Singing Talent Quotes

I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.

Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very quiet if only those birds sing there that sang best.

Talent? That's not talent. Talent is Liza Minnelli tap dancing and singing at the same time. What I just saw was devastation. Dying man on the cross. Salvation in B minor.

Bidding the wizard farewell, he turned to his daughter, who held up her finger and said, “Daddy, look — one of the gnomes actually bit me!” “How wonderful! Gnome saliva is enormously beneficial!” said Mr. Lovegood, seizing Luna’s outstretched finger and examining the bleeding puncture marks. “Luna, my love, if you should feel any burgeoning talent today — perhaps an unexpected urge to sing opera or to declaim in Mermish — do not repress it! You may have been gifted by the Gernumblies!” Ron, passing them in the opposite direction, let out a loud snort.

So many people think that they are not gifted because they don’t have an obvious talent that people can recognize because it doesn’t fall under the creative arts category—writing, dancing, music, acting, art or singing. Sadly, they let their real talents go undeveloped, while they chase after fame. I am grateful for the people with obscure unremarked talents because they make our lives easier---inventors, organizers, planners, peacemakers, communicators, activists, scientists, and so forth. However, there is one gift that trumps all other talents—being an excellent parent. If you can successfully raise a child in this day in age to have integrity then you have left a legacy that future generations will benefit from.

To course across more kindly waters now my talent's little vessel lifts her sails, leaving behind herself a sea so cruel; and what I sing will be that second kingdom, in which the human soul is cleansed of sin, becoming worthy of ascent to Heaven.

In every artist’s life, there comes a person who lifts the curtain on creativity. It is the closest you come to seeing me again. The first time, when you emerge from the womb, I am a brilliant color in the rainbow of human talents from which you choose. Later, when a special someone lifts the curtain, you feel that chosen talent stirring inside you, a bursting passion to sing, paint, dance, bang on drums. And you are never the same.

If you have a painting in you, paint. If you have a song to sing, sing. Don’t judge your creation. Just create it. Banish doubt and fear and step out of your own way if you have to. Write if you’re a writer and invent if you’re an inventor. Do what you were born to do. Only then will you know a remarkable life.

Garrett snickers. “Ungrateful little shit. I give you all my talent, and what do you do with it? You sing songs.” “Hey, that’s my talent,” Hannah says.

Can you play the piano like Beethoven? Or sing like Carly Simon? Can you take fie pages' worth of quotes and turn them into a usable story ten minutes before deadline? I don't think so, unless you have more hidden talents I don't know about. We all have our special sills. They don't make us better or worse than each other. Just different

She sang, as requested. There was much about love in the ballad: faithful love that refused to abandon its object; love that disaster could not shake; love that, in calamity, waxed fonder, in poverty clung closer. The words were set to a fine old air -- in themselves they were simple and sweet: perhaps, when read, they wanted force; when well sung, they wanted nothing. Shirley sang them well: she breathed into the feeling, softness, she poured round the passion, force: her voice was fine that evening; its expression dramatic: she impressed all, and charmed one. On leaving the instrument, she went to the fire, and sat down on a seat -- semi-stool, semi-cushion: the ladies were round her -- none of them spoke. The Misses Sympson and the Misses Nunnely looked upon her, as quiet poultry might look on an egret, an ibis, or any other strange fowl. What made her sing so? They never sang so. Was it proper to sing with such expression, with such originality -- so unlike a school girl? Decidedly not: it was strange, it was unusual. What was strange must be wrong; what was unusual must be improper. Shirley was judged.

When there's music in your soul, there's soul in your music.

I don't have a talent, unless you count hunting illegally, which they don't. Or maybe singing, which I wouldn't do for the Capitol in a million years. My mother tried to interest me in a variety of suitable alternatives from a list Effie Trinket sent her. Cooking, flower arranging, playing the flute. None of them took, although Prim had a knack for all three. Finally Cinna stepped in and offered to help me develop my passion for designing clothes, which really required development since it was non-existent.

You know what punk is? a bunch of no-talent guys who really, really want to be in a band. Nobody reads music, nobody plays the mandolin, and you're too dumb to write songs about mythology or Middle-earth. So what's your style? Three chords, cranked out fast and loud and distorted because your instruments are crap and you can't play them worth a damn. And you scream your lungs out to cover up the fact that you can't sing. It should suck, but here's the thing - it doesn't. Rock and roll can be so full of itself, but not this. It's simple and angry and raw.

On the great canvas of time We all create our own masterpiece. Choreographing our steps across minutes and hours Dancing over the days Painting pictures over months and Writing our stories on the years. Singing our songs that echo across eons. We are all a thread in the talent tapestry. A snapshot in the cosmic, collective collage.

But Aunt Habiba said not to worry, that everyone had wonderful things hidden inside. The only difference was that some managed to share those wonderful things, and others did not. Those who did not explore and share the precious gifts within went through life feeling miserable, sad, awkward with others, and angry too. You had to develop a talent, Aunt Habiba said, so that you could give something, share and shine. And you developed a talent by working very hard at becoming good at something. It could be anything - singing, dancing, cooking, embroidering, listening, looking, smiling, waiting, accepting, dreaming, rebelling, leaping. 'Anything you can do well can change your life', said Aunt Habiba.

No one could see her objectively anyway. Even those who saw her for the first time, before she had opened her mouth to sing. Found her radiant, as if her talent could not be contained in her voice and so poured like light though her skin. Then all that could be seen was the weight and the gloss of her hair and the pale pink of her cheeks and her beautiful hands.

I am not one of the “slower” talents, like Reason or Mathematics. I am Music. If I bless you singing, you can do so from your first attempt.

Worry not. Sing your songs with all the earnestness you possess. What is talent but the tongue that never ceases its wag? Look upon us poets and see how we are as dogs in the sun, licking our own behinds with such tender love. Naught else afflicts us but the vapours of our own worries.

That is what is marvelous about school, she realized: when you are in school, your talents are without number, and your promise is boundless. You ace a math test: you will one day work for NASA. The choir director asks you to sing a solo at the holiday concert: you are the next Mariah Carey. You score a goal, you win a poetry contest, you act in a play. And you are everything at once: actor, astronomer, gymnast, star. But at a certain point, you begin to feel your talents dropping away, like feathers from a molting bird. Cello lessons conflict with soccer practice. There aren't enough spots on the debating team. Calculus remains elusive. Until the day you realize that you cannot think of a single thing you are wonderful at.

Why didn't you tell me?" Vera looked cautious. "Tell you what? I said he was talented.""Talent? That's not talent. Talent is Liza Minnelli tap-dancing and singing at the same time. What I just saw was devastation. Dying man on the cross. Salvation in B minor. An ejaculation of truth.

Your life is your song, sing it loud!

We’re all geniuses. Life is merely overpopulated with singers who play drums, and, drummers who sing, to pay rent.

White institutions are constantly communicating how much Blackness they want. It begins with numbers. How many scholarships are being offered? How many seats are being “saved” for “neighborhood kids”? How many Black bodies must be present for us to have “good” diversity numbers? How many people of color are needed for the website, the commercials, the pamphlets? But numbers are only the beginning. Whiteness constantly polices the expressions of Blackness allowed within its walls, attempting to accrue no more than what’s necessary to affirm itself. It wants us to sing the celebratory “We Shall Overcome” during MLK Day but doesn’t want to hear the indicting lyrics of “Strange Fruit.” It wants to see a Black person seated at the table but doesn’t want to hear a dissenting viewpoint. It wants to pat itself on the back for helping poor Black folks through missions or urban projects but has no interest in learning from Black people’s wisdom, talent, and spiritual depth. Whiteness wants enough Blackness to affirm the goodness of whiteness, the progressiveness of whiteness, the openheartedness of whiteness. Whiteness likes a trickle of Blackness, but only that which can be controlled.

