Fortissimo

tune

When words fail, music speaks.

Are you tired of hearing that too? I'm not usually someone who hates every cliché, but this one really does it for me. I mean, could we put anything else on the college fair poster next to the extraordinarily unflattering open-mouthed close-ups of random people who haven't attended this university in years? Could we find another title for the mid-winter concert? Could we, and I really mean this, find anything else for Porter Penn, the resident perfect-pitch-haver and loudest-singing tenor in the Central Carolina University Chamber Choir (more on him later), to get tattooed on the back of his neck during a particularly exciting spring break mission trip with the United Methodist Campus Ministry?

I don't know about you, but since the day I started performing, (circa Bill Clinton), I haven't been able to escape it. The very first room I ever remember singing in -- the choir room at Daisy Presbyterian Church -- had a quilt the women's circle made hung proudly on the wall that said, you guessed it, "When words fail, music speaks."

There was a poster in my elementary school auditorium, a mural in the Jackson City Arts Center one town over, a bulletin board in the Daisy High School choir room, and some kind of graffiti wall in Harold Hall, the distinguished music building on the campus of Central Carolina University. And when they built the new Roxanne M. Topper Center for the Arts, I don't have to tell you what they wrote on the plaque just outside the Aaron D. Warrick Memorial Choir Rehearsal Room. Somewhere along the line it started to lose its meaning, like every too-much-of-a-good-thing, becoming little more than words strung together that you hear but don't listen to. It was really a joke now- we would say it constantly, to everything, and in a well-timed moment it could be prime comedic material.

But on this particular day in mid-May, a windy, misty morning blanketed by grey clouds hanging low on the horizon, it felt real- no, true again.

I have no words to describe what it felt like leaving for a summer in an unfamiliar house with people I barely knew or, at least, felt like I barely knew. All I could think of all morning was one note. A4. 440 Hz. Better known as concert pitch. Or if you're really not musical, that note everyone in the orchestra plays together before they start.

I know it sounds weird, but there are a lot of feelings in 440 Hz. For me it feels like looking up and up and up at the top of the pale gray choir shell as the audience hums with light, excited chatter. Their anticipation echoes through the dark matted floorboards of the immaculately swept stage, surging straight through my concert black heels to the ends of my perfectly curled hair. I can feel my glossed lips buzz in the backstage shadows, safe for now at A. A is for anticipation. 

Then, at each of their own unique pace, the strings descend to the next note. A thrilling hush begins to fall over the house as the lights dim, and I can see in my mind the orchestra's stand lights flickering on like the stars coming out one by one on a perfectly clear night. As the fading lights bid the audience to sit back and relax, we in the wings begin to settle, a dead silence overtaking us with the sure promise that someone will yell at us later if anyone can be heard. Everyone else is chomping at the bit to get out to the stage, but I close my eyes and melt into the moment, suddenly perfectly calm at E. E is for excitement.

And then everyone drops to D and the lights black out. I can feel my face blanch and my skin become a sea of chill bumps, suddenly wishing for the comfort of the sweatshirt I left in the rehearsal room as the audience falls dead silent. Dark and silence are no longer exciting, and I wonder for a second why I ever became a singer in the first place. There is no way I can do this. All I can think about now is how far away the nearest bathroom is as D shrieks from the stage. D is for dread.

And then the moment passes almost as quickly as it came. Now we're on G. And G, as our director Dr. Rosenbush would always say, is for go-time.

Anticipation started with the drunk text from Oliver and lasted only as long as it took to overpack my suitcase with a beachy wardrobe and every piece of home I could fit. Excitement lasted for even less time, just long enough to make it impossible to go to bed the night before we were supposed to leave. It gave way to dread somewhere around 3 am, when I suddenly realized that I had no business inserting myself into a friend group I barely even knew. The last and only time I'd ever been invited to hang out with them I was sure I'd embarrassed myself, as I do (details to come later), and the only reason Oliver invited me again was that he was trying to be nice and expecting me to say no. Or maybe he just didn't remember anything because he was drunk the whole night. Or maybe Aunt Hilary told him to. Or maybe...