On Karaoke

I hadn't noticed how secluded I had become before my split with Chelsee in 2017. We split the kids half-time, so in the months following, when I went from living with her for the previous eleven years, raising kids for the previous nine, to all of a sudden having (comparatively) huge sloughs of time when it was just me, I felt kind of lost.

I had friends. She and I shared friends. I didn't think I was a huge loner, but in that first year when I just needed to go hang out with someone, anyone, I found it really hard to find people to do that with. I seemed to have very few friends who I could just call up and meet up with. I felt alone in a way I had never really felt before.

So I started doing things on my own. 

I went to Starbucks on my own, which I had always done when I had a spare minute. I went to movies on my own, though I rarely made it through a whole film. I went to eat on my own, reading novels and sipping on a Guiness at Bonzinni's, or eating my weight in donuts at Tim Horton's. I went for walks. I wandered around malls. I went to a trivia night. 

"Looking for an extra guy?" I asked a table of six or seven strangers. 

"Ummm," one dude said, eyeing me up and evidently deciding I wouldn't have much to add to their squad. "You could maybe start your own team," he said.

To which I said, Sure, I guess I could do that, but instead I went to sit at the bar top with a middle aged bald man who wasn't nearly as interested in my small talk as much as he was in his beer.  

I went to karaoke.

I was complaining to my friend who lived in Alberta at the time, about how I didn't have anyone to do anything with. "Whattayou wanna do?" she said.

"I dunno. Anything really."

"O'Hanlon's has karaoke on Sundays," she said.

"Yeah, but who am I gonna go with?"

"Go by yourself. You're a libra aren't you?"

"I am a libra. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Libras like to do things on their own."

So I walked to O'Hanlon's and sang karaoke. 

Prior to this, I had no more than three experiences with singing in public. The first was a duet at that same competition I submitted my stolen poem do. We won't talk about that.

The second was at a talent show in my second year of BS. I had seen Moulin Rouge one time, but my friend had downloaded one of the songs--The Elephant Love Song Melody, which was Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman singing a medley of maybe a dozen love songs in turn to each other--and I had put it on my iPod and listened to it enough times that I could sing it--both parts--on my own, without accompaniment. I sang it at the talent show, complete with a killer falsetto for Kidman's part, and took first prize, not anything to do with my talent, but the fact that I knew all the words, and that I sang like a woman which made people laugh. 

The third. . . . My friend's fiance/wife asked me to sing the song again at their wedding reception. It's not a wedding song, but Ewan and Nicole do end up kissing at the end of it. So there's that.

At O'Hanlon's, after I had gathered the courage to walk over there, after I had ordered a diet cola and sat down to watch a few singers, after I talked to several drunk people who told me I just had to get up and sing, after I tried to figure out what in the world I would sing, I decided to put the Elephant Love Song Medley up, and sing both parts.

Look. It was garbage. The song was much faster than I'd sing on my own. It had been 10+ years since I'd sang it, so I forgot some. I couldn't do the falsetto anymore. It was a mess. But the crowd cheered. The DJ said he could never be drunk enough to try that. One drunk guy hugged me after and told me I was his hero. The next guy got up and sang Bohemian Rhapsody and butchered it worse than I had butchered mine. And the crowd cheered for him with all the same gusto they cheered for me. 

I was hooked. I started going semi-regularly. I went to O'Han's, but I went to Four Seasons, and The Crown n Hand. I sang the Elephant song, but I added others to my repertoire. I sang one song--Float On, by Modest Mouse--and the DJ came up to me after and said, "You fuckin nailed that. When I saw Modest Mouse I was like, what the hell are you thinking, but you fuckin nailed that." He bought me a drink. I felt unreasonably cool. I started asking women, on a first date or shortly after, how they felt about karaoke, and I started judging them just a little bit if they said they weren't into it. One woman said she loved it, but it turned out she only sang on her own karaoke machine at home with her family--mom, dad, cousins, siblings--which was fun, but I was sad she wouldn't ever go out anywhere to sing. 

When I met Chantelle, my current partner and the woman I'm in love with, she told me--when I asked--that her and her step-mom are actually kind of regulars at karaoke at Western's, and honestly, it was one of the dozen or so (and still climbing) things that made me think: "This woman is perfect for me." 