The highest kind of writing—which must not be confused with the most ambitious kind…belongs to the realm of grace. Talent is part of it, certainly; a thorough understanding of the secret laws, absolutely. But finding the subject and theme which is in perfect harmony with your deepest nature, your forgotten selves, your hidden dreams, and the full unresonated essence of your life—now that cannot be reached through searching, nor can it be stumbled upon through ambition. That sort of serendipity comes upon you on a lucky day. It may emerge even out of misfortune or defeat. You may happen upon it without realising that this is the work through which your whole life will sing. We should always be ready. We should always be humble. Creativity should always be a form of prayer.

London is not a city, London is a person. Tower Bridge talks to you; National Gallery reads a poem for you; Hyde Park dances with you; Palace of Westminster plays the piano; Big Ben and St Paul’s Cathedral sing an opera! London is not a city; it is a talented artist who is ready to contact with you directly!

In twenty-first-century Britain, we've linked singing with talent, and we've got that fundamentally wrong. The right to sing is an absolute, regardless of how it sounds to the outside world. We sing because we must. We sing because it fills our lungs with nourishing air, and lets our hearts soar with the notes we let out. We sing because it allows us to speak of love and loss, delight and desire, all encoded in lyrics that let us pretend that those feelings are not quite ours. In song, we have permission to rehearse all our heartbreaks, all our lusts. In song, we can console our children while they are still too young our rusty voices, and we can find shortcuts to ecstasy while performing the mundane duty of a daily shower or scrubbing down the kitchen after yet another meal.

A bird that sings too much will only lose its voice, but a bird that does not sing at all will lose its symphonies.

Kay Cannon was a woman I’d known from the Chicago improv world. A beautiful, strong midwestern gal who had played lots of sports and run track in college, Kay had submitted a good writing sample, but I was more impressed by her athlete’s approach to the world. She has a can-do attitude, a willingness to learn through practice, and she was comfortable being coached. Her success at the show is a testament to why all parents should make their daughters pursue team sports instead of pageants. Not that Kay couldn’t win a beauty pageant - she could, as long as for the talent competition she could sing a karaoke version of ‘Redneck Woman’ while shooting a Nerf rifle.

Focus,” Mary muttered, chastising herself and her wandering mind. From her stereo came the soothing sounds of monks, vocalizing an ancient hymn meant to bring one closer to enlightenment. Credit where it was due, they were pretty good. Mary couldn’t remember ever hearing a bad singing monk, though. Was it just a byproduct of monkhood that one gained a great singing voice? Or maybe they had auditions before one got in. “Great, great, you want enlightenment, but I’ll need to hear you belt out some show tunes before we let you in.” Were there scouts out there scouring the vocal talents of a new generation and recruiting them to top-notch monasteries?

Whiteness constantly polices the expressions of Blackness allowed within its walls, attempting to accrue no more than what’s necessary to affirm itself. It wants us to sing the celebratory “We Shall Overcome” during MLK Day but doesn’t want to hear the indicting lyrics of “Strange Fruit.” It wants to see a Black person seated at the table but doesn’t want to hear a dissenting viewpoint. It wants to pat itself on the back for helping poor Black folks through missions or urban projects but has no interest in learning from Black people’s wisdom, talent, and spiritual depth.

You must find your own times and places of power and contentment, of native talent and success – and be unconcerned if they are different from another’s sphere. Diversity is intentional, natural, enriching, and part of the wonder of being alive in the world. Be yourself, whomever and however that may be.

I have talents that I'm not supposed to have: I can tell who crushes on who by how they stand, I can read strides, I can hear the tonal differences between an alto and a soprano singing the same line so clearly that to me they sing entirely different notes, and I can read through the lines and tell when a person doesn't need to be writing at all. That, that is what makes me a snob, because I cannot abide a person putting pen to paper or fingers on keys when they don't need to, when word choice is not as relevant and demanding and essential to them as breathing and syntax is about being correct and not about being evocative.

It’s already beautiful. You’re so talented.” “So are you,” he said, not looking up from his work. “But all the pieces of your talent—singing, guitar, songwriting…They’re scattered all over, like my installation. Or a constellation. Put them together…” Now he looked up, his smile gentle. “The whole might be pretty spectacular.” A hundred different emotions boiled up in me. Jonah’s words were fragments of my own thoughts. Insights I’d never had the guts to string together on my own. I

Do you think forgiveness is a skill learned through practice, like playing chess, or a talent given to you at birth, like singing in tune?

He found his voice in the silences, where he could sing as loud and as long as he wanted with no one to complain of it.

When the people come for you, your choice is already made. All you can do is lift up the light God sets in your hand. That light don’t belong to you anyway. It’s not yours to hide.

Listen to your own music. Feel its rhythm and beat. Notice what creates music in you. Tap into your natural gifts and talents, your passionate interests so your soul can sing.

I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction and poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that’s all. I’m not editorializing, just trying to give you the facts as I see them.

Do you think forgiveness is a skill learned through practice, like playing chess, or a talent given to you at birth, like singing in tune?” “Yes,” says Lena, in her way. “Some people have to practice forgiveness and will never be naturals. They’ll either do the work and get awesome at it but always have to think it over—or never do the work and die with a sack of hurts the size of an elephant.

We were singing for Dr. Du Bois' spirit, for the invaluable contributions he made, for his shining intellect and his courage. To many of us he was the first American Negro intellectual. We knew about Jack Johnson and Jesse Owens and Joe Louis. We were proud of Louis Armstrong and Marian Anderson and Roland Hayes. We memorized the verses of James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Countee Cullen, but they were athletes, musicians and poets, and White folks thought all those talents came naturally to Negroes. So, while we survived because of those contributors and their contributions, the powerful White world didn't stand in awe of them. Sadly, we also tended to take those brilliances for granted. But W.E.B. Du Bois and of course Paul Robeson were different, held on a higher or at least on a different plateau than the others.

Our relationship was always platonic and never got weird. After he heard me sing, Will believed in my talent. He took me with him to Def Jam Recordings, the hottest new hip-hop label at the time, where he was signed.

Felix was in his room singing into a tape recorder then playing it back and exclaiming, “My God. Do I actually sound like this? All this time I thought that I was a great singer, but I don’t have any talent whatsoever!

How wonderful! Gnome saliva is enormously beneficial!” said Mr. Lovegood, seizing Luna’s outstretched finger and examining the bleeding puncture marks. “Luna, my love, if you should feel any burgeoning talent today--perhaps an unexpected urge to sing opera or to declaim in Mermish--do not repress it! You may have been gifted by the Gernumblies!” Ron, passing them in the opposite direction, let out a loud snort. “Ron can laugh,” said Luna serenely as Harry led her and Xenophilius toward their seats, “but my father has done a lot of research on Gernumbli magic.” “Really?” said Harry, who had long since decided not to challenge Luna or her father’s peculiar views.

I look down, trying to see my skin like she does. Underneath the soft, cerulean-blue glow, there are so many lines it looks like a roadmap. I’m so used to the ruts and puffy scars crisscrossing my arms that I forget about them sometimes. They’re the legacy of the questionable talent that’s kept me alive as often as it’s gotten me in trouble. The story of my life is written in the wounds on my skin. I just wish other people could read the story, too. It’d save me a lot of explaining.

