Harmonizing With Shopping Carts

I feel bad for my shopping companions; I love to sing in parking lots. I don't know exactly why I sing only in parking lots. The cars and shopping carts and outdoor ambiance gracefully deafen my attempts at singing verses mostly from pop icons like the Backstreet Boys and Michael Jackson. I wouldn't classify "pop" as my favorite genre, but I can't help but gravitate toward their unabashedly catchy, albeit ephemeral, tunes. After some soul-searching while writing this post, I have come to the conclusion that a parking lot is the only anonymous place for me to unleash my "skill." In a world where our experts tell women to shout "FIRE" instead of "HELP," I sing "I Want It That Way" in the comfort that people simply don't care about other people.

I don't think I sing so loudly that is obnoxious. I sing to myself and maybe my companions. I sing just enough for it to be considered a private concert.

For those of you that know me personally, you can verify that my vocal prowess is substandard at best. I simply don't understand how to use my voice in a musical manner. The only tune I can carry is iTunes. Baseball players encapsulate my definition of pitch. The word "alto" reminds me of my favorite childhood movie "Balto." Music is a foreign language in which, for me, there is no Rosetta Stone. I watch American Idol (I admit it) if only to gaze at the wonderful sounds emanating from these contestants. Such rich flavors wafting out of such tiny throats!

I don't know how to sing. I never took and will never take formal singing lessons. Even at the moment of my writing this, I still don't fully understand if I have an anatomical flaw that precludes me from singing charmingly or if I simply lack skill.

I don't think I want to understand my failing. This type of ignorance is bliss; I am not condoning all ignorance--just the ignorance that is amazingly melodic.

Singers understand something beautiful that I do not. Their everyday skill blinds me, and I am content to sustain post-lingual deafness when they release their textures. I understand I will never be a Freddie Mercury or a Michael Jackson or even a Nick Carter, and I have great respect for all singers.

On my most recent parking-lot concert, I thought about all the other non-singers going into Costco.

Every person must have a skill that deafens society when they unleash their inner potential. Every person out there is a Luciano Pavarotti in some skill or another. Every person I pass on the street, every person I angrily impugn when I'm in a bad mood--all these people are masters of something about which I know nothing. And I, in turn, am the same. Every person is my teacher, my equal, and my student. My relationship to you, reader, is as dynamic and rich and wonderful as Stevie Wonder's voice.

We all heard that there is a leprechaun's pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The charming aspect of that tale is that, as a child, you could never find the end of the rainbow. Now, as a semi-educated adult, I figure with a walkie-talkie, a mathematician, and a GPS system, I could find the technical end of a rainbow, but I already know the result: emptiness. Not even an empty pot awaits. There is no pot. There is no mystery. There is no sonorous oblivion to rupture my eardrums.

I don't understand scales or three-part harmonies or vibrato. I choose to leave that pot of gold undiscovered. I'll still sing as I push my shopping cart along uneven cement. I can harmonize with a shopping cart only because I don't understand what harmonies are--and I don't really want to. I'll just have some fun. Must we only indulge ourselves in our skilled activities? Can't I sing like Aretha even if I can't sing like Aretha? If you hear me in a parking lot one day, please, reader, join me in jam session--or tell me to shut the hell up.