The first time I met her step-mom and her boyfriend was at karaoke, which to my mind was perfect. 

Maybe six months into our relationship, I told Chantelle: "Don't you think someone should make a TV show that's just a karaoke competition?"

"It's called American Idol," she said.

I used to watch American Idol regularly. This was when it was a fairly new thing, first few seasons. For whatever reason, I never thought of it as karaoke. For a long time I was thinking of it as the latest iteration of the serial novel, each week a new installation in what would become a finished product, only people all over the world were participating in its plot, a choose your own adventure novel, if you will. 

I got a real kick out of thinking how many people are watching the same show as I was, how many people were voting, how I was participating in this huge popular cultural thing, even if it was kind of kitschy and weird. I used to drive around with my sisters singing to the radio and talking about which tunes we'd sing if we were going to audition for the show, and it occured to me that all of us, probably even everyone watching the show, were, in some way, seeing ourselves in those singers. Lookit this guy! He's just a part time hair dresser, and now he's famous, singing in front of millions of people every week.

Of course that's only true of the winners, and even they are forgettable. A quick look at Wikipedia's list of winners shows me that I recognize about five of the winners' names, and half of those are only because I was watching their seasons, not because they've become mainstays of the popular culture. I know there are probably die-hard fans of the show that remember everyone, but it says something that I don't recognize a single name from the seasons I didn't watch. The show is not nearly the life-changing boost in one's career as it's pitched to be (though I doubt any of the winners are complaining). Contestants say things like, “This is going to change my life,” but for nearly all of them, they’re back to their regular lives after they’re voted out.

I think it was around Season 4 when I started questioning my Great Serial Novel theory about the show, about the time I realized that all of the heart-warming stories they shared about the contestants each week were just that: stories. That is to say, it wasn't any kind of novel, where if a writer simply showed the best part of its characters, without showing any flaws, as they say, the novel would only appeal to a very limited viewership. Three dimensional characters are what we're after, as writers and as readers, so that when a character only shows us those parts s/he wants to show us, we feel like we're being lied to. 

On American Idol, they only show us a set of carefully chosen narrative. Characters on the show talk about their battles with depression, or their sorrow over lost loved-ones, or how they used to be homeless, or whatever, but it is painfully obvious that they are only showing you what they are choosing to show you, so that they don't exactly seem like real people, but like pre-determined famous people showing us how, if you too work hard and follow your dreams, you could make it, like I did! 

And I started thinking of it not as a novel, but more like a series of glorified Facebook profiles, the way we each share the best parts of ourselves on social media, or at least the parts we want to show, so that our online personas resemble our real lives in only wildy superficial ways.

In fact, I'm at a point now where I think American Idol has actively participated in a sort of deterioration of popular culture. The popularity of the show led to how many copycat versions. X-factor. America's Got Talent (and all of the different versions worldwide). The Voice. So You Think You Can Dance. Dancing With the Stars. Dancing on Ice. Ru Paul's Drag Race. America's Next Top Model. Etc. I could probably go on for quite a while, all of the shows essentially the same thing, though with slightly different content: previously unknown artist getting in front of some celebrities and a lot of TV viewers to be pitted against each and judged until one is the eventual winner and supposed best. 

All the way to the latest iteration: The Masked Singer. 

I hate The Masked Singer. It's set up exactly like American Idol, except the contestants are semi-famous people, in full costume, singing popular songs, until the judges and the audience vote one out, and you get to see who it is. It's fun. You get clues, and you try to guess who is singing. The costumes are goofy. 

Yet it adds nothing of worth to the world, which is harsh if you think mindless fun on TV is worthwhile, but what I hate so much about the show is how it works so hard to try to make you take it seriously. The judges say things like, "That was amazing!"--or--"You could feel so much emotion!" Never mind that it's a semi-famous talk show host dressed like a lama with wheels under his hind legs so they can swing while he dances. Never mind that few of the singers are actually famous for singing, and they're so busy performing and dancing that even the professional singers sound less than stellar. The judges still clap and give them standing ovations and say "You really made it your own!" When of course none if it is their own. A designer has made the costumes; a choreographer has told them how to dance; an actual singer has made their choice of song famous.