Dans un pays où les décideurs s'évertuent à construire une villa à leurs rejetons là où il est question de leur bâtir une nation, il n'est pas rare de rencontrer des talents chevronnés trimer au fond des gargotes afin de joindre les deux bouts...

Throughout my life as I’ve sought to become a published writer of speculative fiction, my strongest detractors and discouragers have been other African Americans. These were people who had, like generations before them, bought into the mythology of racism: black people don’t read. Black people can’t write. Black people have no talents other than singing and dancing and sports and crime. No one wants to read about black people, so don’t write about them. No one wants to write about black people, which is why you never see a black protagonist. Even if you self-publish, black people won’t support you. And if you aim for traditional publication, no one who matters — that is, white people — will buy your work. (A corollary of all this: there is only black and white. Nothing else matters.) Having swallowed these ideas, people regurgitated them at me at nearly every turn. And for a time, I swallowed them, too. As a black woman, I believed I wasn’t supposed to be a writer. Simultaneously I believed I was supposed to write about black people — and only black people. And only within a strictly limited set of topics deemed relevant to black people, because only black people would ever read anything I’d written. Took me years after I started writing to create a protagonist who looked like me. And then once I started doing so, it took me years to write a protagonist who was something different.

She doesn’t have any terrific talent for acting, but that’s how it appears to go. People don’t do what they have a talent for but what the preoccupation leads to. If they’re good at auto-repairing they have to sing Don Giovanni; if they can sing they have to be architects; and if they have a gift for architecture they wish to become school superintendents or abstract painters or anything else. Anything! It’s a spite. It’s having to prove full and ultimate self-sufficiency or some such monster dream that you don’t need anyone else to do these things for you.

What are you doing?” I finally ask. “I'm serenading you.” I slowly nod, fiddling with the strap of my tank top as I say, “You know those people that naturally sing really well and you could listen to them for hours and hours?” “Yeah.” I look up. “You're not one of them.” His lips twitch. “Isn't it about effort?” “Not with singing, no. It's about talent. You don't have it.” “I love you.” “That's not going to make you sound any better.” Laughing, he reaches for me and pulls me to his lap. Zart, Lindy (2014-11-20). Roomies (p. 218). . Kindle Edition.

And even though she couldn’t write, Kya had found a way to label her specimens. Her talent had matured and now she could draw, paint, and sketch anything. Using chalks or watercolors from the Five and Dime, she sketched the birds, insects, or shells on grocery bags and attached them to her samples.

No one can sing well, play well, or write well, without living through moments of the deepest pain and anguish. Every real talent has known times of torturing depression when the heart in its agony has cried out to God: “Why hast Thou forsaken me? What have I done that I should suffer so?" And then, at the very darkest moment, suddenly, the veil is torn from their eyes! Truth, with her flaming torch, stands before them, and they understand that God sends them suffering to strengthen and ennoble their talent, that it may touch men's hearts and show to tired wanderers on earth glimpses of heaven.

I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction and poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that’s all

But what had he said about risks? Risks were what made the whole thing fun. He burst out singing: Papa non vuole, Mama ne meno, Come faremo far’ l’amor’? He boomed it out in the bathroom as he dried himself. He sang in Dickie’s loud baritone that he had never heard, but he felt sure Dickie would have been pleased with his ringing tone.

I understand. Seraphim, I hope you know you have a great talent. You are a real artist. What you did in the dining room has a deep meaning. It is, no more or less than the very picture of life as it is lived by all of us poor mortals. We try to sweeten it, but the agreeable part stays on the outside because life is always bitter within.

Who exactly are we, after all? What are we? We’re four things. We are our genetic makeup, our inclinations, talents, gifts. You can sing in tune or you can’t. We are our environment. You grow up in a loving environment or you don’t. We are our circumstances. You’re born rich in Chicago or poverty-stricken in Uganda. And we are our willpower.

Life can surround you with music, with books, with talents, with teachers, with all types of materials for opportunity. Life will not, however, make you sing or read or work or learn. Though the books are provided, you still must read them. Though the music plays, you still must sing along. People come and go, but you must reach out and make them your friends. Education is available, but you must study and learn. Life will not force you to take advantage of the opportunities around you. Life will not make you work to learn, to develop, to progress as required until you succeed. In the simplest terms, life pours water into your glass but it will not drink for you. You, and you alone, must pick up the cup and take a sip.

I know you don’t approve of me or my ways, Ezra, but I got to make my way in this world the best I can. I got to work with what talents I got ’cause ain’t nobody gonna look out for me but me. I will play my music, I will sing my songs, I will dance my dances. And sometimes, as I have found in my life, it’s easier being a boy. That’s the way of it. Till later, Ezra.” I

that we would receive the overwhelming message that the vast majority of adults feel they have no talent in these areas. On the other hand, if we were to conduct the same poll among 4-year-olds, we would find that virtually all of them are convinced they can sing, and virtually all of them have confidence in their ability to dance. Most of the 4-year-olds have little or no real talent, but, instead, they are endowed with incredible confidence in their own potential. This confidence, or certainty of success, is something we were all born with but we later traded in for a strong dose of what we call realism. Shortly after we reach school age, we are taught lessons about the world that revolve around us, limiting our vision and becoming realistic.

Your self-doubt resides elsewhere and calcifies until it’s not even doubt anymore. You are certain that everything else about you is bad. You’re definitely not the best person. You’re not the prettiest, you’re not the thinnest, you’re not the smartest, you’re not the -est anything, except when it comes to singing. You do know how talented you are. This may be the only thing about you that you know is truly good.

The eighties are a sorely underrated decade in terms of musical composition. They don’t get nearly the respect they deserve. I try to use my platform in the world to bring attention to this travesty by singing eighties ballads whenever I get the chance. Like right now, as I sing “What About Me” by Moving Pictures on the karaoke stage. It was their one-hit wonder and a soul-stirring exercise in self-pity. My eyes are closed as I belt out the lyrics and sway behind he microphone. Not in time to the music—I’m so pissed, I’m lucky to still be standing at all. Usually I play the guitar too, but my fine-motor functions fell by the wayside hours ago. I’m a fantastic musician—not that anyone really notices. That talent gets lost in the shadow of the titles, the same way the talented offspring of two accomplished stars get discounted by the weight of their household name. My mother gave me my love of music—she played several instruments. I had tutors, first for the piano, then the violin—but it was the guitar that really stuck with me. The karaoke stage at The Goat used to be my second home and in the last few hours, I’ve given serious consideration to moving in beneath it. If Harry Potter was the Boy Under the Stairs, I could be the Prince Under the Stage. Why the fuck not?

The main idea of personal happiness at that [Colonial] time was not some hedonistic notion of pleasure but the other, more philosophical, kind. The Greek philosophers believed that discovering one's own talents and then taking the pleasure of exploiting them (finding out that you had a singing voice, could write well, start a company, or invent new things), that was the deeper pleasure the founders had in mind and the freedom they sought.

