Last Friday we went to a local karaoke bar. Although I like singing, it was that first time for me in an actual karaoke place with strangers watching the "performance". What do you do to feel more at ease under this kind of pressure? Reassure yourself that you are the best, repeat positive thinking mantras, take deep breaths? All of these may help but this time I went for the good old traditional confidence-maker: drink everything near you that seems to contain alcohol. It worked for me and the other folks in the place didn't take their courage from yoga breathing either. (or used it simultaneously with the boozing technique, which is cheating, anyway) One of my chosen songs was 'Always look on the bright side of life' from the M.P. film 'Life of Brian'. It went pretty well and it was a relief to find that the whistling is included on the backing track. I even tried to imitate Eric Idle's thick British accent, which surprisingly made me feel more secure. I must have felt that if I sing with an accent the people will overlook my own random variations of the tune. So, here is the song with subtitles in case you wanna have a go at it too. (vocals included)
The monologue at the end isn't included in the video but you can find a complementary script here.
If you are not a native speaker of English you may find these language notes useful.
As the night progressed, the shows got stronger and stronger and the place got higher and higher. Is it normal to feel that the songs in the karaoke are getting longer after midnight? That was my feeling - things slowed down a lot but in a good way. In this pleasantly numb state, I somehow received a little surprise: tattoos on both my arms drawn with a ball-point pen. The next day it took quite a bit of watching and scraping to get rid of them. I quite liked the rabbit, actually. If that is what it was meant to be. Does anybody have any ideas about the identity of the secret artist?
left arm art
right arm art
