Searching for somewhere to sing

I don’t want to talk about the political event coinciding with MLK Jr. Day today but I hope everyone had a day off of work or at least something chiller today to offset the fascistic vibes. I’ve tried to keep my day as normal as possible (something I’m lucky to do), which has kept me happy. Meera and I went to Trader Joe’s, and something about being there gives me some glimmer of hope. Such a chaotic place…but everyone is nice and tries to be orderly. Very Hillary lib of me, but it’s just true that having sincere, nice interactions at the grocery store makes life better. We’ll continue to have them!

One of my 2025 resolutions is to find a non-cringe singing group, which may be an impossible task. Singing is inherently cringe because it’s vulnerable and has high potential for obnoxiousness and/or sounding bad — but so many groups somehow add more cringe on top of the already cringey act of wanting to express yourself through song.

Singing has always been a part of my life so much so that I can’t pinpoint a first pivotal memory of Wait, I love singing! I was never meant to be a triple threat; I can’t dance, and I liked acting but learned I can only act like myself (GROAN!!!!). Singing has always been the perfect hobby: something I love and am pretty good at.

We all have skills. When did you realize you actually had one? The closest I can feel was the ecstasy of one third grade music class when we did a fake opera, and Mrs. Froehlich gave me the lead. I was so excited to sing the most and the best. I had the validation and freedom to go crazy. There’s plenty of hobbies we love for the sake of them, but it’s much better when you don’t suck shit, right?

I found another hobby around the same time I slayed the fake opera: playing the viola. The viola (some people still don’t know) is like if a violin were slightly bigger and its highest string was swapped for a really low one. The viola often takes a backseat to the violin’s dominance, providing steady harmonies that serve as the orchestra’s glue. While violinists are going crazy on a melody, my violist role would either be a lot simpler or just weird.

My fellow academic tryhards picked the violin and began a path of competitiveness I would have hated, but I was immediately enamored with the viola. I can’t really pick a central archetype of violists I interacted with aside from just plain nice. We were just giggling and having fun. Coincidentally, it was less competitive and easier for me to succeed, so I dove in, full throttle.

I’m realizing while writing this that I gravitated towards a lot of activities because I either wanted to be around other smart people or wanted to avoid who I perceived as dumb people. In middle school, we had our first opportunity to choose a class, which was music. Of band, orchestra, and choir, orchestra was an easy choice because I loved the viola. Part of what made orchestra an easy choice (aside from harrowing rumors of how evil the choir teacher was) was because choir was the bucket everyone who didn’t play an instrument fell into. Middle school was also my first chance at taking an honors-level class, so I wanted to silo myself into as many smart situations as possible.

If choir was gen pop, I was going to have to deal with all the annoying boys disrupting class and making fun of everything. Music was serious for me, and I did not want my authentic interest to be deterred or dampened by outside noise. I then associated taking choir as something that dumb kids did. Similarly, we could choose French, German, or Spanish as a language we could learn. We took Spanish classes in elementary school, so many Spanish-choosers just wanted the easiest option. I found a lot of wannabe smart-os like me taking French and German and, you guessed it, the delinquents taking Spanish. I could probably go into related socioeconomic pressures and my own snobbery in a different issue.

It’s funny that as an adult I just took my first in-person Spanish class last week and am now looking for a way to join some sort of choir. I wasn’t just choosing activities based on my passions but based on the compatibility I felt with my classmates. I didn’t know that until right now. I did love the viola, though, and did private lessons and played in an orchestra outside of school, too.

I vividly remember my private viola tutor, an old lady in her wooden Upper Saint Clair basement, freaking out when I told her that I, a freshman in high school, was going to try out for the musical. She was very afraid for me about the pressure I’d be under and how I’d start ignoring the viola (she was kind of right). She told this story about some girl she knew(?) who got a lead in the play and was stressed out running late to rehearsal. She crashed her car and died, which my teacher punctuated in her Pittsburgh accent: And she diiiied! This phrase joined my family’s lexicon.

I joined the musical and worked the hardest I maybe had worked at anything in my young life. I remember going home after rehearsals and stuffing Oreos into my mouth before passing out doing homework. I was in the ensemble and made friends who either were in choir or planned on joining the next year. At this point, I was much more motivated by being on stage than in the pit.