But later that night, as I brush my teeth in the bathroom, I overhear Baba and Thaya Jaan talking in the guest room next door. “ All this music all the time. You shouldn’t let Amina do so much singing and piano,” Thaya Jaan says. I stop brushing and strain to hear every word, trying to follow. “But, Bhai Jaan, she is so talented. Her music teachers say she is really quite gifted.” “Yes, but music is forbidden in Islam. It’s a waste of time and has no benefit. Instead of filling her head with music, she should focus on memorizing Quran.” The toothpaste suddenly tastes bitter. I spit it out and wait to hear what Baba will say. Surely he’ll say the things he’s always told me, like how music makes him feel closer to God and that my talent is a gift from Allah. But all Baba says is, “Yes, Bhai Jaan,” and then he stays quiet. I am numb. Is Thaya Jaan right? Am I doing something wrong?

quoting from Neil Kinnock, running against Thatcher in 1987: Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Is it because all our predecessors were thick? Did they lack talent? Those people who could sing, and play, and recite, and write poetry, those people who could make wonderful things with their hands? Those people who could dream dreams, see visions? Why didn't they get it? Was it because they were weak? Those people who could work eight hours underground and then come up and play football? Weak? Those women who could survive eleven childbearings? Were they weak? Anybody really think that they didn't get what we have because they didn't have the talent, or the strength, or the endurance, or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform on which they could stand.

I was ashamed. I have spent a good many years since—too many, I think—being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction and poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that’s all. I’m not editorializing, just trying to give you the facts as I see them.

Flowers in your garden always turn in the direction of light because they instinctively recognize their source of energy, strength & renewal. Let you become the source of light, hope, faith, sincerity, inspiration & love in your world. Let you remind yourself that you are complete in all senses & that you have God gifted beauty, abilities & talents. Let you uncover these gifts, nurture & develop these further to improve yourself & your world. Let your reflection & energy has the potential to transform everything surrounding you in ways that enable them to function at a higher level & ultimately be of greater purpose. Let all your actions, reciprocation & interactions with others & yourself be filled with grace & ease today. Let your body, mind & soul sing together in harmony to make you more happy both inside & outside while ending all kind of pretence, deceit & hypocrisy in you. Let you find more joy, peace & blessings with each passing day. Stay Healthy, Playful & Successful!

I was standing alone, at bank of a river Singing a song of a dishearten seraph Wind blows throw me, wild and cold Freezing my eyes to capture the knock I was staring at a glimpse straight to my sight Ignoring the glamour and beauty of life I saw someone in the blurred flight Circling over me to focus the light My mind become brighter and so am I Oh! He was there for so long I find I was never as solo as my night I have a perfect one to be on my side I was once weak and disappointed by my journey I was angry and mad on my unfaithful company I tried hard to be stronger and tougher than I mean And now I am determined and full of virtuous deeds I was bored of hectic normal life of mine And couldn’t find anyone to guide on my line I alone discovered what I meant to be My talents, my path and my desired needs I am ready to face the world that I've known To uncover those skills I learned on my own To make a place of acts, not of just words A place of liberty and love to be heard

Entertainers and barely talented singers shouldn't be voicing their opinion on the political sphere; go try and sing without autotune and actually hit a note, before using your voicebox to speak on topics you don't have the range for, when you don't even have the range to sing your own songs live. — I don't listen to any of these fools, I don't visit their social media pages, I don't care, outside of their entertainer projects, what they do, because that's all they are... OVERPAID ENTERTAINERS.

Coriolanus thought it was quite a display for Arachne, disproportionate to both her life and death, the latter of which could have been avoided if she'd refrained from being such an exhibitionist. So many people had died heroically in the war, with so little recognition, that it grated on him. He was relieved that he was singing instead of having to praise her talents, which, if memory served, were limited to being loud enough to fill the school auditorium without a mic and the ability to balance a spoon on her nose.

There have been a lot of Smedries over the centuries," he said, "and a lot of Talents. Many of them tend to be similar, in the long run. There are four kinds: Talents that affect space, time, knowledge, and the physical world." "Take my talent, for instance," he continued. "I change things in space. I can get lost, then get found again." "What about grandpa Smedry?" "Time," Kas said. "He arrives late to things. Australia, however, has a Talent that can change the physical world--in this case, her own shape. Her Talent is fairly specific, and not as broad as your grandfather's. For instance, there was a Smedry a couple of centuries back who could look ugly any time he wanted, not just when he woke up in the morning. Other have been able to change anyone's appearance, not just their own. Understand?" I shrugged. "I guess so." "The closer the Talent gets to its purest form, the more powerful it is," Kaz said. "Your grandfather's Talent is very pure--he can manipulate time in a lot of different circumstances. Your father and I have very similar Talents--I can get lost and Attica can lose things--and both are flexible." "What about Sing?" I asked. "Tripping. That's what we call a knowledge Talent--he knows how to do something normal with extraordinary ability. Like Australia, though, his power isn't very flexible." I nodded slowly. "So...what does this have to do with me?" "Well, it's hard to say," Kaz said. "You're getting into some deep philosophy now, kid. There are those who argue that the Breaking Talent is simply a physical-world Talent, but one that is very versatile and very powerful. There are others who argue that the Breaking Talent is much more. It seems to be able to do things that affect all four areas. Legends say that one of your ancestors--one of only two others to have this Talent--broke time and space together, forming a little bubble where nothing aged. Other records speak of breakings equally marvelous. Breakings that change people's memory or their abilities. What is it to 'break' something? What can you change? How far can the Talent go?

The wu-forms that we find throughout the text all advocate a personal disposition that seeks to optimize relationships through collaborative actions that, in the absence of coercion, enable one to make the most of any situation. It is the uniqueness of each situation that requires any generalization about this optimal disposition to be stated in negative terms. A voice coach can describe the constraints that students in general might have to overcome in achieving the fullness of their talent, but all of the students must sing their own unique songs.

Even the minstrels who came in the back yards and sang "If I had my way, You would never grow old" were sad, too. They were bums and they were hungry and they didn’t have talent for song-making. All they had in the world was the nerve to stand in a back yard with cap in hand and sing loudly. The sad thing was in the knowing that all their nerve would get them nowhere in the world and that they were lost as all people in Brooklyn seem lost when the day is nearly over and even though the sun is still bright, it is thin and doesn’t give you warmth when it shines on you.

Faking violin stardom ultimately allowed me to return to what captivated me at four years old when I first heard Vivaldi's "Winter." It wasn't the desire to be seen as talented, or a ticket to the big city, or worldly success, or respect. It wasn't The Money. It was simply this: I loved a song. Playing the role of a famous, world-class violinist allowed me to return to the feeling that playing the violin doesn't require anything more than loving a song. Or anything less. As Mr. Rogers says at the end of the trumpet factory episode, right after he explains that as a kid he pretended he was a songwriter on TV, right before he begins to sing on TV: 'It helps to play about things. It helps you to know how it really feels.

Whiteness constantly polices the expressions of Blackness allowed within its walls, attempting to accrue no more than what's necessary to affirm itself. It wants to sing the celebratory "We shall Overcome" during MLK Day but doesn't want to hear the indicting lyrics of "Strange Fruit". It wants to see a black person seated at the table but doesn't want to hear a dissenting viewpoint. It wants to pat itself on the back for helping poor Black folks through missions or urban projects but has no interest in learning from Black people's wisdom, talent, and spiritual depth. Whiteness wants enough Blackness to affirm the goodness of whiteness, the progressiveness of whiteness, the openheartedness of whiteness. Whiteness likes a trickle of Blackness, but only that which can be controlled.

If we're talented at music, that talent is of god.  If something makes our heart sing, that's god's way of telling us its a contribution he wants us to make.  Sharing our gifts is what makes us happy. We're most powerful and god's power is most apparent on the earth when we're happy. A course in miracles teaches that we are only truly happy when we're doing god's will.  The only thing to be saved from is our own negativity and fear.  The crux of salvation in any area is a shift in our sense of purpose.  That shift is a miracle, as always we consciously ask for it:  'Dear god, please give my life some sense of purpose. use me as an instrument of your peace.  Use my talents and abilities to spread love.  I surrender my job to you. Help me to remember that my real job is to love the world back to health.

