Sing, Sink or Swim

A capella is to choral singing as skinny dipping is to swimming. Vulnerable, exhilarating and prone to revelations.               

                                                                                                                               -Christina Davis

I sing in a choir, and sometimes that choir sings “a cappella” – i.e. without accompaniment.  That’s okay with me, because literally I will happily sing absolutely anything my choral conductor hands me to sing.  Singing “a cappella” is more of a challenge than singing with accompaniment, but I’m always game for a vocal challenge.

However comparing singing “a cappella” to skinny dipping does not exactly entice me to try either. I’ve never exactly been a big fan of vulnerability, although I will admit that both activities might be prone to revelations. Like the revelation that it is harder to stay on key if singing without a musical net, or the revelation that when you get out of the water you will be sopping wet AND naked.

There are two things about skinny dipping that I have a problem with – the skinny and the dipping. I gave up swimming after having almost drowned twice – once in a local swimming pool and once in the raging rapids of the Youghigheny River. You don’t have to almost drown me more than twice for me to get the hint that maybe I’d be better off staying out of the water.

For the record, I eschew public nudity, in or out of the water.  Honestly, I am rarely totally naked even in my own house.  What can I say?  I get cold.  Heck, for years, I wouldn't even wear shorts in public, much less appear naked.  Yes, almost everywhere I go I am fully clothed.

Once when I was auditioning for a show for a theater company located in the East End of Pittsburgh which was known primarily for its children’s shows, one of the questions on the audition form was “Would you appear nude on stage?”  What went through my head was, “Are you totally insane?  With these thighs?”  What I considered writing in response was “Not as long as my father is alive.”  What I finally, actually, wrote was, “No.”

Ironically, Nightswimming, my very favorite song by R.E.M (my very favorite band), is ostensibly about skinny dipping: 

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night
I'm not sure all these people understand
It's not like years ago,
The fear of getting caught,
Of recklessness and water
They cannot see me naked
These things, they go away,
Replaced by everyday.

The way I see it Nightswimming is about skinny dipping the way A River Runs Through It is about fly fishing.  It is, but it is about so much more than that.  It is metaphorically about being surer in your own skin and not being afraid to be yourself in the world.

Nightswimming has been in my head and on my lips ever since I thought about using it in the blog. This means that I would never be caught dead skinny dipping but you might very well find me singing “a cappella” about skinny dipping.