Stool pigeon

On being lonely in a crowd

Singing at the Royal Albert Hall (middle bottom)- I know in my very soul that this is the holiest I will ever look.

The music pairing this week is Dust and Shadow from Shielding Songs.

I have sung in choirs since I was 7 years old. One of the great privations of the Pandemic and resultant shielding was the loss of the profound pleasure of singing in a group. So I decide that it’s time to be brave, to get back out into the world no matter how challenging that is. I join a pop choir and hope that I might meet some new friends there. I feel achingly, desperately shy but I take a deep breath and walk through the door. As always with these things, it feels like everyone already knows each other. The room is alive with laughter and chat. I scan the room and my heart sinks. The choir holds rehearsals in a primary school and the chairs are those tiny plastic formed ones. There is absolutely no way that I will be able to get in or out of one. I gulp back tears and head over to the organiser to ask if they have any adult size chairs. She looks quizzical and then says ‘no one has ever asked us that before…umm..no… I don’t think so. Erm…sorry…can I ask why?’ I swallow and tell her I have mobility problems. She gets distracted and moves on to another person. I see a piano stool in the corner. I can’t pick the stool up and carry so I drag it across the room. It makes an appalling, grating howl as its legs scrape across the gymnasium floor (think Will Smith in the Men in Black table scene) and there is an abrupt lull in the thrum of chatter as people turn to stare and giggle. A few roll their eyes and no one offers to help.

Deathmatch- infant school chair v piano stool

I sit alone at the back of the room, perched almost twice as high as anyone else. As the rehearsal continues people glance over occasionally. I can see that they are wondering what the hell I’m doing- it looks so attention seeking, like I’ve decided that the little chairs aren’t good enough for me. In the break I walk down to the front, take a deep breath and say ‘Excuse me, I have an ingoing illness that means I can’t sit on the chairs. Erm, I am, as a result, sitting on the piano stool by myself at the back.’ They wait for me to continue. ‘Well, it’s quite lonely back there so I’d be really grateful if someone would be kind enough to come and sit with me.’ There is a pause. Some of the women have already started chatting as I have struggled through my monologue, a couple more smile kindly before they turn back and resume chatting. But not one person comes with me. I am mortified and the sense of defeat is overwhelming. I do the walk of shame, back to my solitary piano stool. I am trying to gulp down tears but it feels like I have something lodged in my throat, which I suppose I do. It’s a toxic mix of loneliness, jealousy, fear, shame and exhaustion. I struggle through the rest of the rehearsal and slump home.

I am determined not to give up though – being able to join the choir has become talismanic. It represents normalcy, fun, being well enough to have a hobby, the possibility of new friends. So the next week I set my shoulders back, take a deep breath and try again. I am very much hoping that someone, either one of the organisers or an observant choir member, will have carried the piano stool over for me, but it remains firmly in the corner of the room. So I go through the painful act of dragging. Again no one helps and I sit alone at the back once more. A couple of people stop and ask why I am sitting on a piano stool. “Because I’m fucking disabled, crippled, impaired, immobilised, damaged, maimed, ruined” I want to scream. ‘Because my spine and ribs and hips are fusing together and yes, it’s as painful and terrifying as it sounds.” But I do what I always do and make a self-effacing joke and mumble through the reason. When I get home I realise that I have found the perfect metaphor for chronic illness- you basically exist on the piano stool and it’s isolating, embarrassing and separating – it is its own desert island. I limp through the rehearsal, both physically and metaphorically, and never go back.

As ever, thanks for reading and if you’re in pain every day too, then I am sending the gentlest of hugs. It’s harder than most people can imagine, but I know how tough it is.

Because I am Annie-coded I would love to end on a ray of sunshine, which is that my music is being performed at the incredible Southbank Centre as part of BAFTA’s celebration of award-winning games music in January. There may also be a planned UK tour, but if I tell you about it I will have to kill you. Now all together, ‘the sun’ll come ouuuutttt, tomorrow…”.