Blog swapping!!

I have been asked by my bloggy friend Jennifer over at quirky pickings to do a little blog swap, and to make it even more fun she asked me to pose the question for her to answer!

Stay tuned to read what she had to say and come and visit me HERE to get find out how I would finish this phrase “If you really knew me you would know……” (P.S. it does include a picture of me and you know how very rare that is lol)

Enjoy my friend Jennifer…..

Are you inspired by anyone that you would be embarrassed to admit?

i didn't have an immediate answer to this question because i don't believe a person should be afraid to confess to inspiration, however it is achieved. so it took me a long time to answer this. the question’d been sitting in my inbox, then my read folder for months. literally. i'd asked for it in august. and been mulling over the answer ever since.

i decided this morning to tackle it. and so, my thinking cap took the form of a google search: embarrassing inspirations. i checked the image results. i saw pictures of women with their eyes covered with black rectangles, as though their vision had been censored. of monkeys with their teeth bared and their hands across their faces. of french mastiffs (best dogs ever, by the way) with their upper lips caught on their bottom teeth and their eyes fierce. of rats and rings and seth rogen.

and for some reason, i thought of bette midler.

and remembered all those times when, as a child or adolescent, i would go off by myself and sing her version of the rose.

or be sitting in class (or detention) writing down the lyrics and drawing a cheesy picture of a rose to go with it. because i knew how to do the homework already, knew i'd ace the test regardless of whether i completed the assignment, and my teachers’ busy work bored me. because the lyrics:

when the night has been too lonely

and the road has been too long

and you think that love is only

for the lucky and the strong

just remember ...

these gave me solace when my day had been unbearable. and more often than not, it had been.

we had two versions of this song in my house. one by her. and one by harry belafonte. hers is infinitely better.

i love this song.

singing it is one of the few things i do well.

not that i can sing as well as i did twenty years ago. i smoked too many cigarettes between now and then, and my range is significantly less because of it. but even still, i can sing it sufficiently.

i used to sing it on the bus on the way to and from school.

quietly. or so i thought.

someone heard me once. and, of course, his reaction wasn't kind. neither were those of others who clued in on his mockery of me.

i rarely sing in front of people. probably because of that. i hadn't realized until just now, though, that that's why this is. i'd been in choir for one year in high school. i do the occasional karaoke with friends. that's it.

anyway. i love this woman's voice. i love her spunk. i used to dream that i could be a little bit like her.

but ultimately, it wasn't her so much as the song that inspired. the lyrics. the hope in them. it kept me believing in the future when i couldn't see much of one at all.