Microphone

The word for today is MICROPHONE. It should mean a little phone, but instead it is the electronic device that amplifies what someone says so that an audience can hear it. I think this blog is my MICROPHONE.

Yesterday I went to the coffee shop to write the blog entry. It was after 6 o'clock on a Saturday evening. I circled the streets around Hinman and Main in Evanston at least half a dozen times to find a parking spot. I could not see inside the coffee shop from the street because the combination of the moisture and the air temperature caused fog to layer over the windows. Once I walked in the door I found a packed room of people listening to singers performing at an open mike night.

There were performers whose music had a country Appalachian sound, others with a 60s pop sound, and still others with a roots or blues sound. There were flannel-shirted, middle-aged men performing the songs they wrote to woo their wives thirty years ago and young, ethereal women experimenting with the power and lightness of their voices--reminding me of Joan Osborne or Tori Amos. For the most part, I could write with the music in the background. One man sang about his friend Mike who is running for Alderman on the Green Party ticket. "My friend Mike," he sang, "he rides a recumbent bike. He likes to go for a hike. Go vote for Mike." It is one of the best campaign songs I've ever heard.

Then a young dread-locked, African American man took the microphone (he didn't actually take it, he just sat down on the stool behind it). He said he was a rapper and that he was going to cover a tune that he'd learned at the Old Town School of Music and then perform an original song. He started singing "House of the Rising Sun"...there is a house in New Orleans. At first I thought he'd just slowed it down as part of his interpretation, but then he began to struggle, he strummed, he paused, he apologized (this was the first song I learned), he continued, he strummed, he paused, he apologized, he continued.

I found it harder to keep the music in the background. I began to wonder if he would give up and just go into his original song. He didn't give up; he struggled through to the end. The audience applauded, not out of a sense of duty or gratefulness that he was done, but with appreciation---he had performed, it didn't really matter if he made mistakes. No one sneered or sighed; they smiled and laughed along with him. His original song was quite good, something about taking away the evilness inside, something about how could it be evil if the source is god's love. The next performers were a woman singing the Sixpence None the Richer song "Kiss Me" and a man accompanying her on guitar. Her voice wasn't really that good. I wondered if she sounded better at home, in the car, in the shower? But again, it didn't really matter. Everyone was having a good time. Anyone who wanted the MICROPHONE could have it.