How Can I Keep from Singing?

Do you know those words “How can I keep from singing?” They are from a beautiful Appalachian hymn and the words speak powerfully and poignantly of the healing, nurturing nature of singing to lift us up even in the midst of life’s darkest hours- even as they also give wing to our feelings of joy and gratitude when life is especially bright. If I had to choose one single song to be something of a theme song for my own life, this might actually be it- since singing has been such an integral part of who I am and what means the most to me.

A couple of recent experiences have helped me consider these words in new and deeper ways. One of them is the play at the Racine Theater Guild in which my wife Kathy has been starring: “Glorious,” based on the life of a New York City socialite who loved to sing even though she had only negligible talent for doing so. People literally came by the hundreds to hear the real Florence Foster Jenkins sing- and while a few came to be amused, many of them came to experience the joy and passion with which she shared her quavery and ill-tuned voice. And this play further suggests that when Florence sang, what she herself was hearing was not the actual sound emanating from her throat, but the glorious sound that was in her mind and heart. This play has been a huge hit for the RTG, and every performance I’ve attended has ended in a heartfelt, unbridled standing ovation… so the story is obviously connecting to people on a very powerful level, and in my admittedly unbiased opinion that has a lot to do with how my wife is portraying Florence with affection and respect. . . and of course the play itself as well as the performances of her fine costars has more than a little to do with it as well. Anyway, in this rather cynical age of “American Idol,” which spends way too much time poking fun at talent-impaired contestants, IMO, I love a story which celebrates amateur music-making in the best sense of the word- for what is an amateur? Literally, it’s someone who does what they do simply for the love of it. In that respect, Florence Foster Jenkins was the ultimate amateur.

The words of “How Can I Keep from Singing” also came to mind as I walked into Siebert Chapel yesterday morning for for the 6th Annual “Real Men and Real Women DO Sing,” a festival in which high school singers join forces with adults for a day’s worth of rehearsals that culminates in a concert that night. Kathy’s dad conceived and organized the event as one more way to encourage people to KEEP SINGING once they were out of school. And of course, those two words should also apply to the young adolescent boy who perhaps gets discouraged when his voice changes and singing is no longer is as easy or natural as it once was – or to young singers who maybe find themselves disappointed that they didn’t earn a coveted spot in their school’s top choir or the leading role in the latest musical. Those words KEEP SINGING hit me in a completely different way when I walked into Siebert and immediately saw two young men from Union Grove High School- two of the students who last fall lost their beloved choir director, Kris Novaeus, when she and her husband were killed in a tragic motorcycle accident. I played piano for the choir as they sang for the funeral – managing to do so with astonishing strength and poise – but I knew that the first choir director hired to follow Kris had not worked out and in fact lasted only a couple of weeks, but I didn’t really know where things had gone from there. I was so pleased to see those two guys there- and eventually learned that two young women from UGHS were there, along with their new choir director, Jennifer Hojnacki. And at that point, I knew that I wanted somehow to acknowledge their presence in the festival. So at the concert last night, in addition to the “Old Man River” which had been requested, I also offered a second song which I sang in memory of Kris and dedicated to the members of her choir who were still singing. And the song was “How can I keep from Singing,” the words of which I slightly adapted for the occasion:

My life flows on in endless song

above earth’s lamentation.

I catch the sweet though far off sound