On finding your voice

and rising above the drone

I love to sing. Favourites include Yer So Bad, Free Fallin’ and Breakdown. Vocally, Tom Petty is my hero. There was a time when I didn’t think I could sing. As a child, singing took happened in one of two places: school, or church.

Most of my school based singing experiences had nothing to do with singing at all. Singing, as far as I could tell, involved lining up, making hand gestures and getting rained on by moist lipped children with uncontrolled plosives.

In the fourth grade I had Mrs Vanrickervorsal. She was neither cruel nor kind, neither stern nor playful. She did however have a massive pair of eyes. Her eyes were like twin, full, late summer, early evening moons. The kind that take up what seems to be the entirety of the sky.

I’m not sure if she was a hippie or not. As a member of Gen X, I love to look back and try to figure out who my hippie teachers were. She had us sing a song called ‘One Tin Soldier’. It was an anti war song that paints a bleak picture of human nature. She …