I was recently talking with my friend J about karaoke. “When I sing karaoke, it’s a feeling of glory that I’m ultimately going for,” I told her.
You know, the feeling you get when you’re belting out the chorus of Arcade Fire’s “Intervention” and all your friends come in with falsetto backup at just the right moment. Or when a dude puts Britney Spears’ “Oops I Did it Again” in the karaoke queue as a joke but there’s no one to sing it, so he says, “OK, who’s got this one?” and you grab the mic and YES, you do know all the words. AND the dance moves. Or when you sing The Strokes “Heart In A Cage” at a karaoke bar and the MOMENT you start singing, two scantily clad women start gyrating on your legs because you are instantly a rock star.
Glory.
All of those moments happened to me, save the last one, which happened to my husband. But I haven’t felt a lot of glory in my life lately. Largely this is due to the combined socially isolating forces of covid and parenthood. I also haven’t done karaoke in a long time. And even though I do LOTS of glorious dance moves and singing in my own home, glory is a feeling best shared. Perhaps glory only truly exists when it can be honored within the presence of others…
Martial arts is also a place where I have felt glory in my life. (Boy, was that a lightning-quick if rocky topic transition!) Landing a new move, getting someone in the head with a sweet kick, surprising myself with a thought-free but perfect retaliation to my partner’s strike. Yes, glory is a sweet feeling of hard work paying off with a beautiful success.
I’ve really been wanting to post the picture below for a while, and I chose today’s topic of glory with the photo in mind. It’s me and three of my old kung fu buddies after a tournament. The four of us had been practicing our point sparring quite intensely at the time, and our hard work was rewarded with the huge pile of trophies we won at the tournament. Our teacher laughed at how many and how big they were when we brought them back to our school.
Yes, this was a moment of glory…but even more, it was a moment of shared joy with my friends. I had so much fun that day– there were loud musical forms presentations, teenage boys spinning sticks real fast, a table where you could buy big ol’ knives, and if I remember correctly, there was Hawiian plate lunch to eat.
It was really tasty.
So in the spirit of looking for glory anew in my life, I take a moment to note a glory of the past:
My tournament career is over, but I’ll be doing karaoke again very soon. I’ll let you know what glory I find there.
Michelle Folk Johnson 