Contact The Editor
Articles By This Author
I come from studious people, Anglos, suspicious of dream merchants and rainbow salesmen, people who, if you put us on a beach at sunset with tubs of beer on ice and a steel drum band and a fabulous buffet of roast pork and fresh fruit and a hundred people dancing with hands over their heads, my people would get busy collecting trash and cleaning up. We aren't party people. I wander around the periphery of parties and find a quiet corner to sit and surf the internet on my cellphone, looking up Uranus, the longevity of sea lions, the breeding habits of the praying mantis, and so on.
I used to blame my evangelical upbringing for this deficiency but once you pass 30, you have to cut the folks a break and take responsibility for your life. I never developed social skills because I never had to deal with people face to face. I made a career in radio broadcasting where you simply impersonate friendliness; it's a one-way street. It's sad. I'm 84 and I don't have the charm to make a successful shoe salesman.
Festivity is a natural part of mammal life: I see dogs amusing each other on dog playgrounds, happy foxes playing fox games, pigs cavorting in a mud pit, horses horsing around, and I happen to derive euphoria in a couple ways — one is the one you thought of first and the other is singing duets with women.
I'm an English major so it wasn't easy for me to get the chance to do this. People ask me to proofread their complaint to the boss, they don't invite me to sing, so I had to start a weekly two-hour radio show with a band and a staff with offices and a receptionist and meetings at which we discussed community service and artistic alignment, all so I could sing "Homestead on the Farm" with Kate MacKenzie and "Why Worry?" and "Love In Vain" with Heather Masse and "Hard Times Come Again No More" with Renée Fleming.
It was a lot of work; I had to host the show and be the boss so nobody could say, "I think Renée can handle 'Hard Times' by herself," but I had to do it because frankly, singing solo, I sound like an English major, but having grown up among aunts who were altos, I have a good ear for harmony and when I'm paired with a good singer, I sound quite respectable, which makes me wildly happy. Delighted even.
I earn my living by writing but writing is never good enough, everything needs rewriting, which is why I don't read my own work, but singing "Why Worry?" with Heather once, I thought, "That was perfect" and it truly was.
I'd seen Renée sing the role of the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier at the Met and she was phenomenal, it took your breath away, but when she sang "Hard Times," she was authentic American, she was a sharecropper's daughter and I was her brother.
I go back to St. Paul to sing some duets in August and meanwhile I'm writing a book, which I've rewritten twice and am not finished with.
Happiness comes in pairs, not solo. I find myself in a happy marriage, day in, day out. And in my old age, I've become fond of the blues, for the sheer beauty of the flattened fifths and sevenths, and the simplicity: I followed her to the station with her suitcase in my hand.
I sang it with Heather, Rich playing piano, a little theater out West, and the purity of it shook me. When I get old and my eyes are dim so I can't write, I want to spend my time at Shady Acres singing old songs with ladies. Let the kids write all the songs they want, I plan to sing about how you lift me up when I feel blue and I can't help falling in love with you. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, I once was lost and now I'm found. My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty. On a blanket down by the sea, with my baby is where I'll be. Under the boardwalk.
Garrison Keillor is an author and radio personality. His latest book is "Cheerfulness". Buy it at a 38% discount! by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR.
Why she is leaving, I do not understand. I watched that train going down the line.
I stood there in the rain. You could not see I was cryin'.