My good friend John Louviere just wrote a book. It’s a wonderful compilation of his writings, stories, poems, and lyrics. One of the things that I love the most about John Louviere is that he’s a gifted singer/songwriter. As a musician who has worked for many years to find my own voice through the end of my saxophone and clarinet, I really love and relate to this story. I’m offering it here below with his permission.
One afternoon, while sitting at the piano and tripping through the notes of “When The Saints Go Marching In,” I found myself singing along with my erratic melody. It was at this moment, as my foster mother was walking past me towards the kitchen, that a question involuntarily flew out of my mouth like a clay pigeon, "Do you think I have a good voice?" Being an expert marksman, she didn’t miss a beat. Looking at me with a mixture of shock and perplexity, she loaded a cartridge and quickly pulled the trigger. “No,” she said emphatically, “I do not think you have a good voice.” Her blunt response hit my solar plexus, and I sat back, dumbstruck. Smoke lingered in the air as she left the room, having no idea the impact of her words.
But more long-lasting were the effects of what I did immediately afterward. I lifted myself from the piano bench, walked into my bedroom, closed the door, and knelt down next to my bed. I then placed my elbows on my mattress, pressed my palms together, and out of my mouth came the following prayer: “God, if you give me a good voice, I promise to sing to you for the rest of my life.”
As a fourteen-year-old born-again Christian, my God was a God of miracles and wonders. And in this moment, I was as certain as Elijah on the mountain that I would be returning to the piano with a new and God-touched voice. We’re talking edge-of-my-seat, “I can’t wait to try out my new voice” certain. When I finished praying, I got off of my knees, walked out of my bedroom, and sat back down at the piano. I carefully placed my fingers on the keys and began pushing them through the melody. And then . . . I opened my mouth and began to sing.
Isn’t innocence a beautiful thing? And ignorance—what bliss.
Being able to pinpoint the moment you lose them both—this is not a day for the faint of heart. It is, for everyone, a day of tragedy and a rite of passage. When I opened my mouth to sing, indeed, a miracle happened. I heard something I had never heard before: No matter which keys my fingers played, I could hear only one note coming out of my mouth. I was aghast. Nothing made me happier than singing to God. And yet, I had just discovered that this child of his had the voice of a happy elephant. My sorrow did not last long because spring arrived. And along with it, baseball season. I ran happily back into the familiar, comfortable world I had known since I was a child: recreational sports.
When I was a freshman in college, I decided to sign up for a talent night with a couple of friends I had just made at a campus ministry group. A fellow named Mike and I decided that he should write a few progressions on his guitar and I should try to write some lyrics and sing them. Though I had continued singing like a happy elephant since the day of my prayer, my insecurity and nervousness were profound (after all, the last time I sang in front of anyone, the crowd was pretty rough). But when it was time, our names were announced, and up we went. I held the lyrics in a quivering hand and the microphone in the other, Mike’s rhythm drove us forward, and we finished our short set relatively unscathed. But after the glad-patting and jovial banter, everyone started stacking chairs, making plans for the rest of the evening, and slowly exiting the room. It was then that my friend Janice walked up to me. She had been waiting to talk to me. She said, “I don’t want this to sound weird but . . . I think I just saw what you’re supposed to be doing with your life.”
Two years later, during my junior year, I was walking the mile or so down the road to the same campus ministry group. I had just discovered Bobby McFerrin and could not stop playing rhythms on my chest and body, singing improvisational songs to God. All of a sudden, I stopped in the middle of the road and said another prayer, “God, would you please give me some way to express this rhythm?” I was thinking, in particular, about the drums. But mostly I was just so overwhelmed with my love for rhythmic expression.
Later that week, Melissa, the leader of the music group, got up and declared that she was offering free guitar lessons. Guitar? Hmm, I once had a roommate who played guitar. And I had seen the large group of guitar players that Melissa led each week as we sang devotional songs. But it had never occured to me to pick one up. As she gave her announcement, I remembered Bobby McFerrin and my moment of prayer. I found the sign-up sheet and wrote my name down.
I borrowed a friend’s guitar and arrived at my first lesson to find about fifteen other students awkwardly holding their cumbersome instruments. Melissa showed us three chords and one rhythmic pattern. We were told to come back the following week, show our progress, and we’d be given three more chords and a new rhythm. I spent most of every waking hour that week with my arms around that guitar. As I played chords, I rested my head against the wood and listened to each sound reverberate into my ear. It was love at first strum.
I arrived the next week to find that I was one of the only students to have practiced. Before I left that day, Melissa gave me the master list of all the chords, a chart for creating my own rhythms, and I never went back. In the quiet of my room, I began to write song after song after song. I took the chords Melissa gave me, broke the patterns apart, and made up my own chords. I played rhythms on my body and then transferred them to my guitar.
The only thing that interested me was making sounds that were pleasing and writing words that came naturally. And to my great surprise, what came out of me were rivers and rivers of sorrow. Sorrow as I had never known. Emotions I had no idea were inside me.
I have been writing songs for almost thirty years now and am living proof of the power of music. If you want a good voice, you may just get what you’re asking for. As a child, my idea of a good voice was one that was pleasing to listen to. As a man, my idea of a good voice is one that tells the truth. Music is tricky because it’s a bit of both. It’s a rhythm that requires pressure and time, weight and levity, push and pull, doing it over and over thousands and thousands of times until it is a language you speak fluently.
The great hope (besides love) is that in moments when you’re remembering clay pigeons struck by quick words that left your heartstrings feeling off-key, you will understand more fully—in tones that have been both beautifully and truthfully embedded in your body—that it was all a part of bringing you here, exactly where you were meant to be.
