Songs and Echoes

By Jessica Lake

I want to make clear how central singing has always been to me. I have always sung. And people have always complimented me. It was the one thing I could do right.

Before every holiday in grammar school, we learned silly songs—about Christopher Columbus, American Indians, Valentine’s Day. There were also the hymns I learned in church.

Near my grandparents’ house was a cemetery. I used to wander there, stopping at gravestones that caught my eye. I would read the names aloud, the dates of birth and death, and wonder about the lives that fit between them.

Mostly, I would sing—whatever song came to mind.

I wanted them to know that even though decades and centuries had passed, they were not forgotten. That even if their great-grandchildren had lived full lives and died, someone still cared that they had once been babies, students, loving mothers, dutiful sons—gone too soon.

Sometimes I sang to the sunlight, to the grass swaying, to the leaves whispering to one another. My prayer was that, in gratitude for my gratitude, someone might someday think of me—alive once, but also gone too soon.

As a child, I fantasized that someone would hear me singing and discover me. I would be famous. People would notice me and like me. Maybe I would be in The Mickey Mouse Club.

Eventually, I realized something unsettling:

I wasn’t really singing.

I was mimicking whatever I heard—sounds, accents, cartoon characters. My voice became theirs. Whoever I heard on a record, the radio, or television, I felt compelled to make their talent mine.

This makes me something of a contrarian.

A singer blessed with a musical voice usually reveals herself by mastering her own instrument. She learns what makes her voice singular and uses it to tell a story.

Mimicry is almost the opposite.

What comes out of your mouth is someone else’s performance.

I try to reproduce the original’s range, tonality, phrasing, vibrato, pronunciation, even the attack and decay of individual notes. Often that means reproducing bad habits as faithfully as good ones. Essential to the trick is placing the voice correctly along the scale from masculine to feminine, child to codger.

When nothing of me remains, I am happy.

In everything, I overachieve. I am foolish enough to try to mimic almost anything I hear. Most of what comes out is garbage, which only means I must work harder. I have wasted decades being almost there.

Once in a while, though, I sing in my own voice—a warm, articulate high tenor.

It’s strange.

I labor to torture when I can charm with ease.

Mimicry is clever trickery. It disguises your voice and fools the listener. There is something dishonest about it. Worst of all, the worse I initially sound, the sweeter the eventual success.

And I never give up.

My best imitations of women were Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, and Trisha Yearwood.

Age has damaged my voice. I can’t belt anymore.

When I was young, I also tried to imitate my brothers’ love of 1980s heavy metal. Those singers shout, scream, and grunt at full volume—bulls in china shops. It is all testicular and strangulated. I can do it, but not for long. It is tiring, painful, and hard on the voice.

What comes naturally to me is grace, intimacy, melody, and romance.

I love folk, Broadway, Baroque opera, and the American songbook. I have what is called a legit voice—the Broadway kind—requiring openness, clarity, and pristine articulation. Idiosyncrasy is usually considered a flaw.

Afraid of disapproval, I hid those ambitions from my brothers. I tried to make myself want what they wanted. I failed at guitar, bass, drums, and keyboard.

Sisyphus-like, I covet talents that can never quite become mine.

Again and again I begin with hope, practice, improve, and eventually rediscover the same limits. In time, loathing pours from my ears, drips from my mouth, and spills from my lips.

Then I begin again.

That may be the circle.

As a child, I sang in a cemetery because I wanted the forgotten dead to know that someone still heard them.

I wanted the same mercy for myself.

I wanted to be heard.

And then I spent a lifetime learning how to sing until nothing of me remained.