Paperwork: Don’t ever bother trying to find me on any karaoke stage

I do not sing in public. It’s a personal rule.

I blame Uncle Bob.

Oh, songs can pull a chorus out of me. I just start singing. But I’m usually alone and certainly cautious about who is listening. (The happy birthday song around the cake is torture.)

I don’t think I ever told Uncle Bob this story. He passed in 2022 and I miss him deeply. If I had told him, he would have laughed. His distinctive laugh is part of my memory.

I was 13 or 14 years old. Uncle Bob was visiting and he brought something new and exciting – a portable tape recorder.

He showed us how simple it was. Poke a record button, talk into the mic, rewind, punch play and suddenly hear your own voice.

He let us try. And wow! Hearing my voice, what it sounds like to others, was a new and strange experience.

Then Uncle Bob started singing into the recorder. I was excited and eager to get that mic and start singing. Which I did. Then there was the playback.

Uncle Bob, with that laugh, said, “Whoa. Don’t ever do that again. That was terrible. You are a lousy singer. Never, ever sing aloud again.”

OK, perhaps those weren’t his exact words. And perhaps I don’t remember anything he said. But he did make fun of my singing.

I was devastated. I believed him. I think I still do, even though my wife insists I have a good singing voice. (Based on one evening years ago involving a few drinks and a karaoke machine, which is a step up from a tape recorder.)

So that teeny, tiny event embedded in my vocal chords and is triggered whenever I am expected to sing in front of people.

And why am I sharing this story now? Well, this train of thought started chugging along thanks to author and writing guru Natalie Goldberg.

She was 6 years old alongside her cousin at the piano, playing and singing. The cousin then screamed to Goldberg’s mother, “Natalie is tone-deaf. She can’t sing!”

“From then on, I never sang and I rarely listened to music,” writes Goldberg in her inspiring book, “Writing Down the Bones, Freeing the Writer Within.”

Years later she took lessons and a singing master told her she was not tone-deaf. She just needed to listen to the music, not her single voice.

“If you listen totally, your body fills with the music, so when you open your mouth the music automatically comes out of you,” Goldberg explained.

“A few weeks after that, I sang in tune with a friend for the first time in my life and thought for sure I had become enlightened. My individual voice disappeared and our two voices became one.”

Goldberg rolls her memory into advice for writers: “Writing, too, is 90 percent listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you, and when you write, it pours out of you. … You don’t only listen to the person speaking to you across the table, but simultaneously listen to the air, the chair, and the door. … Listen to the past, future, and present right where you are. Listen with your whole body, not only with your ears, but with your hands, your face, and the back of your neck. ... The deeper you listen, the better you can write.”

Great advice for writing. I should try it with singing. Immerse myself in the music. Drown out that voice telling me I can’t sing. And that voice was never Uncle Bob’s. It’s always been my own.

It’s interesting how memories from growing up take root, and how we harvest what grows, and how that can change as we age. I allowed a flickering memory to keep me from singing. Now it seems silly.

But ... don’t hand me the microphone yet.

Lonny Cain, retired managing editor of The Times in Ottawa, also was a reporter for The Herald-News in Joliet in the 1970s. His Paperwork email is lonnyjcain@gmail.com. Or mail The Times, 110 W. Jefferson St., Ottawa, IL 61350.