Singing on the Brain

Ever since it became widely known that this one fellow up in Wisconsin claimed to get a better yield from his corn crop by singing to it, that is, singing to his acreage as he passed over it in his tractor, nothing has been the same around here.

It wasn’t mentioned what it was he sang, nor now long he sang, nor how frequently. I think that would have helped amateur gardeners a lot.

The rest of us were left to guess where he was coming from stylistically, whether he accompanied himself with a harmonica or guitar or drum or simply clapped rhythmically in the nature of gospel singers, if karaoke was involved, if he dressed for the occasion in top hat and tails or other Broadway attire.

The story only said that he sang to his crops.

This leaves the back yard gardener uncertain how best to proceed.

I think I could identify corn well enough in its full-grown state in the fields along the highway, and distinguish it from wheat, soybeans, milo and the other crops here in the breadbasket of the nation, but that’s about it.

I can’t say that I know the length of the growing season of corn, what it is exactly that you plant when you are planting corn, what it looks like when a shoot of corn first pops it head out of the ground.

I couldn’t tell you upon seeing a crop of corn at a certain height in, say, July if it was ahead of the curve or behind it and if the Farmer Singing Effect had any bearing on that aheadedness or behindness.

But of all the things that I’d be interested in knowing, and don't, it’s whether or not this fellow was a good singer, and if that had any impact on the outcome.

A key piece of data that is missing is whether some of his crop failed or some corner of his fields wilted over and died due to his picking the wrong key or the wrong tempo or not breathing deeply from the diaphragm as singers are advised to do.

There’s a general lack of scientific rigor altogether in this account, which leaves the rest of us improvising our way through.

It’s been a rough few seasons for the garden. The year always starts hopefully, with a trip back from the garden center in the station wagon laden with every variety of vegetables, and within each of those vegetables, every variety of breed.

“This is going to be the year that the curse is broken,” you might picture me saying in your mind. “This is the year that I really knock it out of the park.”

Well, as any student of the Greek tragedies will tell you, this is exactly the type of thing that the hero typically says near the beginning of the play, akin to a bowling pin somehow or other setting itself up at the far end of the alley and inviting Fate to roll a few frames.

I suppose that’s why the great Greek tragedies have endured for so long; they give us lessons that we can apply in so many other areas of our life.

It’s surprising to me that Aeschylus or Euripides or any of these other fellows of the day, who must have been beside themselves churning out next week’s offering to the equivalent of a tough Broadway crowd, never lighted on vegetable gardening as a fit subject for tragedy.

It has all the ingredients: the pride before the fall, the unknowing and trusting protagonist, the awful unraveling of Fate as it takes its inevitable path to complete ruin (here the playwright would have a lot to work with starting with Aphid Infestation and ending with Zucchini Rot), but which in any event leaves your garden plot at the end of the season looking rather like a landscape from a science fiction movie set sometime in the future and meant to warn us that we must treat our Mother Earth with respect, otherwise it will end up looking like this.

With that being the back story, as these theater fellows would call it, perhaps you don’t wonder that one early morning in the first weeks of spring, you could find me at the side of my tilled and planted garden clearing my throat.

My friends say I have a pleasant baritone, but it took me a while to work up to my task. After all, to someone not knowing the science behind it I would simply look like some sort of idiot bellowing out songs to a dug-up plot of ground if I wasn't careful. 

People just can’t take the time these days to keep up with science, can they?

I started by whistling a few bars of Yankee Doodle Dandy and other lively ditties as I strolled by the spot of a morning or evening, perhaps putting a little march into my steps as I did so, a little pizzazz, as though I were on stage, one of two dozen hoofers under the limelight in the big opening number, marching in formation and whistling in unison.

Do I make an open friendly gesture with my arms as though inviting audience members to join in, ‘come on. everybody now!’

Maybe. Maybe.

Well, that didn’t seem to have much effect. The arugula and the carrots and the chives and the green beans more or less just sat there in their state of suspended animation that they had assumed over the previous half dozen seasons.

Well, whistling isn’t singing, is it?

So one morning I stood there at the edge of the garden humming in a low tone in a soulful manner looking rather I imagine like an old man who has forgotten what it was that he meant to do after wandering out this far in the back yard but not wanting to waste the trip and so he hums a melancholy song, when I said to myself, ‘oh, what the hell, in for a penny in for a pound,’ and placing my hand over my heart, just cut loose:

Oh, Danny boy,

The pipes, the pipes are calling

From glen to glen,

And down the mountain side

The summer's gone,

And all the roses falling

'Tis you, 'tis you

Must go and I must bide.

I sauntered among the rows of seedlings and plantings like one of those theater fellows who comes down off the stage and strolls through the aisles, involving everyone. A bit shy at first, but towards the end really putting it across, with my arms flung open wide and giving it everything I had.

As the sound of my voice faded away an unnatural silence seemed to fall, so I went right in to a version of Tonight, Tonight from West Side Story and Try to Remember from The Fantasticks.

I rounded off what might be called the Broadway segment of my act with a rousing rendition of Hello Dolly! Belting it out, if I do say so.

My voice fully warmed up now, I thanked them all for coming and said that for their listening pleasure I’d now like to give them my version of Yesterday.

I like to mix ‘em up in these performances, touching on the different emotions, something happy followed immediately by something melancholy. Well, that’s how life is, isn’t it?

I went up-tempo with my next selection, launching right into Jumpin’ Jack Flash, really nailing Mick Jagger’s growl. Before the last note had faded I was into School’s Out and I’m Eighteen by Alice Cooper. No one ever said I was afraid to challenge an audience!

The act just grew from there.

Much depends on how I’m feeling that morning. I might take the crowd through a history of the blues, starting with field shouts and New Orleans marches, and showing with my voice alone how the blues merged into jazz.

I could be in more of a crooning Sinatra mood, say, Strangers in the Night, or tap into the big band side of my nature, say Bobby Darin doing Mac the Knife. One evening as I wrapped that one up with especially verve – “Look out, old Macky’s back!” – I had the thought that I knew I must be moving them. They’re hearts aren’t made of stone after all.

Well, I keep at it.

Steady as she goes is everything in science, and I’m nothing if not persistent. For instance, you wouldn’t expect me to be much of a rapper, and maybe I’m not, but by golly, I give it all I’ve got.

You may picture me, if you wish, as a grown man in late middle age, standing alone in the back yard at all times of day or night, matinee and evening performances both, rain or shine, pouring my heart out on the garden stage, game to the end, honing my craft and tightening up my act by the day.

The only man in the neighborhood, perhaps the city, county, state, or universe, tapped in enough to the latest thinking in the relationship between musical performance and agronomy to put current best practices into action.

I can’t wait to see if all this effort shows any success at harvest time. It’s not exactly clear if my singing is doing any good but what’s the point of quitting now? Besides, even if doesn’t pay off in the garden, I’ve now got a hell of a lounge act.