Okay, let me get the really embarrassing stuff over with immediately.

I enjoyed it.  I had FUN.  I am planning on putting myself on the official St Margaret’s rota.*

Whew.  That was hard.  I enjoyed singing Jesus Is My Boyfriend** music [sic].  In public.  How totally humiliating is that.

Sunday, which was sunny and fabulous, passed under my own personal cloud of prospective dread.  I did do some singing warm up because I wanted some chance at some voice and I tend to shut down to a tiny rasping squeak like a single lonely cicada when I’m nervous.  I didn’t warm up exactly brilliantly.***  And when I crept into St Margaret’s I was not encouraged by the sight of Aloysius ALL BY HIMSELF except for the woman who was going to be running the tech deck helping him lay out the cables.  He had said in his email that the names on the rota were a bit thin this week. . . .

AAAAAAAUGH.

Fortunately it wasn’t as bad as that.  Samantha appeared deus ex machina, saying that she hadn’t been planning to sing that night but she had realised that I was going to be all alone and she couldn’t do that to a new girl.  Eeeeep.  Thank you.  Eeeeeeeeep.  And then Sinead, another rota singer, wandered in and said that she couldn’t do her proper rota day and maybe we could use her tonight?  YES.  PLEASE.  HERE, HAVE A MICROPHONE.  Hamish, the church office magician, appeared, spun his spurs and strapped on his six-shooter.  Er.  Bass.  But that was all.  No drums.  No keyboards.  No random woodwinds.  No vicar—he’s always there.†

We plunged into practise.  I was on the near end with Aloysius just at my right shoulder which is very good because not only does his guitar give me the key I’m scrabbling for but he’s a nice strong tenor and I’d already told him he had to sing the melody.  The first couple of songs are a bit of a blur.  I was holding the mic as if it was going to morph into something with six heads and forty-seven incisors per as soon as I stopped staring at it like it was going to.  The Hammered to Death by Fluffy Bunnies song was substantially less diabolical with the new line-up but we had to go through it several times since I had no clue about what it was supposed to sound like—and of course there was no sheet music.  And then Aloysius had to get fancy and bolt a couple of songs together so you slide into the second one without a break and then revert to the previous one for a chorus repeat WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO US YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE ONE OF THE GOOD GUYS.

I don’t really know what happened except that I think I can hear God laughing.  My voice woke up.  And the last couple of songs I actually kind of like††—especially the one which is in a reasonable range, so many of the Jesus Is My Boyfriend songs lie on my voice like bricks on custard, it’s like the aural version of trying to wear someone else’s prescription glasses, and neither singing up an octave or down an octave works.  But here were two I could sing.

And I did.  And furthermore . . . and this is where I know I was taken over by an alien personality . . . I started singing free harmony.  I do not sing free harmony.  I can learn a harmonic line, given the sheet music and about six months, but I cannot just frelling riff off a melody.  Whoever she was, Sunday night, using my voice, I hope she visits often.  That was serious fun.  At the end Sinead gave me a hug and said, I can tell you like that song!

And then the live performance—I mean the service—was pretty much falling off a log.  Problem?  There was supposed to be a problem?

There are one or two things to mention here.  First, St Margaret’s evening service is small and informal.  It’s not like anyone was going to be nasty to me even if I screwed up big time.  And I don’t exactly guarantee I was pitch perfect even while the self-confident alien babe was singing.  Second, most of the Jesus Is My Boyfriend stuff is dead easy, especially if you’re used to beating your brains and ripping your own throat out singing stuff that is significantly beyond you because you take voice lessons and your voice teacher needs something to do, right?†††  It should be easy:  people who don’t take voice lessons should be able to sing their church’s worship music.‡  And third . . . I was just telling someone who asked me how I ‘learnt’ to do public speaking . . . I didn’t.  After my BEAUTY was published they sent me out on the road and I discovered I could do public speaking.  It’s like one of those James Bond things:  the car develops waterwings or the knapsack is also a rocketblaster.  I CAN DO PUBLIC SPEAKING?  WHAT?  WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?  Aside from little questions like whether I can sing or not, apparently singing in public doesn’t make this agonising doubt any more agonising.

How frelling bizarre.  I did think it was at least possible that if I didn’t freeze up, singing for purpose—helping to lead the service—would let me like the floppy, soppy music we sing better, and make it feel more like an offering of worship instead of a mortification, ashes and hair shirts optional.   And.  Yeah.  But I wasn’t expecting the harmony—or the high.

* * *

* Unless someone stops me.  Noooooo!  She’s too loooooooud!  She drowns out the keyboard!  —Ugly.  Mwahahahahahahaha.  —slightlyadaptedhellgoddess^

^ I belong to the Love Wins camp, remember, so if you’re asking me, all reigning in all the various hells—ie the nice somewhat confused ones and the really unpleasant ones—is temporary.  Which is fine.  I’m sure I’ll be ready for a new challenge when my particular corner of hell disintegrates.+

+ There will be chocolate, champagne and critters in heaven, won’t there?#

# Of course there will.  And the roses WILL HAVE NO THORNS.

** ::falls down laughing::  Thank you, dhudson.   I love this.  I’m also glad that it seems to other people that there’s something CREEEEEEEEPY about a lot of this sticky music:  I’ve been describing these songs as frelling power ballads only it’s God instead of your boyfriend/girlfriend/groupoffriendswithprivileges.  Dhudson’s phrase cuts to the chase.

Although some of the old gospel hymns, which is what I grew up with and are about the only positive memory I have of church as a kid, aren’t exactly faultless in this area.  I’ve always loved In the Garden, and it’s one of those I’ve been singing for fifty-odd years and did not have to relearn the lyrics when I started singing while hurtling as a way to shortening the warm-up when I get back to the piano and the Italian art songs etc^, but it’s always struck me as doctrinally a little dubious:

He walks with me, and he talks with me

And he tells me I am his own

And the joy we share as we tarry there

None other has ever known.

—Um.  Hmmm.

^ Also I’m beginning to enjoy the looks on other pedestrians’ faces when I don’t shut up in time and lyrics like ‘On that bright and cloudless morning when the dead in Christ shall rise’+ register on their unsuspecting ears, which in this modern well-zombied culture may rouse an unfortunate secular response.

+ Which I confess I tend to belt out with all the new Nadia-power within me.

*** I also crack a lot when I’m nervous.  How many ways is this going to be a disaster.

† Vicars.  They take holidays.  Who knew?

†† No, no, not like!  Oisin will never speak to me again!

††† HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  And for my latest stupid trick I’m learning Victor Herbert’s I want to be a prima donna—aka Art Is Calling to Me—mainly because it’s silly and I’ve always loved it for being silly.  It also has a high Bb.  The thing, as I told Nadia, that is really irritating is that I have a high Bb . . . when I’m doing the frelling washing up.  As soon as I get near the piano it jumps out the window and runs off to Cornwall.  Or Canada.  I assume this is common, you can remember a note long enough to check it on the piano?  Yes that is a high Bb, but try and do it again suuuuucker. . . . .  Nadia says, just rewrite it for now.  You can put the Bb back in later.

‡ I don’t have a problem with that;  my beloved gospel tunes are pretty much the only music on the planet that I can more or less play on the piano with both hands by sight-reading.  Easy.  Very, very easy music.