Once More, With Feeling

a refrain without refraining

Last night I heard the insistent query of the pauraque, flicking his two-noted trill— again and again— into the gaping darkness. Where did he learn such gusto, such foolish hope? It was two the morning in the Peruvian Amazon, and the blackest night I ever knew. Still the pauraque tossed his voice into the abyss.

And after thirty minutes… it happened. An answering cry: the makings of a duet. Thirty additional minutes, and both cries grew fainter, for the first pauraque had drawn closer to its fellow through the technology of song. As their midnight eavesdropper, I wanted them to find one another at last. But their ending wasn’t what mattered. What mattered was that they drew closer in that overwhelming darkness; that their voices became life rafts to ache towards communion.

Photo via Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Of all the world’s distinctive animal calls, there is none more pleasing to my ear than the singing voice of my partner, Max. He has an arresting, soulful, and frolicsome voice that cycles through snippets of song every hour of the day and night. People do not stop in their tracks when they hear him sing, nor is he auditioning for America’s Got Talent anytime soon. But he is my Orpheus.

Allow me to set aside my own besotted partiality for a moment and explain. Max’s voice is expression itself; it is experimentation. When he alights upon a song— that’s what it feels like, an arrival— he climbs inside the melody to discover how many shapes he can make with it. What happens when this note is held a fraction longer? Might this lyric be accentuated with a growl? He listens. He inspects. He disassembles and reassembles the song, which is not unlike the way he plays with words.

Max ambles through melody the way one might pick wildflowers, or juggle silk scarves, or offer exotic delicacies at a banquet: Look! Isn’t life rich? Isn’t life beautiful? He does not sing as though he is producing a tune; instead, he sings as the tune’s jovial ambassador. He wants to become acquainted with all of its notes— even those daunting, hard-to-hit ones— and in doing so, he gets out of his own way and bows in service of music. When Max sings, ego recedes in the name of art.

I am sorry to say that I do not share this convivial relationship with music. Singing terrifies and frustrates me. Often, I am so busy chafing at my voice’s limitations that I forget to enjoy the feeling of inhabiting a song. I am too scared to hit notes that I think will sound bad, and in this way, I am not in service of the song. Instead, I am in service of my own fragile ego. Too often I fixate on the sole (the individual carrying out the music), whereas Max focuses on the soul (the essence of what’s being communicated). I have to remind myself that a song is not a vehicle for exposing my flaws. A song is just minding its own business! It would like to live, please and thank you, upon the breath of all who care to know it.

This is why Max’s voice— curious, warm, assured— feels medicinal for me. It is a daily reminder to embrace what is before me. Max honors the song, kneels at the altar of the song, and simply wants to serve the song’s fullest expression.

But he doesn’t stop at music. This unwavering zeal is how Max has always loved me: first as a friend, then through romantic expression and the unhusked thunderclap of falling in love, then the nadir of mutual heartbreak as I stepped away and across all those years of apartness, and then finally as my beloved partner. His refrain: “I don’t need you to choose me. But I want you to choose YOU.” And being a rather intelligent man who could hear the depths of my soul’s song like no one else, he held the sneaking suspicion that Ilana choosing Ilana, fully and completely, might also be accompanied by Ilana choosing Max.

And Lo, it did.

All he ever wanted was to hear my melody, full-throated and rampant. More importantly, he wanted me to experience what it was like to sing it. So, this is a piece about music: a word that stems from the Greek mousikē (“art of muses”). It is therefore also a piece about inspiration and love.

Imagine that someone understood your song, really heard it, and could sing it back to you if ever your voice faltered. Would you hesitate? Or would you say: Yes, Life, I am listening, I hear your searing cry and I rise up, out of the black, to answer it? Now imagine that when you found the courage to name your own soul— to stake everything you had on your soul’s fervent and mandatory unfurling— its most stalwart ally would be waiting. That your old-and-new love, faithful and unerring, would come bounding out of the darkness to fetch you home at last.

I tried for so long to wend my way in the world, to go about my normal life, to hum comfortably under my breath. But there was always that still small voice, bleating into the darkness, tiny flint, saying: Do not do your soul this violence. Honor me, and cease boarding up the cottage of your heart. Because love, real love, wishes to be known. It is an instrument as natural as the bird cry. Love will sit at your table, a Greek god in disguise, to test your own powers of recognition as well as its own inevitable radiance.

I have spent so much of my life not using my voice to sing because I wanted a better one. But this is my only life. I’m not going to waste time failing to accept the voice I have, just as I’m not going to waste time failing to embrace the love I’ve been gifted. Now I run towards Love itself not in tattered humility or penance, but in proud, breathless admiration. I greet Love with all the ceremony and splendor and sublime urgency that it deserves. I am learning to cast my voice out like the pauraque at midnight; I can summon darkness on demand anytime I like, simply by closing my eyes.

So, I’m putting my mouth where my mouth is. Below is a video of me singing while attempting to replicate that womb of darkness behind my eyelids. People familiar with About A Boy will understand the context of this song and its connection to embarrassingly earnest expression (“the worst part was when they closed their eyes”). What’s more, “I felt he found my letters and read each one out loud” is an uncannily accurate description of Max’s perspicacity.

In this video, my voice falters in many places. Most of my notes are off-key, I’m sweating profusely, and I can assure you that I have neither seen nor looked in a mirror in almost two weeks. But this song has a soul, and so do I, so why not let them stroll arm-in-arm together, in unison?

Look, the world is burning. We are killing each other with impunity. We fail to hear the heedful warnings of our own wise hearts and of that Great Heartbeat, the earth. So. I will not go gentle into that good night. I will go singing, which is the best prayer I know.

And what of you, dear pauraque? You know what kind of creature you are, and if you don’t— there’s still time to find out. What thrilling call belongs to you and you alone? Who and what might your voice reach for in a twilit oblivion?

This mouthful, this astounding and temporary miracle we call a life, is yours to unleash. What good are stables? Take your heart out to pasture where it belongs, in the wild grasses beneath the sky. Celebrate the lusty whoop of your heart as it canters across the plains.

Plunge your quavering notes into the darkness. Love fiercely, and now— which is to say, the only eternity we know. Love, little heart. Love valiant and unabashed. Drink deep from the goblet of life. Spill your own unmistakable song into the world. And be free.

If you enjoy my writing, go wild and click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.