Sing to the Lord a New Song!

By Jo Taliaferro

 

I remember the first rehearsal with our new music director, Sean Johnson at North Como Presbyterian Church.  The 30-voice choir was preparing for Easter and I felt a rush of excitement with a little anxiety sprinkled in.  Would I learn so many new pieces in such a short time?  I, a devout first alto knew the day of big treble, so to speak, was just around the Lenten corner.

 

How do I, a woman without eyesight,  sing in a choir?  I could not read both braille words and braille music at the same time or keep my eye on Sean as he raised his voice and his hands saying, “Watch me!” And what about playing bells?  The conductor was new and I feared that all my missed notes would make him wonder as well, about my presence as a musician.  Then there was a note in our newsletter stating that if we could count, we could ring bells!  A big part of the answer is my own passion for music and for being able to memorize notes and words.  For me, it’s just doing what I’ve done for over half a century.  No one said, even when I was a child I couldn’t.  After all, doesn’t every person who is blind have acutely God-given excellent hearing to make up for the lack of sight? Compared to what, I wondered sometimes as I sat on a stairway overhearing my parents discussing my future.

“It’s not that she’s a bad singer in the shower,”(and who is?) “she just uses up all the hot water!

Absorbing choral music, I discovered, became a survival drumbeat for me. Out came my emotions in songs like, “If You Will Only Let God guide you” and “How Lovely is thy Dwelling Place”.  The words filled me and if the adults could do such magic, so could I.  “I need your eyes,” and “Get your heads out of your music,” coached the director and for once, I knew it wasn’t about me!  My head was full of words that sometimes had to be revised because I was capturing them from my neighbors in the choir who for some reason had their heads in their own music!

 

Strange, though, when people watched the director I used what they saw with their eyes to amend notes and words through my ears.  I sang more accurately when my friends had one eye on the director and their other eyes on both words and music!  “How could they manage all that “looking”, I wondered and still wonder.  I learned to read braille music so I could play the piano but I never even tried to master the art of reading notes with one hand and words with the other.  I simply listened and soaked it up like a sponge.

 

So, what are the secrets to learning how to go flat with the rest of the choir?  One is sitting by good musicians and making the same mistakes they do as they sight read  so that the director can correct us by verbally counting out the measures or playing the notes for the culprits.  Another is learning where the trouble spots are by hearing them referred to by letter or measure number.  “There’s a rest at measure 74,” the choir director would say for the tenth time “so, look up and I’ll give you the cut off!”  I did just that except that I omitted the end of the word so as not to be caught singing a solo.  There was always the shower where I could sing that pesky measure any way I wanted.

 

Here’s the clincher, the obvious widespread motivator for making my voice heard in song.  “You’re blind,” said the crowds, “You HAVE to be a great musician because your hearing is so much better!”  The truth is, my hearing isn’t necessarily better, just used many hours each day !  I listen to the sounds of my environment almost all day, like my sighted friends scan the newspapers, their yards, the faces around them; to engage with the world, the community, the TV, the pastor, the choir director.

 

I know ahead of time when the anthem will be sung because North Como Church faithfully sends me the bulletin every Friday by email!  I can put it in a format that’s useable for me and stay in step with an inclusive and open faith community!  During worship, The rustle of robes, and the sounds of attentiveness alert me that it’s time for a hymn, an anthem a responsive reading.  The inevitable flipping of pages say,  “Sing to the Lord a new song!” It’s a gift given and a musical gift shared, a noteworthy challenge, not an insurmountable obstacle.

Jo is an at-large teaching elder who sits on the PTCA Disability Concerns Taskforce. 

 

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