Harmony

I miss making harmony. 

It's partly because of the pandemic and partly because of personnel changes at church, but the days in which I could always slide into a weekend ensemble are over, at least temporarily. While it lasted, it was a great combination of flexibility and structure. The directors picked the music; they would let me know which Masses needed people and whether it would be most helpful to have voice, flute, bass, guitar, or (very rarely) keyboard. I just had to show up and do what they asked me to. Usually I played or sang a pre-written part, but exactly often enough they would say, "Can you just use the chords to noodle around? Play something pretty." And I would.

These days I have a very small role in the music program: I am a substitute cantor at the early Mass when the usual cantor is sick or out of town. But the part of me that needs to make harmonies with other people is swelling up internally, like a-- I started to say like a boil, but maybe we'll say like a pupa instead. We'll hope it's more of a butterfly phenomenon than an abscess phenomenon.

When I am washing dishes these days I don't want to sing by myself. My brain feeds me a line of music to sing like it always has, but lately it is a harmony part instead of the melody. This morning it kept running a loop of this specific spot from the new Brooke Ligertwood album. (Do you hear the harmony part too? The one that starts out a third above Brooke's melody line there?) I love the bass part in that song, too, but playing the bass alone feels even lonelier than singing a harmony part by myself.

I think this is why I've been listening to The Chicks so much this year: Natalie Maines sings in exactly the right register for me to harmonize with her, sometimes higher and sometimes lower. Last night I picked up Pete at the climbing gym just before Goodbye, Earl started playing over the car speakers, and I tried to coax him into singing it with me. "Mom," he said, "is it maybe a little strange for a Catholic to sing so enthusiastically about murder?"

"Um," I said fumblingly, "self-defense and murder are viewed differently in moral philosophy?"

But really I just wanted to sing Martie Maguire's harmony part as loudly as possible.