My school’s choir had an audition-only girls singing group called Triple Trio because it was originally nine girls upon its founding during the Great Depression or whatever. I don’t remember what motivated me to try out, but I went to a private voice lesson or two (with a lady who’d become my teacher for the rest of high school) to perfect my audition. I tried out with a Latin song we all had to learn and these are a few of my favorite things…and got in as a sophomore, the first year anyone is eligible. I wasn’t in choir previously; I didn’t do theater outside of school; I was an ensemble nobody in the musical…I felt like such a baddie.

I did all sorts of school choir stuff for the rest of high school. I’m an alto, which in choir land is a lot like playing the viola, providing low notes and stability or weird harmonies while sopranos out-high note each other. Like with viola, it was easier to excel here and way more fun. I met some of my best friends and fell in love for the first time in the alto section.

I loved singing and kept at it through high school. It took up a lot of my time. I learned how to breathe differently. I felt myself get better. My voice teacher even told me she thought I could ace some college auditions if I ever wanted to do that (but of course she’d say that — she was getting paid!). I loved getting something right, both on my own and in a group.

But I also couldn’t stand choir. All of the things you think about theater people are true for a lot of them. Personality types…obviously lots of strange folks, but so am I. Some of the strange was compatible with mine, but others were not. Above all, I hated the competitiveness and fakery over stupid stuff. People would get so up their own butts and sing loudly and badly. One of the most embarrassing things is when someone thinks they can sing and actually can’t. I’ve been this person and have seen this person, and they always feel like nails on a chalkboard. In other words, choir makes me cringe.

My main activity in high school was editing the school paper, but I liked having singing stuff as an aside (which I realize now took up way more time than how it felt at the time because time flies when you’re having fun). When I got to college, I auditioned for 8 a capella group auditions like I was in pitch perfect. The experience was excruciating — tons of the most obnoxious high school choir archetypes from around the world instead of around my suburb (and these people were actually the leads of their school musicals, which they openly bragged about!). I could feel the cliqueyness and competitiveness already, but I loved to sing so I thought that could propel me away from the mess.

I got called back for almost all of the groups I auditioned for and, again, I was ecstatic. The rules, for some reason, were that you could only pick three groups to attend callbacks for, so I picked what I surmised were the three best groups. I ended up going to the same callbacks as three other freshman altos, and we vibed the whole time like how altos do.

We had a teeny group chat and messaged each other when the group lists were announced, and I didn’t get into any of the groups I auditioned for. I was crushed and felt like my college life was over before it even began. Should I have picked a different song? Should I have gone to different callbacks? I can’t hear my own singing and really know if I’m good against my peers or not — was this proof that I actually suck? I spent a day crying in my room and mourning what would end up being the last time I tried singing in an organized way.

My friends now, especially the ones I made in college, rightfully think it’s hilarious that I could have been an a capella kid, which they think are the most insufferable people ever. I would have been a completely different person, probably, or maybe I’d still be embarrassed of the cringe. Now my singing is with them when we go to karaoke, which is obviously one of my favorite things to do. I am going through a viewmaster in my memory of all the pivotal karaoke memories I’ve had over the past few years from New Hampshire to New York.

Or it’s alone! It’s constant. I sing out all of my yawns. I make up little songs every few minutes. I spend many days alone while Meera’s at work just singing to myself. The shower is my sanctuary. It always brightens my day, but I feel my skill waning, the muscles flabby.

Above any sort of skill-honing, I just miss the feeling of singing in a group. It also is so cringe to still say that I sing but the last time I did in a real way was in high school. It’s giving I would’ve gone pro if I didn’t tear my ACL junior year. But I don’t want to try being an amazing singer (I’m in a town full of actually amazing ones), I just want to feel amazing singing — which is done best in a group.

Now what would that group look like? I have standards, but I don’t want to audition because I don’t want to compete with anyone. I’ll sing some Christian songs if forced, but I would hate to sing for a church. And the hardest sell of all — I don’t want to sing with a cringe group!

