Jed Wolf

Using an upcoming singing audition to probe soul-level wounds for signs of healing seemed a good idea. How else does one inspect the condition of lifelong scars? What if the thin skin grown while attending to other things conceals festering welts and boils?

I’ve historically been drawn to exposing my vulnerabilities and rarely bite my tongue. I write with unedited abandon, thrust my neuroses at audiences and remain attuned to the whispers of passers-by from the front porch of my anxiously landscaped yard, yet hearing others say I’m fucked, fine or fabulous has little effect on my daily urge to tango with terror.

Now that the latest major undertakings around here are completed, like a true addict, the boundless gratitude I should feel daily (I’m told) for life here in paradise is unnerving, so I’ve returned to torturing myself for not sounding relaxed while singing. As a result, the psychoanalyst in me has returned to prescribing unending bed rest and other darkly ungrateful obsessions.

Despite what the broader universe is going through, after listening to practice recordings from yesterday, I’m too busy loathing my every aspect to care. If the best I can do is imagine this world a blander place without insecure, compulsive charlatans like me to pit our fragile egos against, it’s time to break out the big guns.

Dear God,

For at least once in my life, please make me someone who rather than imagining, actually experiences an actual twinge of actual confidence. (In the meantime, I’d settle for a convincing camouflage of the whine of adolescent vulnerability that haunts my insecure diaphragm.) I beg you. Make my voice masculine, relaxed, sonorous, worldly and wise and while you’re at it, release the chokehold on my neck and shoulders, hide the bulging arteries in my neck and help my eyes bug out less.

Grazie