Addicted to art (at 3)

I’m an addict. Have been since I was three – 100 years and trying not to count.

That was when I cut my first record — You Are My Sunshine, a 78. OK, it was my parents’ record-making machine. I had an adoring and supportive audience. 

I was hooked. Who doesn’t love to be famous at three?

No one chooses to be an artist. Who would choose to make less money, work harder and outlive what would be a short career? 

Art chooses you and, if you are lucky, you accept the challenge.

I’m still hooked. I will tap dance and sing — You Are My Sunshine – all the way to my grave. Happy to have been chosen.

Full disclosure: I took a detour after the early record-breaking record. I quickly forgot about singing and became a much nicer person (just kidding) and did sports and dance until I was in the high-school musical.

I was singing the opening number in My Fair Lady as the curtain opened. It rolled me up in it, carried me over the orchestra pit, and put me down, ever so gently, back on the stage. I loved the look of fear on the faces of the musicians and audience.

I straightened my hat, and finished my song. Was I horrified or embarrassed? Nah, the show must go on and it was great to fly solo.

I was hooked.

I have travelled the world, learned many languages, seen every little town in Alberta and supported myself with music all my life.

I have sung at weddings, funerals, musicals, operettas, opera, with symphonies, guitars, jazz groups, rock bands and at play schools. 

My adventure with singing has taken me to some very strange and wonderful places where I have met stranger and even more wonderful people.

Surprise, there are many people just like me out there. People willing to volunteer hundreds of hours behind the scenes to bring art to you and a few fools who think singing in front of a thousand people is fun! Whee!

Volunteers made — and still make — possible many of the gigs we professional, though underpaid, singers and musicians do for a living.

Like this one, in my early career. After finishing university, I did score some paying gigs with Seattle Opera and did a series of community/Seattle Opera joint productions

This meant Seattle Opera supplied profession singers (me!) and a pianist. The community provided the director, sets, chorus, etc. We did El Capitan by John Philip Sousa. Yes, the marching band composer. 

The town recruited a contractor for their set designer, an English teacher who had never seen a musical and eight men to be the great armies of Spain and the uprising peasants. We arrived three days before opening to find they had built a wall – unmovable, huge and with only one regular door in the middle and no side stages.

What fun trying to squeeze through the entrance or getting off stage in time.

My most memorable moment happened when the Conquistadors, all in helmets, and armour, left the stage to become immediately the uprising peasants. 

The stage went empty and stayed that way. Finally, the frustrated director yelled from the audience, “Where are you?”

An indignant chorister came on stage in his underwear and yelled back, “We have a costume change,” and stomped off. 

I was still hooked.

Yes, live art is exciting and impossible without the hard work of volunteers.

The pandemic has taught us how empty the world would be without artists/risk takers, and volunteers.

In future columns, I hope to show who is out there and what they’re doing along with some anecdotes. I know I’m not the only crazy one. You will have a chance to meet the others.

Hooked and proud of it.