Beautiful! Honesty is beautiful Kindness is beautiful Intelligence is beautiful Talent is beautiful Beautiful is a romance with such abundance Beautiful are the flowers that roam the earth Beautiful is awaking to the sound of singing birds Beautiful is a disguise Playing hide and seek inside and outside Beautiful is as naked as the rising sun Beautiful is delightful and truthful Beautiful is the golden daylight that shines And the taste of sweet colored red wine Beautiful was never ever created by mistake Beautiful is the ingredient we bake life's cake When all or nothing is at stake I am beautiful You are beautiful We are beautiful Beautiful is great Beautiful is sweet Beautiful is love Beautiful is power Come to me Mr. & Mrs. Beautiful Let me into your little secret Of why you are so obedient and dutiful

But numbers are only the beginning. Whiteness constantly polices the expressions of Blackness allowed within its walls, attempting to accrue no more than what’s necessary to affirm itself. It wants us to sing the celebratory “We Shall Overcome” during MLK Day but doesn’t want to hear the indicting lyrics of “Strange Fruit.” It wants to see a Black person seated at the table but doesn’t want to hear a dissenting viewpoint. It wants to pat itself on the back for helping poor Black folks through missions or urban projects but has no interest in learning from Black people’s wisdom, talent, and spiritual depth. Whiteness wants enough Blackness to affirm the goodness of whiteness, the progressiveness of whiteness, the openheartedness of whiteness. Whiteness likes a trickle of Blackness, but only that which can be controlled.

Sam Moore had scuffled his way into hosting a talent show at a nightclub, the King of Hearts, in his hometown of Miami. Dave Prater was a bread baker. Sam remembers that when Dave signed up for that week’s show, he was wearing his baker’s whites; wherever he walked, he left behind white flour shoe prints. At the auditions, Dave sang a Jackie Wilson song, “Doggin’ Around,” but realized he didn’t know the verses. Sam, whose job depended on selecting acts that would produce a good show, agreed to stay close during the performance and feed him the lines. But that night, Sam’s foot caught the microphone cable, and as the mike began to fall, Dave went down to catch it and Sam went down to catch Dave. Choreographers couldn’t have written it better: They came up together, singing and with the mike in hand. In that little mix-up, an act was born that would last the better part of twenty-two years and would remain forever a part of the public consciousness.

Bloody hell,” Charlie gasped. “That’s twenty-five quid each, Isaac.” “Language.” “Shit.” Isaac blew out a breath. “A hundred quid, Mum.” “Isaac, language.” “Hey no,” Dex said, holding up a hand. “I mean a hundred each. I could use these as stencils. At this size I could pretty much charge double that, if not more, each time they’re used. Probably twice again if they have them in colour.” The three of us looked at Dex in awe. He wanted to buy my talented boy’s drawings for a hundred pounds each. “Well?” I prompted. “Fuck yeah.” “Language,” I said, barely above a whisper, still in a state of shock. “It’s a deal.” Dex grinned. “Speaking of which, I said I’d show you my designs, but I gotta be honest, I’m not sure they’re as good as these.” “Oh fuck,” I muttered. “Language,” Charlie cried. As Dex stripped off his shirt, I genuinely thought I heard a choir of angels sing and saw a shaft of light shine through the darkness outside and into my lounge. There was only one word for what I was looking at – wondrous. He could honestly market himself as a tourist attraction and sell tickets.

When I put together my early bands, usually some other singer who was short of one would take it away. It seemed like this happened every time one of my bands was fully formed. I couldn’t understand how this was possible seeing that these guys weren’t any better at singing or playing than I was. What they did have was an open door to gigs where there was real money. Anybody who had a band could play at park pavilions, talent shows, county fairgrounds, auctions and store openings, but those gigs didn’t pay except maybe for expenses and sometimes not even for that. These other crooners could perform at small conventions, private wedding parties, golden anniversaries in hotel ballrooms, things like that — and there was cash involved. It was always the promise of money that lured my band away. Truth was, that the guys who took my bands away had connections to someone up the ladder. It went to the very root of things, gave unfair advantage to some and left others squeezed out. How could somebody ever reach the world this way? It seemed like it was the law of life. It got so that I almost always expected to lose my band and it didn’t even shock me anymore if it happened. It was beginning to dawn on me that I would have to learn how to play and sing by myself and not depend on a band until the time I could afford to pay and keep one.

Sacraments   I once met a man whom I’ll call Steve. He grew up in a nondenominational charismatic church. He was a highly motivated, highly talented individual. He was also a strong leader and an excellent communicator. Given his personality and gifting, it’s no surprise that he became the pastor of a successful independent church. His life seemed to be going great until the day he discovered that his wife was having an affair with one of his best friends. The situation got worse when his church fired him for not being able to control his family.   Unemployed, going through a divorce, and cut off from the community that had always surrounded him, a friend invited Steve to join him at an Anglican church. There he discovered the power of liturgy and the mystery of the communion table. Steve didn’t have the kind of spiritual life he had always relied on. Nothing about God made any sense to him. He couldn’t sing praise songs, he couldn’t read the Bible, he couldn’t even pray. But he could eat.   Steve’s mind needed answers. His heart needed to be comforted. His soul needed grace. Sermons weren’t giving him answers and praise music wasn’t comforting, but the body of Christ was feeding his inner self. Steve discovered that God was real to him when he ate and drank Holy Communion. Even though Steve was at the lowest point of his life, a time when he could do nothing to help himself, he was still able to receive the sacrament.

My interest in comics was scribbled over with a revived, energized passion for clothes, records, and music. I'd wandered in late to the punk party in 1978, when it was already over and the Sex Pistols were history. I'd kept my distance during the first flush of the new paradigm, when the walls of the sixth-form common room shed their suburban-surreal Roger Dean Yes album covers and grew a fresh new skin of Sex Pistols pictures, Blondie pinups, Buzzcocks collages, Clash radical chic. As a committed outsider, I refused to jump on the bandwagon of this new musical fad, which I'd written off as some kind of Nazi thing after seeing a photograph of Sid Vicious sporting a swastika armband. I hated the boys who'd cut their long hair and binned their crappy prog albums in an attempt to join in. I hated pretty much everybody without discrimination, in one way or another, and punk rockers were just something else to add to the shit list. But as we all know, it's zealots who make the best converts. One Thursday night, I was sprawled on the settee with Top of the Pops on the telly when Poly Styrene and her band X-Ray Spex turned up to play their latest single: an exhilarating sherbet storm of raw punk psychedelia entitled "The Day the World Turned Day-Glo" By the time the last incandescent chorus played out, I was a punk. I had always been a punk. I would always be a punk. Punk brought it all together in one place for me: Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels were punk. Peter Barnes's The Ruling Class, Dennis Potter, and The Prisoner were punk too. A Clockwork Orange was punk. Lindsay Anderson's If ... was punk. Monty Python was punk. Photographer Bob Carlos Clarke's fetish girls were punk. Comics were punk. Even Richmal Crompton's William books were punk. In fact, as it turned out, pretty much everything I liked was punk. The world started to make sense for the first time since Mosspark Primary. New and glorious constellations aligned in my inner firmament. I felt born again. The do-your-own-thing ethos had returned with a spit and a sneer in all those amateurish records I bought and treasured-even though I had no record player. Singles by bands who could often barely play or sing but still wrote beautiful, furious songs and poured all their young hearts, experiences, and inspirations onto records they paid for with their dole money. If these glorious fuckups could do it, so could a fuckup like me. When Jilted John, the alter ego of actor and comedian Graham Fellows, made an appearance on Top of the Pops singing about bus stops, failed romance, and sexual identity crisis, I was enthralled by his shameless amateurism, his reduction of pop music's great themes to playground name calling, his deconstruction of the macho rock voice into the effeminate whimper of a softie from Sheffield. This music reflected my experience of teenage life as a series of brutal setbacks and disappointments that could in the end be redeemed into art and music with humor, intelligence, and a modicum of talent. This, for me, was the real punk, the genuine anticool, and I felt empowered. The losers, the rejected, and the formerly voiceless were being offered an opportunity to show what they could do to enliven a stagnant culture. History was on our side, and I had nothing to lose. I was eighteen and still hadn't kissed a girl, but perhaps I had potential. I knew I had a lot to say, and punk threw me the lifeline of a creed and a vocabulary-a soundtrack to my mission as a comic artist, a rough validation. Ugly kids, shy kids, weird kids: It was okay to be different. In fact, it was mandatory.

