Did Someone Say Musical?

No… wait… not what it says.

Prompt: Are you musically talented or musically challenged?

Well, I suppose that depends on how you define it.

I can’t play any instruments because I was never taught to. But I danced before I walked and I can sing damn near anything except maybe opera… though I’ve never tried.

One never knows.

I come from a very musical family. Mostly on my dad’s side though I do have a cousin on my mom’s side that actually does sing opera. Quite well actually, her voice is incredible.

But on my dad’s side, almost everyone plays at least one instrument and/or sings. My cousin, Melynda is actually a recording artist in Holland.

This is her. She wrote this song about her late husband who died of a heart attack on the morning of their tenth wedding anniversary. This song still makes me cry.

Some people say there’s a family resemblance and she and I look alike. I don’t know. But we like to sing together. We’ve done this song together at family events.

My brother can play just about any instrument he picks up but was a prodigy at the piano from before I was dancing. My dad plays drums and guitar. Both of them sing. My brother will say he can’t but that’s just him being weird. He’s actually good.

Just… not as good as me. 😎

I used to have a band and that was my first escape from the ballet world. It was composed entirely of dancers from my school. Our songs were written by this British guy I had a major thing for. We’ll call him Simon (not his real name) and he wrote a song about me once. It was called Little Girl, Big Sound. It was to try to give me the courage to speak, or maybe sing about the things that I’d been through. We wrote a lot of songs together and it was helpful. But most of them never saw the stage. Our band covered a lot of Evanescence and that’s how I started getting compared to Amy Lee in terms of what my singing voice sounds like.

Simon would do the male parts in any Evanescence song that we covered. This one was my favorite where I wasn’t lead. I loved to sing My Immortal and Bring Me To Life, but this one had deep and personal meaning to me. And Simon’s voice suited it perfectly.

One of my biggest talents (outside of ballet) is that I can mimic almost anything I hear. So when I’m compared to an artist after I sing one of their songs, it’s usually because I purposely tried to sound like them. I can also do pretty much any accent under the sun.

I left my band when I started seeing The Blue-Eyed Vampire… but he can also sing and absolutely lived for Karaoke. So I never stopped singing but I was able to show off my voice in a new variety of ways. I always liked to do big songs. Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Christina Aguilera, Pink, Sia — anything that would show what my voice was capable of producing amused me.

But duets with Blue Eyes were always requested. We had our Karaoke place and everyone knew us there and when we’d be spotted out together — it was a guarantee that someone who’d seen us before would ask us to do a song together. We changed it up a lot. Sometimes we had competitions and sang the same song separately but in our own way. The House of the Rising Sun was the big one for that. I always won. My version was bluesy and I did a lot of it acapella and I would belt the words out from my little ballet body and people were stunned.

I liked that.

I never enjoyed the attention that I got for being little miss Prima Ballerina but when people listened to me sing, I was in my glory.

Now I sing mostly to cats and in my car. But it’s a talent that never caused me pain. It let the pain be released. And I loved it. I still love it.

This was my favorite duet to do with Blue Eyes:

Pretty fitting considering our relationship. We also sang Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys and Love The Way You Lie by Eminem and Rihana because Blue Eyes was actually really good at rap.

This song, by The Dixie Chicks, was the song I would sing whenever I was seriously pissed or triggered or just trying to work through the horror show that was my life. I know what it’s really about but it seriously fits my life.

Another favorite duet:

This was one area where Blue Eyes and I were very similar. Genre didn’t matter. We could sing pretty much anything and we’d kill it.

(Yes, I’ve been singing along with these videos and the cats have joined me along with my husband and I’m singing to them. Hubs doesn’t know the connection to our favorite Vampire — but I think that’s okay).

Blue Eyes had his apology songs (because he never said he was sorry) and I had my “I’m MAD at you” songs. Like this one:

We needed armor.

I don’t think this prompt was supposed to turn into a little home concert and playlist but… I love to sing.

Send me down memory lane and it’s usually a bumpy road covered in broken bones and trauma. But set it to a soundtrack and I can tell you about how I made Jewel a staple at Friday night Karaoke because she’s an amazing storyteller and I loved to sing her stories.

I would switch from country to pop to rock to being the featured voice behind Blue Eyes rapping and I never wanted those nights to end. When I was singing on stage… I was alive on stage.

Dancing, I was a shell. I was just a really well-choreographed corpse. I could command an audience either way but singing was way more fun. When people looked at me they could see by my body structure and vacant stare of starvation and perfect posture that I was a ballerina. But they never expected my voice.

I loved that.

I never wanted to do it professionally. Until I found vet med, I was pretty sure that the fastest way to stop loving something was to start doing it professionally. But I use my voice to soothe cats. And I think it’s pretty cool that it can do that.

So while I don’t play instruments, I still think it’s fair to say I’m pretty musical.

I also just realized that the window behind me is open and I’ve been singing to my entire neighborhood this whole time.

Meh.

As long as they don’t think I’m friendly and come over to try to borrow things, I don’t care.

😎

Oh no. Tomorrow is a poem. I make no promises, Keeley Schroder. We shall see what comes of it. My guess is… not a poem 😂 Follow the prompts and write every day with the most insanely fun group of writers on Medium. And I’m not biased at all just because I’m one of them. Obviously. Join us… we have alcohol and cookies. And poetry. Apparently. Maybe if I get drunk first…

All of my prompt responses so far are below… this is the only one with a playlist that created apparently a block concert. Should I go request payment? I probably should…