Don't lose that number

A pleasant dream: It’s choir but in a strange location, maybe a sail loft in a shipyard, industrial workers, the hard type. You know. Staring up at the wooden beams, curved and stained and built when they knew how to build things. There they are, the good people of Fife. From Cowdenbeath, Lochgelly, Kelty, Rosyth and thereabouts, easily dismissed you might think. I recognise the labourers faces, weathered, hard, soft, some dead, some alive maybe, younger than they should be, perhaps younger than they ever were. I’m looking around at those faces, nodding in recognition. There’s no back biting, no feuds, no religious differences or football teams, smokers and non-smokers, short and tall, male and female. We are a diverse and fractured tribe, this Fife choir of choice misfits. Perhaps we’ve died and this is some retrospective, non-compliant heaven nobody dared to believe in.

High on this imagined hill, the sail loft starts to fill with sound. Like a heavy aircraft taking off, or a ship being launched, pulling against the chains, reluctant, but we’re putting in the effort, we’re applying ourselves. We’re throwing down those expressions and inhibitions and years of dissent and negativity. The singing will be strong and positive. We rebel against our type. You thought wrong. You judged us blindly. Tough? Uncouth? Stupid? If you see only that then just leave, we’re past that now, we have a singing voice that just might break the stereotype you find so easy to believe. But to know that you’d have to stop and listen and that’s not easy for you. Your inside voice tells you that on repeat. Misplaced other voices just don’t count and you fell under the spell, telling yourself stories. Those people in the choir don’t hear your own inner narrative. There will be no disputes or riots today, no slap across the puss, we’re free from disagreeing.

So we sing, “Rikki don’t lose that number”. No choirmaster, no song sheets, it’s all just pouring out like from a machine. Stronger by the second. I’ve never heard a choir sing this song. Incongruous, an imperfect fit but just right. I’m so new to choirs and people. How did this ever happen? We do two verses, two choruses, no flaws, word perfect. Everything is rising, the room, the loft, this is a huge space now filled with our sound. It’s wonderful, warm and uplifting. The middle eight is coming, I feel an inner tension. It’s not tough to sing, we’re in the groove anyway, we have the momentum and everybody is feeling really good. In my head I can hear the words coming up, I can see the words … that middle eight.

Now I’m awake. It’s three thirty. The cats want fed.