You Are My Song/Eli's Heart
Writing You Are My
Song was a very different experience from writing Eli's Heart. Eli
Levin's story is full of drama because of the two challenges he has faced from
birth: a prodigious talent and a frightening congenital heart condition. I
recently described Jamie Logan, the young tenor in You Are My Song,
to one of my readers as “an ordinary guy with an extraordinary talent.” Jamie
has an unusually beautiful singing voice and excellent musical instincts, and
he works hard to develop his talent.
It’s interesting to
compare Jamie to Eli Levin. Because Eli was born with a prodigious musical
gift, it’s a given that he will be a professional musician. The only question
for Eli is how he will use his remarkable skill as a pianist: as a virtuoso,
performing solo recitals and orchestral appearances? That is the manner in
which most pianists endowed in this way spend their lives.
Eli chooses instead to
work with other musicians, as an accompanist or collaborator. The early part of
the book includes descriptions of his battles with his mother over this choice.
Because of who Eli is, with these dual challenges there is of necessity the
sense of a fairy tale in his story. He’s different from most of us. He’s very
different from most of us. He was performing professionally as a soloist at the
age of twelve. When he is twenty-four, he’s completed his master of music
degree and has embarked on a busy career as a collaborative artist that takes
him all over the world.
Jamie, on the other hand,
starts his adult life with an associates’ degree in business and an early
marriage that is in trouble. In high school he had enjoyed singing, and like
most of us, sang in the school choirs and the high school musicals. Unlike Eli,
Jamie has actually heard very little classical music until a voice teacher
plays him a recording of a tenor singing a particularly beautiful and moving
aria. Jamie is excited by what he hears to the point of returning to college at
the age of twenty-three and eventually attempting a career in opera.
Many professional opera
singers don’t begin serious study until high school or even college, as opposed
to instrumentalists who sometimes demonstrate talent and even genius at a very
young age, as early as three or four. Serious singing requires muscular and
mental development that doesn’t begin to take place until the mid-teens for
most men, and the early to mid-teens for women.
One difference between
Jamie and Eli, it seems to me – and I know them better than anyone does – is
how they perceive their talent. Eli has the ability to play anything to near
perfection the first time he reads through it. Yet he practices hours on end,
striving for absolute perfection. He has a very revealing moment in the book
when talking with his psychiatrist (I think I did him a great service by
putting Pete in his life):
Eli was aware of how quiet
it was in the room. They were high enough above the street so that traffic
noise wasn’t audible.
“You know something, Pete?
Nobody ever asked me if I liked playing the piano. It came easily to me, and I
could sight read anything, so everybody figured that’s what I should do. What
else was I going to do?”
Eli thought a minute. “I
love music, Pete. I don’t mean to say that I don’t like playing piano, because
really, I do. I’m hard on myself sometimes because I want it to be perfect. But
when I’m working with another musician, it can be exciting to feel what’s
happening.”
Jamie has come much later to music and the realization he might have a career as a
performer. But he battles self-doubts, partly created by the early marriage
that ended badly after only two years. More than once these doubts surface as
Jamie works hard to become as good a performer as he possibly can. At one point
his second wife asks him:
“What do you want, Jamie?
I mean what do you see as the fulfillment of your dream?” She was surprised she
had never asked him this. She knew he wanted to sing. She wasn’t really sure
what would make him feel he’d “made it.”
He said without
hesitating, “Singing Don José at the Met.” He looked a little troubled. “It may
never happen. But I guess it’s good to have a goal, and that’s mine.”
Eli's Heart and You
Are My Song are both available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle. They are good
stories. I have a friend who says everyone has a story, and I believe she is
correct. It's been absorbing, challenging and rewarding to follow Eli's and
Jamie's paths.
Covers designed by Tristan Flanagan
