Now and Then.

Who the...?

Harendra Kapur.
Kyra Mathews.
Tejas Menon.



I have mentioned before that I can't sing to save my life. This isn't entirely true. I can't sing like Tejas can, or like Harry can. I can't sing like Norah Jones or KT Tunstall. I can't sing for other people, I can't sing to play the fool into karaoke machines. But I can sing, when I really really need to, when it seems like the right thing to do, and when my voice chooses to ignore my brain telling it that it's a terrible voice and not to humiliate me.

Carly Simon and Dusty Springfield have/had voices and wrote music that most current female artists can only dream of having/writing. When they sing, the emotion and the rawness, blares through and heals wounds, and you know, that if you have emotion and rawness, and wounds that need to be healed, then you can sing too. These women are/were brave, are/were independent, are/were magic from the moment they opened their mouths. Their music is/was the kind of music that you can imagine old men sitting on park benches and nodding their heads wisely over, saying "They dont make voices like that anymore" And they don't. They really don't make voices like that anymore.

For the past month, I have let Carly and Dusty save my soul. Imitating Brittany Murphy in "Little Black Book", I lie on my bathroom floor and belt out Carly Simon. Im alone at home, and I sound good, because Im singing my soul out, letting the wounds heal. In my room, at night, I snuggle up to the words of Dusty, crooning her words softly to myself. I lie spreadeagled on an empty beach and sing about clouds in my coffee and the son of a preacherman, while watching the clouds above me rearrange themselves and float away, leaving me cleansed and clear.

I am now wishin' and hopin'. I have fewer clouds in my coffee. I look forward to the look of love. I have no secrets. I can tell myself that I haven't got time for the pain. I close my eyes and count to ten. And, I am anticipating, that little by little, I'll know just what to do with myself.

So, thank you, Carly & Dusty, Simon & Springfield. For giving me the strength to sing, and for letting me know that my soul is worthwhile enough to be saved by both of you.

"You know when you take the paint off an old canvas and you discover that something's been painted underneath it? That's what I feel like - that part of the old is coming through the new" - Carly Simon
"I just decided I wanted to become someone else... So I became someone else" - Dusty Springfied

The All of us.

The All of us.