VANCOUVER – Caroline sings and the entire theatre goes silent. Not a word, not a whisper, not a breath. She sings like an acrobat or a hang-glider, her voice ascending and descending, riding the line between lift and free fall. She sings and it seems that she is weightless. She stands under the hot stage lights and she levitates for our entertainment. She awakens something primal. The audience breaks its vow of silence. They hoot and holler and even sing. They do their best Caroline Polachek impression.
But they are not Caroline.
Caroline sings of Smoke and Blood and Butter, of a genre she calls “scorny” (that is, scary + horny) and always always always she sounds exactly like herself. I wonder, as she sings, if she has ever tried to sound like anybody but Caroline. What a sad day that would be! But today is not that day. She sings for over an hour and her voice never wavers, never falters, never does anything but exactly what she intends. It lifts and falls and lifts again, higher and higher, and still she seems weightless. (Has anyone ever seemed so weightless?) And the audience rewards her for her efforts. They make little hearts with their hands. They profess their undying love for her and her voice. And Caroline smiles and wraps her arms around her shoulders in a suggested embrace.
Shortly before she walks off stage, she performs Caroline Shut Up. And I think, if I could sing like Caroline I would never shut up. I would sing until I was blue in the face, until I was dead and buried, until I was face-to-face with a chorus of angels. And I would put them all to shame.
But I cannot sing like that, will never sing like that. And so my only hope is that Caroline Polachek keeps singing.
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