and makes fun of me, even though I have decided that I am not intelligent or special, everything was perfect.
And I sang. I was singing Carly Simon's "Nobody Does It Better" (or wailing rather), when I saw him. There was a man standing in the bushes watching me. He wasn't laughing. He was silent. He was observant. Normally, anyone in this situation would stop this flagrant act of turpitude and walk away blushing, but for me, not tonight. I sang like nobody was there. At times, maybe because my voice sounds different to me, I sounded beautiful.
There was a long silence. I realized that if this man was really listening to me, he might hear beauty. But I just made that up. Who hears a smile? Who hears beauty? I sang The Cure's "Friday I'm In Love" and I believe The Beatles' "I Will." And I stood and walked past the bushes.
That was when I saw it. He was merely a plant. There was no man. No one heard me sing. Singing like no one is there when you know someone is there does not happen. I was singing like someone was there, like someone cared about me. No one heard my beauty.
I conceded that this world was rotten in response to me being a virtuoso. And I walked home.
The softlinks that others have added were quite unexpected really. I actually had this faint idea that maybe someone understood. I guess not, though.