Tagged: tralalala!

In the fall of 1992, I was living and working in Chicago. I lived in a 3rd floor apartment on Cornelia with a roommate and my 2 cats, Pooka and Toby. I was in a relationship with a guy who worked at the bank where I worked, albeit in a different department. The relationship would be ending under very strained circumstances within months although I didn’t know that at the time. From Cornelia it was a short walk to the Belmont El station where I could catch the downtown train to First Chicago Bank, coming out in the station right...

I like singing at the elderly care homes, which we do twice a year, because our audiences for the most part are so very appreciative. They sing along and nod and smile at us. Frail shoulders bob when we sing the livelier tunes and more than one face is teary-eyed when we round up with the 3 tightly harmonic verses of Silent Night. But it makes me very pensive as I can’t help but put myself in their slippers and wonder what life is like there for them, what will it be like for me if I end up someday...

Sing in the car the whole way there, along the highway and up the hill, while the sky blazes blue around you. A tiny bird darts zippity up, first a no-winged bullet, then an aeroplane. Airplane should always be spelled with ‘aero’ instead. It seems more…aerodynamic, somehow. Sing as you drive up the road and down again, searching for a parking place along the edges of the park. Usually parking is no problem, but tonight it’s jampacked up one side and down the other. Is there something going on at the Stadium? In the park? Just people out enjoying the...

In choir we are practicing excerpts from Stabat Mater, an Easter mass concert that we are performing together with the Lomma Women’s Church Choir. It’s the first time since I joined the choir a couple of years ago that we’ve done religious music (apart from a couple of pieces in the big 3000-member choir concert we performed in Stockholm last year). Today we practiced from 10 to 4 in the chapel of the congregation house in Lomma, and it struck me again how much more majestic music sounds in a church with the open space and high ceiling. We worked...

Been thinking about, and talking about music, and singing in my head and out loud. Music infuses and enthuses me. If I had a soundtrack to each day my step would be lighter, but the nice thing is, I’m usually singing my own soundtrack, so if my step were any lighter I’d be bounding up in the air like an astronaut on the moon. Boing! I find it hard to work without music playing somewhere in the room, in the house, or in my head. One reason I dread sharing my office with someone is the worry that they won’t...