In another lifetime, I was a singer in an electronic/postpunk/noise/pop band. Not what most would consider a ‘good’ singer, I’m pretty pitchy - my role models were folks like Edward Ka-Spel, Ian Curtis, Gary Numan, David Byrne. The band broke up, as bands do, in the late 90s, after a ten-year run, and long after turning over singing duties to a more talented vocalist. I moved to a different stage in my life, got a degree, moved to the country, built a house, IT job, married the keyboard/guitar player.
Maybe six or so years ago, My wife and I started learning and playing favorite songs for fun. I started singing again. For some reason, I started sounding pretty good to myself, better than in the band days, singing songs I would not have thought I could pull off. Sounding more like I always sounded when I would sing in dreams. Songs by Bowie, John Grant, Gordon Lightfoot, Chris Isaak. And Wichita Lineman, which I hadn’t really thought much of either way before, but learning and singing Wicked Game by Chris Isaak, I learned I could actually kind of sing with a country twinge, even though I have never been much of a country fan. Excepting the greats, of course, Dolly, Willie, Hank.
So we learned Wichita Lineman, and I was really enjoying it, especially the part where I could put a bit of a yelp between “never” and “stand the strain.” Then, about eighteen months ago, I was singing “Sigourney Weaver” by John Grant, and in the middle of the song, my soft palate just… stopped working. Totally nasal sounding. Weird. I just kind of played it off as a goof, as I would sometimes do, to not alarm my loving guitar player. My voice recovered after a half hour.
A couple of weeks later, at a work picnic, I was talking to someone and it happened again, I just lost the ability to control my mouth muscles and form words. Totally freaked out, I excused myself and got the hell home. Told my wife the next morning, and, after talking to a nurse relative, then my GP, made an appointment with a neurologist. Sure enough, as the internet clues had led me to believe, I had a somewhat rare neurological disorder, Myasthenia Gravis. Causes voluntary muscles to easily fatigue and stop working. No cure, just some mitigation of the symptoms via continuous tweaking of drugs and dosages. Still about a thousand times less horrible than other autoimmune diseases like MS and Rheumatoid Arthritis, though.
Of all the indignities the symptoms cause, the only thing that really broke my heart is that I can’t really sing anymore. Sometimes I can make it through “Man Who Sold the World” or “Heaven” by Talking Heads, but I’m not even going to try Wichita Lineman again. I still love the song, but it’s tough to hear. At least I nailed it for a few months, that was pretty sweet.
So that’s my Wichita Lineman story.
