the Tea Bar

You have to understand, first of all, that I was a hairbrush singer. At 4 years old I used to sit by myself in our living room, dressed in a white (night)gown and red ribbon and cowboy hat, singing Olivia Newton John hits to an imaginary audience, crooning meaningfully into a hairbrush. The brush disappeared by middle school, but only because I'd gotten good enough at the piano to accompany myself, so my hands were busy. I was entranced by the power of music--particularly a great love song or sad showtune--and spent hours at the piano, imagining myself passing on the power of those songs to various crowds.

When I was practicing for the talent show I sang in last April (for which I did not play), I deliberately did not use a hairbrush. I'm too grown-up for that now.

Besides, a lint brush works just as well.

So I'm not going to pretend that I don't love performing just for performance's sake. And I'm not going to try to play it cool about this Tea Bar thing. (Playing it cool is not a strength of mine, anyway--at least not when it comes to music.) I've been wanting to do this, without exaggeration, nearly all of my life.

That's what motivated the improbable beginning of this adventure to begin with. I ran across a posting on Craigslist where the owner of a new cafe in Fort Lee (about 45 minutes north of here, at the foot of the George Washington Bridge) was asking for musicians willing to provide live music. He wasn't able to pay you, he said, but he'd feed you. I was intrigued, so I emailed him, but I never heard back.

A couple of weeks later I had a birthday. (I turned 39. Have you heard?) Mark took me out to dinner, and the unwritten bylaws of birthdays decreed that I could invoke whatever harebrained plan I wanted, and he pretty much had to acquiesce. So I asked if we could wander around Fort Lee (to which I had maybe never actually been?) and look for this new cafe. For which I had no address. And no name.

Clearly I know how to party.

But we FOUND the thing. There's more to the story, but skipping ahead a couple of weeks and a few chapters, I ended up booked to do a solo gig there last Friday night.

The singing intimidated me not at all. The singing is like breathing...not because I'm that amazing, but because I've been doing it since I could talk, and it just is what it is. The PLAYING scared me. But I've been making a conscious effort to be brave lately, so I gave it a shot.

I had a total of two viable songs for which I had already worked up a piano part. I figured to be safe I needed about thirty. So I spent the next few weeks (less, really) courting a repetitive stress injury, parked at the piano, narrowing down the long list of songs that I love down to thirty that I could learn to play in short order.

It was a race to the finish line in which I surrendered four days at the gym (which hasn't happened in over a year) and accumulated an enormous mountain of laundry, but I made it. And Friday night I found myself opening the door of the Tea Bar and looking at this:

Kind of surreal.

I should acknowledge here that this is not a big place. It's really cute, and it has good food, and it's well worth checking out, but Carnegie Hall it is not. I'm aware that this was not a concert in a big venue with a grand piano. Also, there weren't many people there. But it didn't matter. For me, it was all about the music.

Once I got into the groove of the thing, it was like everything around me sort of faded into the background. Like my own personal open mic, my chance to take every beautiful song I'd brought and pour my heart into it.

Do you know that line from Chariots of Fire? The one where Eric Liddell is talking to...maybe his sister, when she's challenging him about why he's running? He says something like, "God made me fast, and when I run, I feel his pleasure."

Singing has become like that for me. I'm not going to be winning the musical equivalent of gold medals, but for whatever reason and to whatever degree, God has wired me this way. He gave me some ability and a deep, deep love for singing. And when I do it, whether it's in my kitchen or at a worship team rehearsal or in a half-empty tea bar, I feel joyful and peaceful and more completely myself. It's like something inside me settles in and begins to glow.

I sang jazz standards, pop songs, worship songs, Christmas carols, showtunes...pretty much the whole gamut. And it was FUN. Three and a half hours of heady, giddy, soulful-as-this-white-girl-gets fun.

The owner was very kindly complimentary and wants me to make plans to come back once a month. Yeah, that's not going to happen. My laundry pile can't handle it. But I'd for sure do it again, especially if I can convince a couple of the really excellent musicians with whom I'm blessed enough to be friends to come with me.

I won't lie...I wouldn't hate having a bigger audience next time. There's something about art that requires a recipient in order to make it fully realized. But even if the only ones really listening are my husband and my Heavenly Father, I'm there.

What an adventure.