The Worst Chorus in Worcester
I didn’t sleep on the plane. Not more than a few minutes, total. This didn’t come as a huge surprise. I had hoped that maybe, since it was the end of a long day, at the close of an exhausting week of preparing to leave the country, that my body and brain would co-conspire to shut down for a few hours. Log out, shut down, restart.
Instead, I just closed my eyes and rested, eventually trying my trick of counting through the US Presidents from Washington, Adams, Jefferson…and when that didn’t work its magic, counting them backwards. About three hours before the plane landed at Heathrow (where my fellow choir members and I could disembark and join up with the rest of our group) I decided it was morning. I abandoned the pretense of sleep and watched All About Eve until breakfast arrived.
Our first day in the UK was really only a late afternoon and evening. The majority of the choir from All Saints’ Beverly Hills converged just past baggage claim, then took a coach two-ish hours to the city of Worcester, where we’ll be for the week, singing first at Worcester Cathedral and then at Tewkesbury Abbey. On Monday morning, we’ll head across the island to Canterbury, where we’ll sing daily evensong services for another week. A pilgrimage, both spiritually and musically speaking.
Our coach arrived in Worcester and I got settled into my room by about 9pm Saturday night. A late dinner would need to be scrounged up, and I joined a small contingent of diners at Nando’s where, sleep-deprived as well as food-deprived, I cried when I couldn’t get my online order to go through on the third attempt. Dinner was eventually solved, apologies issued all around. I settled into bed that night well-fed, happy, and with few doubts about the heavy slumber that awaited me. The faint hum of the nightlife six stories below seemed to me an acceptable shade of white noise.
Then the singing started.
Ironically, the singers were not members of our sizable choir group. From somewhere below, the sound of a party’s worth of men sang together in a tuneless, careless shout. The tune I first made out was Billy Joel’s Uptown Girl.
Now is where I must emphasize my mental state. Desperately in need of sleep, in an unfamiliar place, in a room by myself, my anxiety about another sleepless night verged on panic. Late night is a characteristically irrational time to boot. As the singing continued (I believe Sweet Caroline was in the repertoire), my agitation rose. A fleeting moment of clarity reminded me that this singing was exuberant and joyful and even somewhat precious. The clarity did not, alas, bring me any closer to sleep.
I have always had a hard time tuning out human voices. As I’ve gotten older, the sound of someone merely awake in the house is often enough to keep me up if I’m not already asleep. It’s why I opted to room by myself on this trip. And now, an entire fraternity (or so it seemed) was unwittingly and unwelcomely serenading me with the greatest hits of the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s.
I put in earplugs. I found a fan in my room and set it on high. I put my iPad on the pillow beside me and blasted rain sounds. But still I could hear it. My brain had put my ears on alert, and my ears were following orders.
I got up one last time and looked at my phone. I scanned the app, wondering what bar or club the sound was coming from. But everything was closed. I finally found a place open until 2:00 am — still an hour off — and told myself that surely the singing would stop by then. Then I went back to lie in the dark until the noise died down.
When I woke from a heavy sleep the next morning, I was thrilled to find that it was after 10:00 am. This meant I’d slept for nearly eight badly-needed hours. I went down to breakfast expecting to hear a chorus of moans and groans about the high-volume revelers. But no one there had heard them; they were all staying on the other side of the hotel, where the biggest noise complaint was being awoken by seagulls and church bells in the morning. In the light of day, I realized that the lone bar open to 2:00 am was also on the opposite side of the building from my window.
As the day went on, I kept asking folks if they’d been kept awake by the singing. But no one had any idea what I was talking about — not even the women staying two floors directly below my room, who would theoretically have been even closer the ruckus. The next day, I kept asking, and heard a few people say that they’d heard someone else complaining about it, but no one could remember who. “Was it me?” I asked the second-hand hearer each time.
“I don’t think so? Maybe?”
So what was it? Was it the fluke of having been already half awake when the singing started up? Some trick of physics that brought the sound right to my windows? And what had the revel been? A rowdy karaoke bar, not listed on the map? A house party? A wedding reception?
The idea of ghosts was floated. After all, we’re in a very old place. A building just around the corner has painted in large letters on its front, “BUILT 1420.” A sign outside the Cathedral Close tells visitors it’s been a site of worship since the 7th century. I’ve never seen a ghost, but here in Worcester, the idea of being haunted by the sound of an ill-fated group of fraternity brothers doesn’t feel entirely out of the question.
On balance, I’m pleased that (so far as I know) I’m the only one who heard the singing. As I lay awake in bed, I’d dreaded waking to a group of red-eyed choristers ready to call the trip a wash on day one. This, too, had been one of those irrational late-night fears, but it was moot in any case if no one else had been kept awake. On top of that, there’s now the mystery of the whole thing, almost romantic, almost gothic, if you squint.
For weeks, I’ve been “picturing” this trip without really having a picture of it. I imagined a restful, spiritual, even solitary experience. I’d imagined something healing. And who knows — I may get all of that. But my imagination left something key out of the picture: I’m here with a club of some 30 musicians and friends. There will be reveling. And there will most definitely be singing. If we can make as joyful a noise as my ghost chorus, we’ll be doing something right. And if our singing wakes up even one soul, so much the better.
Reminder: You can watch THE MIRROR GAME online!
For a good chance at an up-to-date list of places where you can find a stream of the movie I wrote and co-produced, take a look at our website or JustWatch.
Yep; ghosts. Have you been over to the Ennis House, just south of Griffith Observatory?
I’m so glad you shared this and I’m SO glad you finally got some sleep! What a story for your first night. 😂