But--and this is the wild part--people DO take it seriously. When they show the audience, they're screaming and cheering, and voting so hard. They pan the crowd sometimes, after one number or the other is finished, and people are literally crying. They just watched a pink monster with googly eyes sing someone else's song in what can only be described as a mediocre performance, and they're crying, as if this blue tiger really just changed their lives with his rendition of Ice Ice Baby.

Say what you will, but I really doubt this show would be possible, and doubt even more that people would be crying over it, if we hadn't had American Idol showing us a relentless series of sentimental stories about its contestants. If we hadn't decided it's good and worthwhile to put twelve contestants on stage for us to vote for, or against, to fall in love with before voting them off the stage for good, we wouldn't have this show that is literally nothing, that sends its b-list celebrities back to their b-list celebrity jobs as soon as they're voted off, that is so unimpactful that I couldn't tell you a single song that was sung, and could only tell you maybe 4 out of the dozen costumes, and only remember one of the judges. 

We wouldn't be pretending to care about it.

Which is the opposite of karaoke. Nobody cares about karaoke. We cheer for each other even when we're off key and screechy, even when we'd probably pay NOT to listen to each other sometimes. But nobody's pretending to care either. We care only as much as we're anticipating our own turn and hoping the others sing songs we can sing along with. 

I mean the point of karaoke is not the same as the point of The Masked Singer, or of American Idol, but its basic premise is the same: somebody getting up in front of strangers to sing someone else's song. I get stuck thinking, often, about how it does kind of function the same as American Idol. Whereas the TV show has millions of viewers, all participating in this one thing, karaoke bars have two to three dozen, and yet on any given day, there's how many different bars doing the same thing. I think about this most whenever someone sings Sweet Caroline, by Neil Diamond, because someone sings it every time I go out, whether I'm at Crown and Hand, or Sparky's, or Western's, or Four Seasons, or O'Hans, or Smitty's. And each time the entire bar sings along. We are strangers, many of whom would never even talk to each other outside of this specific situation, yet here we are, pumping our fists and singing Bum Bum Bum together. And for every one bar I'm going to, there's how many thousands of other bars filled with people singing the same songs from their favourite bands, all of us, according to wikipedia, making the global karaoke market worth $10 billion a year. 

I feel more connected to the world during Rose's rendition of Sweet Caroline, or Benny's, or Carl's, or Sandra's, then maybe any other time.

Since meeting Chantelle, we've become regulars at Western's, going at least once a month, sometimes three or four times. I've started going with my friend, Matt, to Smitty's whenever I'm free on a Thursday. I told my friend, Chris, about it, and he's been coming nearly weekly with us, and he's invited some of his friends, so that some weeks there's a group of 8-10 of us all singing various songs from our respective youths. 

It sounds stupid, but a large part of me feels like if I didn't go to karaoke on my own that one time, maybe I wouldn't have as many friends as I do now, maybe I would still be that lonely, secluded dude I was when I split with Chelsee. I certainly wouldn't have made as many memories as I have these past three years. I spent my 35th birthday singing karaoke, for crap's sake, with more friends that I possibly could have guessed based on my last half-dozen birthdays or so. It brings people, at least my friends and I, together in a way I don't think anything else I've been interested in does.

One week, not long ago, a woman got up at Western's and totally crushed a version of Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black." I hadn't heard the song before. I downloaded it immediately. The next week, Chantelle and I went to a show at The Exchange on Friday, instead of karaoke, and the woman coincidently happened to be one of the performers. She sang "Back to Black" again, this time playing it on her guitar, amongst some of her own originals. It was good, but not as good as her karaoke performance, but to be honest, I kinda loved her show.

The Exchange is small, and there weren't a lot of people there, anyway. So after she sang, I went up to her to tell her I enjoyed her show, and after talking for a few minutes I told her I actually saw her sing at Western's last week.

"Oh my god, really?" she said.

"Yeah, it was kind of awesome."

"To be honest," she said. "Sometimes I'd rather sing karaoke. There's just no pressure."

"Exactly," I said, and we laughed.

"Nobody cares if you screw up," she sipped her beer. "I mean nobody cares about karaoke in general," she said.

And I agreed with her. again. 

But I do, Lexy Desjarlais. I do care about karaoke. I even wrote a blog about it.