In spring that year (1930), by a symbolic act whose significance I myself did not grasp, a march through the stifling heat to the sea with a little band of followers to make illegal salt, Gandhi had aroused the Indian people from the lethargy into which they had long sunk after nearly three centuries of British rule, if you counted the incredible period when they were governed for two hundred years not by a foreign country but by a bizarre band of traders greedy for profit, the honourable members and agents of the East India Company. These hustlers had first came out from England early in the seventeenth century, found the pickings beyond their fondest dreams, and by hook and by crook and by armed might, had stolen the country from the Indians. It was the only instance in history, I believe, of a private commercial enterprise taking over a vast, heavily populated subcontinent, ruling it with an iron hand and exploiting it for private profit. Probably only the British, with their odd assortment of talents, their great entrepreneurial drive, their ingrained feeling of racial superiority, of which Rudyard Kipling would sing so shrilly, their guile in dividing the natives and turning them against one another, and their ruthlessness in putting down all who threatened their rule and their profits, could have done it, and got away with it so long. Perhaps only the Indians, divided as they were after the decay of the Mughal Empire into dozens of quarrelling, warring states, great and small, could have succumbed so easily and so quickly to the aggression of a handful determined merchants, backed by a small handful of British troops in the service of the Company, and remained so long in abject subjection. As Radhakrishnan, the great Hindu philosopher, put it in our own time: "The day India lost her freedom, a great curse fell on her and she became petrified.

For the better part of two years Niels Lyhne wandered abroad. He was so lonely. He had no family, no friend who was dear to his heart. But there was a greater loneliness about him than that; for a person may well feel anguished and forsaken if on the whole enormous earth there is not one small place he can bless and wish well, someplace he can turn his heart toward when his heart insists on swelling, a place he can long for when longing insists on spreading its wings; but if he has the clear, steady star of a life’s goal shining overhead, then there is no night so lonely that he is entirely alone. But Niels Lyhne had no star. He didn’t know what to do with himself and his abilities. He did have talent, but he just couldn’t use it; he went around feeling like a painter without hands. How he envied the others, great and small, who, no matter where they reached in life, always found something to hold on to! Because he could not find anything to hold on to. It seemed to him that all he could do was sing the old romantic songs over again, and everything that he had accomplished had been nothing more than this. It was as if his talent were something remote in him, a quiet Pompeii, or like a harp he could take out of a corner. It was not omnipresent, it did not run down the street with him, it did not reside in his eyes, it did not tingle in his fingertips, not at all; his talent did not have a hold on him. At times it seemed to him that he had been born half a century too late, at other times that he had arrived much too early. The talent within him was rooted in something from the past which was the only thing that could give it life. It could not draw nourishment from his opinions, his convictions, his sympathies, it could not assimilate them and give them form; they floated away from each other, these two parts, like water and oil, they could be shaken together but could not be mixed, never become one.

Dear Peter K, First of all I refuse to call you Kavinsky. You think you’re so cool, going by your last name all of a sudden. Just so you know, Kavinsky sounds like the name of an old man with a long white beard. Did you know that when you kissed me, I would come to love you? Sometimes I think yes. Definitely yes. You know why? Because you think EVERYONE loves you, Peter. That’s what I hate about you. Because everyone does love you. Including me. I did. Not anymore. Here are all your worst qualities: You burp and you don’t say excuse me. You just assume everyone else will find it charming. And if they don’t, who cares, right? Wrong! You do care. You care a lot about what people think of you. You always take the last piece of pizza. You never ask if anyone else wants it. That’s rude. You’re so good at everything. Too good. You could’ve given other guys a chance to be good, but you never did. You kissed me for no reason. Even though I knew you liked Gen, and you knew you liked Gen, and Gen knew you liked Gen. But you still did it. Just because you could. I really want to know: Why would you do that to me? My first kiss was supposed to be something special. I’ve read about it, what it’s supposed to feel like00fireworks and lightning bolts and the sound of waves crashing in your ears. I didn’t have any of that. Thanks to you it was as unspecial as a kiss could be. The worst part of it is, that stupid nothing kiss is what made me start liking you. I never did before. I never even thought about you before. Gen has always said that you are the best-looking boy in our grade, and I agreed, because sure, you are. But I still didn’t see the allure of you. Plenty of people are good-looking. That doesn’t make them interesting or intriguing or cool. Maybe that’s why you kissed me. To do mind control on me, to make me see you that way. It worked. Your little trick worked. From then on, I saw you. Up close, your face wasn’t so much handsome as beautiful. How many beautiful boys have you ever seen? For me it was just one. You. I think it’s a lot to do with your lashes. You have really long lashes. Unfairly long. Even though you don’t deserve it, fine, I’ll go into all the things I like(d) about you: One time in science, nobody wanted to be partners with Jeffrey Suttleman because he has BO, and you volunteered like it was no big deal. Suddenly everybody thought Jeffrey wasn’t so bad. You’re still in chorus, even though all the other boys take band and orchestra now. You even sing solos. And you dance, and you’re not embarrassed. You were the last boy to get tall. And now you’re the tallest, but it’s like you earned it. Also, when you were short, no one even cared that you were short--the girls still liked you and the boys still picked you first for basketball in gym. After you kissed me, I liked you for the rest of seventh grade and most of eighth. It hasn’t been easy, watching you with Gen, holding hands and making out at the bus stop. You probably make her feel very special. Because that’s your talent, right? You’re good at making people feel special. Do you know what it’s like to like someone so much you can’t stand it and know that they’ll never feel the same way? Probably not. People like you don’t have to suffer through those kinds of things. It was easier after Gen moved and we stopped being friends. At least then I didn’t have to hear about it. And now that the year is almost over, I know for sure that I am also over you. I’m immune to you now, Peter. I’m really proud to say that I’m the only girl in this school who has been immunized to the charms of Peter Kavinsky. All because I had a really bad dose of you in seventh grade and most of eighth. Now I never ever have to worry about catching you again. What a relief! I bet if I did ever kiss you again, I would definitely catch something, and it wouldn’t be love. It would be an STD! Lara Jean Song

You might expect that if you spent such an extended period in twelve different households, what you would gather is twelve different ideas about how to raise children: there would be the strict parents and the lax parents and the hyperinvolved parents and the mellow parents and on and on. What Lareau found, however, is something much different. There were only two parenting “philosophies,” and they divided almost perfectly along class lines. The wealthier parents raised their kids one way, and the poorer parents raised their kids another way. The wealthier parents were heavily involved in their children’s free time, shuttling them from one activity to the next, quizzing them about their teachers and coaches and teammates. One of the well-off children Lareau followed played on a baseball team, two soccer teams, a swim team, and a basketball team in the summer, as well as playing in an orchestra and taking piano lessons. That kind of intensive scheduling was almost entirely absent from the lives of the poor children. Play for them wasn’t soccer practice twice a week. It was making up games outside with their siblings and other kids in the neighborhood. What a child did was considered by his or her parents as something separate from the adult world and not particularly consequential. One girl from a working-class family—Katie Brindle—sang in a choir after school. But she signed up for it herself and walked to choir practice on her own. Lareau writes: What Mrs. Brindle doesn’t do that is routine for middle-class mothers is view her daughter’s interest in singing as a signal to look for other ways to help her develop that interest into a formal talent. Similarly Mrs. Brindle does not discuss Katie’s interest in drama or express regret that she cannot afford to cultivate her daughter’s talent. Instead she frames Katie’s skills and interests as character traits—singing and acting are part of what makes Katie “Katie.” She sees the shows her daughter puts on as “cute” and as a way for Katie to “get attention.

