Where Everybody Knows Your Name

It's true, at times we all want to go where everybody knows our name. In a curious way this phrase surfaced in my morning involvement in a choral presentation with me and 300 of my closest friends.

A few weeks ago I discovered that Gary Portnoy, the singer/songwriter of the Cheers theme also wrote and performed the theme to Punky Brewster. I love the Cheers theme and upon discovering this I recognized the stylistic similarities of the two theme songs I'd grown up hearing. Follow the links to listen to each one:

Cheers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KtAgAMzaeg

Punky Brewster:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q5ZnTM4VGM

I posed this factoid question to some friends of mind in the massive choir I participate in: What do Cheers and Punky Brewster have in common? I don't usually get a quick response from anyone that I quiz in this manner, but this morning my friend Chris proved that he'd done his homework on Mr. Portnoy and thus knew the answer to my question. "Where everybody knows your name," began echoing in my head as the subject of Cheers was mentioned for a brief moment. Little did I know how that would correlate to my life minutes later.
We had a song to sing from memory this morning for choir in a weekly broadcast that I participate in that goes out to thousands of radio and television networks. 

It was one that I felt confident in memorizing, I knew I knew most of it already. I figured I’d be able to sing it through looking at the music one more time and I’d be able to have it down ready for the broadcast. Well, this morning we didn’t ever sing through the whole song with our music before the broadcast run through (another word for a fast-and-furious dress rehearsal). That isn’t uncommon for the music that we know well in the choir; however, it was evident as we did our run through that ‘we’ as a choir did not know this song very well. At all. All of the men got their initial verse without problem, but once it hit the combined 3rd verse nobody knew the words and there was a noticeable change in volume and discernable phrases in all of the men’s section. No big deal right? It was just the "dress rehearsal". I knew I needed to polish that verse anyway and I went right to work as we finished our run through. As our director gave us notes from the run through, I found out something that all choir members want to know, “Does our beloved choir director really know my name?”. We've all wondered this at one point. It's a legitimate question. There are so many people in the choir and we rarely have social time outside of the quickly paced, planned-to-the-second rehearsals. Plus, we never ever hear our names called out unless it is on some sort of agenda recognizing someone for something (ie: joining or leaving the choir, saying the opening prayer, etc...) Our director also always threatens to use our individual names when we underperform in some way, but never, or I should say very very rarely does. It makes you think that he doesn't because there really is too many people's names to remember. Well, for me, I discovered the answer is yes. I guess I knew this already since I'd had a brief chat with him on a choir tour and he asked about my sister. He didn't say my name at all, however it was certainly implied that he knew it since he knew her name, first and last. This morning he called out to the tenor section, and while looking at me and the first tenor to my right said, “We need to memorize our music better. I going to name names... Brother Snarr and Brother Searle. You are right on camera during that 3rd verse and anyone can tell that neither of you knew the words you were supposed to be singing.” He went on for a minute longer about memorization, but the realization of what had just happened caused for me that super uncomfortable feeling that you get throughout your whole body when you’re called out in front of your peers. Oh boy. Yeah, I could take it in stride and not take offense, but holy cow, that feeling was so potent; hearing your name in that way from that one person in front of choir and arriving guests. It is something that I don’t want to have to experience again. Of course I could laugh in many ways, so many of the men in the choir nearly wet themselves thinking they were just as guilty as Searle and myself. I knew that was the case. Nobody knew that verse and it was obvious listening in the choir loft, we were just the ones that got caught red handed. Needless to say we got plenty of praise from the rest of the men in the choir for taking the fall for the team. So yes, it's nice to be known by name. Most of the time.

By the way, the broadcast went just fine, everyone sharpened their memory on this fuzzy 3rd verse. I could see with my peripheral vision the red light from the side balcony camera as it turned on in that very same moment I was caught without words during the run through. It caught my left side, and a subtle wink from my left eye. I knew each word and am likely to not forget them soon.

P.S. I wasn't kidding about the wink. Here a short clip of it captured at :03. It's quick and subtle, but it is there and totally on purpose.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ij356k3a3sv3vb1/1018131233.mp4