One of my favorite Christmas songs as a kid was ‘The Little Drummer Boy’. The simple, insistent drum rolls, the intoxicating cadence, and the sentimental tale of a little boy who had nothing to give but a song – a small piece of self-created art – spoke to me more than any angels on high or Santas en route.
On one Christmas, my parents gave me a toy audio recorder that recorded a couple minutes of sound, which you could then play back. I was too young for a proper stereo, and I don’t even think cassette tapes had come into mainstream play yet, so this little recorder was all we had. After all our gifts had been opened, and we were shifting into the lull of a post-Christmas morning moment, Mom suggested I try it out.
Suddenly I became shy and self-conscious: the budding stages of stage fright and a heart-bursting aversion to public speaking or unwanted attention reared its debilitating head. I hesitated and proffered excuses, saying I would do it later. Upon further pressure, I caved, but only on the condition that I could record a song alone without anyone watching.
Mom took me into her bedroom, where we sang ‘The Little Drummer Boy’ into the machine. Even then I was embarrassed and awkward about it – the pressure of performing, even if just for family, wreaked havoc on my nerves. Yet somehow I got through it, and my recording of the song was complete. We went back downstairs to play it for the rest of the family, and when it started I literally hid under a blanket – so suddenly bashful was I upon hearing my voice for the first time.
It’s a feeling I’ve never gotten over, and whenever I hear that song it is imbued with a slight bit of tension and apprehension, and a requisite sadness that accompanied more than a few childhood moments. An indication of what was to come, there was the voice that everyone heard, coming forth from some mechanized machine or computer – in someone else’s song, in a story, in a photograph – and the internal voice of a scared little boy, cowering from the world and begging for protection when none would be found. The safety of separation between the artist and the art – the perceived image of a man and the reality that will always pale beside it.
On that single Christmas morning, I learned more than I would from a whole year of school, and the knowledge would burden and terrify me.
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