They Sang With Me

I had to sing "Edelweiss"

It was part of this cabaret
Where I was supposed to only sing back-up
On several other songs
Because I'm not a singer

I did the show for my friend Tripp
Whose real name is NOT Tripp
It's his stage name
Because he's an idiot

He talked me into it
Because he needed male singers
And I wasn't doing anything
And I WASN'T going to be singing anything
By myself

Well, guess what happened?

The 'Edelweiss' soloist dropped out
Because he and Tripp broke up
And because nobody else wanted to sing
A cliched song from a sappy Rodgers and Hammerstein show
That left me singing 'Edelweiss'

And I was scared to death

Not only was I singing 'Edelweiss'
But it was the last song of the night
And after sitting through Tripp's restructured version of--

'Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me'

Which involved a good two minutes of Tripp riffing
Until the word 'sun' had seven extra syllables in it
I could tell the audience was restless

I started to sing

I had gone over it with the music director
And we'd worked it out so it was a little bit more of a lullaby
Then a stirring German national anthem

That way I didn't have to nail it
I just had to screw it in

Things started out badly

My voice was shaking
My hands were shaking
People were shaking their heads
It wasn't pretty
Not at all

I tried just getting into the emotion of it
I tried selling it with my acting
I tried imaging the Von Trapp kids
Never seeing their home again
And having to spend the rest of their life
In Vermont

Finally I stopped

I just stopped singing

And I didn't know what to do next

The accompanist had stopped playing
And was just sitting there looking at me
Probably wondering if I was going to throw up

And I thought, how silly

How silly that everyone here knows what song I'm singing
They probably know every word to it
They know how it's supposed to sound
And they're just waiting to hear if it sounds as good coming from me
As it does in their head

It's in their head right now
That's what I thought
It's in there rattling around
Sounding better
Than I'm sounding now

So you know what I did?

I told them to sing along
Yup, I did the unthinkable
I turned what was supposed to legitimate theater

(Granted, it wasn't
Someone dressed up as the Phantom
Got drunk beforehand
And instead of singing 'Music of the Night'
They launched into 'Buenos Aires')

Even so, I turned the night
Into a campfire sing along

At first everybody in the audience laughed
But then they could see I had no intention of singing again by myself
And the accompanist started to play

And Tripp, good ole Tripp
Whose real name, by the way
Is Bartholomew Evans

He came up next to me
And he started to sing

'Edelweiss...Edelweiss...'

Then all the actors started to sing
Pretty soon so did the audience
And there we all were
Singing

It's not much a story I know
To say that they sang with me
But in that moment
It was pretty damn beautiful

And believe it or not
The moment they sang with me
I could hear my own voice
I heard it so much clearer

And it sounded...

Not bad

Not bad at all