The wedding of David and Michal was a glorious affair. Though Saul was normally stingy with his money, he was not so with his daughters. Michal had started the day with a bath followed by a bodily anointing of oil. She wore a linen and silk dress with embroidered cloth of Phoenician purple. Her hair was brushed to a soft perfection and placed beneath her Tyrian style crown of gold. She was bedecked with gold and silver jewelry from Egypt. Bracelets, necklaces, ear coverings and a ring on her nose. She walked through the Gibeah streets in fine calf leather sandals, surrounded by a cadre of dozens of virgin bridesmaid companions dressed in white linen. A band of minstrels led her with rejoicing on tambourine, flute, and lyre. She felt like a queen. She would be a queen one day. She knew that she was marrying the mightiest warrior in all of Israel. The gibborim who had killed the giant Rephaim Philistine, who her own father, the anointed warrior king, could not conquer. All she could think of the entire journey to the palace were the lyrics she first heard her from the lips of her bridegroom upon their first acquaintance. She had never forgot them. They were burned into her heart. He had sung a song of virginal submission to a manly king as a sample of his musical talent to her father. But she knew he had sung those words for her. She knew by the look in his eyes, his unquenchable stare of desire for her. It was like a prophecy. Now those words were coming true, she was going to be living them out any moment. Hear, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear: forget your people and your father’s house, and the king will desire your beauty. Since he is your lord, bow to him. The people of Israel lined the streets and cheered their beautiful princess as she approached the entranceway to the palace. She could feel her heart pounding out of her chest. Would he sing to her on their wedding night? Would he seduce her with his musical talent before he ravished her? All glorious is the princess in her chamber, with robes interwoven with gold. In many-colored robes she is led to the king, with her virgin companions following behind her. With joy and gladness they are led along as they enter the palace of the king.

Iola isn’t a medium or a mentally ill soothsayer. That child enjoys the goddess’s favor. Don’t pull silly faces, if you please. As I said, your view on religion is known to me, it’s never particularly bothered me and, no doubt, it won’t bother me in the future. I’m not a fanatic. You’ve a right to believe that we’re governed by Nature and the Force hidden within her. You can think that the gods, including my Melitele, are merely a personification of this power invented for simpletons so they can understand it better, accept its existence. According to you, that power is blind. But for me, Geralt, faith allows you to expect what my goddess personifies from nature: order, law, goodness. And hope.” “I know.” “If you know that, then why your reservations about the trance? What are you afraid of? That I’ll make you bow your head to a statue and sing canticles? Geralt, we’ll simply sit together for a while—you, me and Iola—and see if the girl’s talents will let her see into the vortex of power surrounding you. Maybe we’ll discover something worth knowing. And maybe we won’t discover anything. Maybe the power and fate surrounding you won’t choose to reveal themselves to us, will remain hidden and incomprehensible. I don’t know. But why shouldn’t we try?” “Because there’s no point. I’m not surrounded by any vortex or fate. And if I were, why the hell would I delve into it?” “Geralt, you’re sick.” “Injured, you mean.” “I know what I mean. There’s something not quite right with you. I can sense that. After all, I have known you ever since you were a youngster. When I met you, you came up to my waist. And now I feel that you’re spinning around in some damned whirlpool, tangled up in a slowly tightening noose. I want to know what’s happening. But I can’t do it myself. I have to count on Iola’s gifts.” “You want to delve too deeply. Why the metaphysics? I’ll confide in you, if you like. I’ll fill your evenings with tales of ever more astounding events from the past few years. Get a keg of beer so my throat doesn’t dry up and we can start today. But I fear I’ll bore you because you won’t find any nooses or vortexes there. Just a witcher’s ordinary tales.” “I’ll willingly listen to them. But a trance, I repeat, would do no harm.” “Don’t you think”—he smiled—“that my lack of faith makes such a trance pointless?” “No, I don’t. And do you know why?” “No.” Nenneke leaned over and looked him in the eyes with a strange smile on her pale lips. “Because it would be the first proof I’ve ever heard of that a lack of faith has any kind of power at all.

I regret the passing of the studio system,” Lucille Ball once said. “I was very appreciative of it because I had no talent. Believe me. What could I do? I couldn’t dance. I couldn’t sing. I could talk. I could barely walk. I had no flair. I wasn’t a beauty, that’s for sure.

Try Evan,” he suggests. “Apart from numbers and heaven, which gets old very quickly, there’s practically nothing.” “Numbers? Oh! Eleven…seven…” I furrow my brow. “Devon,” Kelly calls over. “That’s a county in England.” “Leaven,” I add. “You do it to bread.” Evan’s expression is comical, his blue eyes stretched as wide as they’ll go as he plucks a string and, in a singsong nursery-rhyme voice, intones: “From the age of seven to eleven Before he tragically went to heaven Evan leavened bread in Devon.” He throws his hands wide. “See? Not much to work with.” “At least you don’t have rude stuff that rhymes with you,” Kelly says gloomily. “They called me Smelly Jelly Belly at school for years.” “And Kendra isn’t that great either. It sort of sounds like bend-ya,” Kendra adds. I can’t help smiling that Kendra and Kelly are competitive in everything, even down to whose name rhymes with worse stuff. “Kendra,” Evan sings, playing a chord, “I would never bend ya, or lend ya or send ya… Oh, the words I can engender thinking about Kendra…” “‘Engender’!” Kelly exclaims. “That’s really good!” I pull myself out of the pool and walk over to a lounger, picking up a towel and wrapping it around myself; I sit on one side of Evan, Kelly on the other. Even cool-as-a-cucumber Kendra has sat up to watch Evan playing his guitar. “What about Paige?” I ask, looking over at his sister, the only one uninterested in her brother’s talent. She’s got a moisturizing pack on her hair--her head is wrapped in the special leopard-skin towel she uses when she’s doing a hair treatment--pink headphones on her ears, and a magazine in her hands as she reclines on her lounger. “Paige goes into a rage when you tell her she’s not yet legal drinking age--” Evan sings immediately, and Paige, who must have been listening after all, promptly throws her magazine at his head. He ducks easily, and it flies past and lands on the tiles.

Birds sing because they have a song, not because they want to impress anyone.