Gabby and I met through being alto queens in high school, and she kept singing in college. When we both moved to New York, we went to a singing group that ended up going viral on TikTok a few times. It’s a drop-in, no audition group not meant for competitiveness but for the love of singing. This sounded totally up my alley, and I was really excited. Gabby had gone before me and liked it, so I went with her.

I ended up hating it. Cringe, cringe, cringe. All people like me — singers validated in high school — but they were clearly trying to compete with each other. There’s this phoniness I feel in a lot of new age-y spiritual groups around Brooklyn in which people use therapyspeak to mask how they really feel. I felt this with a lot of the members but especially with the guy leading it all, who I’ll call The Director, an early-30’s, moderately attractive, allegedly gay guy.

One of my least favorite things about singing in groups is politicking, and this is often enabled by the group’s director. High school choral directors are often picking favorites and ignoring others in a way they probably wish they could have done as teens, so this creates a patronage system for parents and students to suck up to. I always hated this and did not participate. As adults, we should be away from that, but I felt a cult forming around The Director. The way people laughed loudly at his every joke, awaited each word that passed through his lips…they were entranced. I was repulsed by it. Why does everyone have to be looking for Daddy everywhere they go?

The rest of the rehearsal had some fun moments, usually when we were off in little groups. Anytime anything revolved around The Director, I was so bored. I could feel him performing himself, everything seemed to be a way to make him look more authoritative instead of letting us shine. Another therapyspeaker. At the end of the rehearsal, people were encouraged to sing their feelings instead of speaking them, which I found extremely corny and could have been fun in a different environment. I have been crapping on The Director now for almost two years. I loathe his vibe, and he represents everything I hate about New York. He was giving what seemed to be the kind of singing group I could get into, but I was wrong.

This weekend, I went to a choir concert. Gabby and my other friend Payton joined a no-audition, secular community choir mostly filled with old people and singing rock songs. I would have joined it because it sounded fun, but — lo and behold — The Director was in charge of it. I was happy to be in the audience, though, and a bunch of us went to support them.

The show was at this gorgeous old church in Brooklyn Heights (the Catholics slayed that one). Meera and I sat in a pew off to the side and got to wave to our friends as they came out. The church in all of its Brooklyn libbiness felt cozy and reminded me of how much I enjoyed running around places of worship in my youth and finding secret passageways or old objects lying around.

I cry or hold back tears at the beginning of every Broadway performance because I feel so thankful be to experience such greatness. Seeing this big group of oldies start singing together made me want to cry. We had a toddler running around in a pew in front of us trying (and usually succeeding) to get the attention of her mother singing at the end of one of the risers (not everyone was an old). It was so nice to sit next to Meera, and the toddler was very taken by her (relatable). The audience was all people who just wanted to support the people they loved. I felt a real sense of community.

Then The Director starts speaking between songs. Ugh. The same cultishness and self-importance as I knew two years ago. I tried ignoring him and just enjoying the songs, which wasn’t hard for a while. Eventually, he had to read off raffle winner numbers, which he started by saying Community care update 1 (what does that even mean) that EMS staff were called and he asked the crowd if anyone called them. He should have just been stern, but he had to say community care update? Then Community care update 2 was the raffle. Instead of reading off raffle numbers, he sang them. This was his way to flex his skills, and half of the time he sang the numbers too quickly. I was thinking about maybe joining this group but realized that if he was my director, I’d have to hear him proselytizing each rehearsal.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the concert and watching my girls sing and giggle. Meera videotaped Gabby’s solo like we were proud parents. We all got drinks after and partly talked about how polarizing The Director is. Gabby, a fan, says that people who don’t like him are just repelled by his authenticity. Eyeroll!

But maybe it would be better to just enjoy, either to let the The Director lull me or not care enough about what he says to just go enjoy singing. Why do I insist on finding a cringeless place where there is so much cringe to be found no matter what? Is it some sort of repulsion to my own nerdiness, my own authenticity? Do I just have high standards? Are these standards worth missing out on a creative expression that’s always made me happy and has only been hindered by annoying people? I’ve probably been an annoying choir person for countless people.  

If this wasn’t enough of a cry for help, please help me find a place to sing! I don’t want to write anymore so I’m ending it here. I am craving Chipotle. #Mmm #ChipotSLAY