Wasted

This song came into my head this morning as I was trying to motivate myself to get up and go to work:

If you had eyes like golden crowns and diamonds in your fingertips you'd waste it
If shining wisdom passed your lips and traveled to the ears of god you'd waste it
And so I hate that you're overrated most revered and celebrated cause you're wasted

I didn't immediately understand the connection to anything I had going in my life -- and then I started watching this video, and saw the little girl from the audience come up on stage and sing along with Brandi, and started to cry, as I always do when children sing. I haven't been able to really discern what the tears are about -- perhaps that's a good subject for therapy -- but I can say that they feel more loaded than just the tears that come from being moved. They are heavier than that, weighed down, it seems, with regret.

Regret about what, I don't know. What have I been given that I've wasted? My voice?

Every time you close a door and nothing opens in its place you've wasted
And when you speak the words you know to those who know the words themselves you're wasted,
You're such a classic waste of cool, so afraid to break the rules in all the wrong places

Then again it's good to get a call
Now and then just to say hello
Have I said I hate to see you go...hate to see you go

My daughter had a school performance on Friday, and she informed me on Thursday that she'd be lip syncing rather than singing, particularly the Joni Mitchell song. My first instinct as a parent is to support my kids' decisions, but in retrospect, I reckon it'd be more useful to question her on that one a bit. Why not sing out loud?

Listening to WPR the other day, I realized it wasn't just my daughter who is self conscious about her voice. The show was dedicated to Levon Helms, who died last week, and for those who don't know, was a singer and musician who found fame in The Band. He died of the throat cancer that he'd beaten into remission 10 years before. In the interview I was listening to, he talked about what changed when he defied the odds and went back to singing after throat cancer. "I still can't say I'm in love with the sound of my own voice," he said, "but at least I'm letting myself enjoy it more."

Wow. If a man who made his living with his voice as one of his instruments doesn't love it and has to contract cancer to find the joy in his singing, what does that say about us as a species?

I'm not sure. But I for one am going to focus on not wasting this precious voice -- and whatever other gifts -- I've been given. And I'm going to do my best to enjoy them, too.