She was a nineteen-year-old student. She sang, played piano, and went to church every Sunday. Today, there was a C.E.M.P. call-out to Northridge, where an SUV sped through a red light and hit her as she was crossing the street. Her body flew several dozen feet through the air before landing face-first on the ground. The jewelry she was wearing clattered across the intersection. The artwork she was carrying scattered in the wind. She seemed talented. She seemed smart. She seemed generous. She never had a chance. It could have just as easily been me. It could have just as easily been you. But it was her. Tomorrow, though, is another day. THE PARTING WORDS OF THE FISHWIFE SIDUR TO GILGAMESH: “When the heavenly gods created human beings, they kept everlasting life for themselves and gave us death. So, Gilgamesh, accept your fate. Each day, wash your head, bathe your body, and wear clothes that are sparkling fresh. Fill your stomach with tasty food. Play, sing dance, and be happy both day and night. Delight in the pleasures that your wife brings you, and cherish the little child who holds your hand. Make every day of your life a feast of rejoicing! This is the task that the gods have set before all human beings. This is the life you should seek, for this is the best life a mortal can hope to achieve.

While other child stars were suing their parents for millions, holding up liquor stores and ODing outside of nightclubs, we felt we were the lucky ones. Candace and I led the most glamour-less lives possible for kids on TV series. Our parents pushed for normalcy in every possible way. Bridgette and Melissa were the real stars of the family: Bridgette’s dancing and singing talent combined with her charming personality and Melissa’s first-rate brain and individuality made them two of the most well-adjusted teenage girls you could find.

If these are ‘talents’ – the ability to sing, or to quickly comprehend and reproduce musical notation – what kind of a thing is ‘talent’? A commodity? A gift? A prize? A reward? For what?

Peary was born in 1908, son of a Portuguese immigrant, and christened Harrold José de Faria. He once pinpointed his first radio job as Jan. 21, 1923, at KZM, Oakland. In the late 1920s he worked at NBC in San Francisco. The Spanish Serenader, a series vintage 1928, gave him a chance to use his singing voice as well as acting talent. Landing in Chicago in 1937, he soon became one of radio’s insiders, gaining a reputation as a top utility man. For a year he played various characters named Gildersleeve on the McGee program: then he approached writer Don Quinn with an idea of a meatier role for himself—a pompous windbag, perfect foil for McGee, who himself ran the biggest bluff in Wistful Vista.

The 2017-18 Broadway season offered a perfect example of the difference between the performative and psychological styles of acting in musicals. At the Shubert Theatre, veteran singer and comedienne Bette Midler returned to Broadway in a revival of Hello, Dolly!, a musical that demands above all star presence. To the delight of her fans, Midler played Bette Midler as Dolly. No one in the audience wanted her to be anyone else and the part didn’t demand the plumbing of psychological depth. A block away, young Ben Platt offered a powerful example of how a talented acting singer can create a believable character through speech and song in a musical. Platt’s performance in Dear Evan Hansen (Book, Steven Levenson; Music and lyrics, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul), has made him a star but Platt never breaks character, never acknowledges the audience. Ben Platt convincingly becomes Evan Hansen in both dialogue and song. Dear Evan Hansen is a post-Sondheim musical that demands intense acting as well as singing; Hello, Dolly! demands personality.

I wished I was blessed with the talent of poetry, of coaxing words into a sonata of the soul where I might sing my pain, my gratitude, my meager, little happiness, into the echoes of the universe and maybe, hopefully, people who feel the same might find this song and find comfort in it and, for an inch of a moment, we'd be together; a virtual community beyond tech platforms, across space and time. But I'm no poet.

since the accident. I don’t know what her problem was. After all, I was a “hero.” At least the newspaper said so. “Hey, Alex,” she said, twirling her ponytail with her pencil. “Oh, hi,” I stammered, looking down at my burger. “You guys sounded really great in the talent show. I didn’t know you could sing like that.” “Uhh, thanks. It must be all the practice I get with my karaoke machine.” Oh God, did I just tell her I sing karaoke? Definitely not playing it cool, I thought to myself. TJ butted in, “Yeah, Small Fry was ok, but I really carried the show with my awesome guitar solo.” He smiled proudly. “Shut up, TJ,” I said, tossing a fry at him, which hit him between the eyes. “Hey, watch it, Baker. Just because you’re a ‘hero’ doesn’t mean I won’t pummel you.” “Yeah, right,” I said, smiling. Emily laughed. “Maybe we could come over during Christmas break and check out your karaoke machine. Right, Danielle?” Danielle rolled her eyes and sighed. “Yeah, whatever.” I gulped. “Uhhh…yeah…that sounds great.” “Ok, give me your hand,” she said. “My hand,” I asked, surprised. “Yep,” she said, grabbing my wrist and opening my palm. “Here’s my number,” she said, writing the numbers 585-2281 in gold glitter pen on my palm.” I will never wash my hand again, I thought to myself. “Text me over break, ok?” she said, smiling brightly. “Yeah, sure,” I nodded, as she walked away giggling with Danielle. “Merry Christmas to me!” I whispered to TJ and Simon. “Yeah, there’s just one problem, Dufus,” TJ said. “Oh yeah, what’s that, TJ? That she didn’t give you her number?” I asked. “No, Dork. How are you going to text her if you don’t have a cell phone?” He smiled. “Oh, right,” I said, slumping down in my seat. “That could be a problem.” “You could just call her on your home phone,” Simon suggested, wiping his nose with a napkin. “Yeah, sure,” TJ chuckled. “Hi Emily, this is Alex Baker calling from the year 1984.” He held his pencil to his ear like a phone.  “Would you like to come over to play Atari? Then maybe we can solve my Rubik’s Cube while we break dance ….and listen to New Kids on the Block.” He was cracking himself up and turning bright red. “Maybe I’ll type you a love letter on my typewriter. It’s so much cooler than texting.” “Shut up, TJ,” I said, smiling. “I’m starting to remember why I didn’t like you much at the beginning of the year.” “Lighten up, Baker. I’m just bustin’ your chops. Christmas is coming. Maybe Santa will feel sorry for your dorky butt and bring you a cell phone.” Chapter 2 ePhone Denied When I got home from school that day, it was the perfect time to launch my cell phone campaign. Mom was in full Christmas mode. The house smelled like gingerbread. She had put up the tree and there were boxes of ornaments and decorations on the floor. I stepped over a wreath and walked into the kitchen. She was baking sugar cookies and dancing around the kitchen to Jingle Bell Rock with my little brother Dylan. My mom twirled Dylan around and smiled. She was wearing the Grinch apron that we had given her last Christmas. Dylan was wearing a Santa hat, a fake beard, and of course- his Batman cape. Batman Claus. “Hey Honey. How was school?” she asked, giving Dylan one more spin. “It was pretty good. We won second place in the talent show.” I held up the candy cane shaped award that Ms. Riley had given us. “Great job! You and TJ deserved it. You practiced hard and it payed off.” “Yeah, I guess so,” I said, grabbing a snicker-doodle off the counter. “And now it’s Christmas break! I bet your excited.” She took a tray of cookies out of the oven and placed

Madonna is my example of a hardworking diva. Her music is unique. When she sings, she does that with her whole being; when she dances, she does that with her whole self. Her daedal talents in music – a fact I attribute to recondite proclivities – attain greater heights each passing day, and have placed her among the greatest singers ever.

Bob Marley gave Reggae music new meaning. The super-talented Jamaican singer did not just sing; he chanted. Highly spiritual, his music has cadences of subterranean intrigues wholesome for the human psyche. He loved mankind and stood for the oppressed. Bob has been dead now for many years, but his good music lives right on.

Calling is where our talents and burdens collide. Our talents are our birthright gifts, the gifts that make our hearts sing, come alive. Our burdens are found in our stories, in what breaks our hearts. God was inviting me to use the gifts that made me come alive, to redeem the things that broke my heart.