implicit art

I rarely look up a song I’ve heard on television. Maybe on a late night show now and again (I think I found Corinne Bailey Ray thanks to a meta-late night show, Studio 60), or something in a movie, but on TV, not so much. But after the third time I had turned to my wife and said, “This is actually quite a beautiful song; and I think it may be the same artist as the last time I said this,” while watching Grey’s Anatomy, I caved and looked it up on the internet. I was shocked when I found Ingrid Michaelson’s name. Via Wikipedia:

Michaelson was born to artistic parents — composer Carl Michaelson and sculptor Elizabeth Egbert, who is the Executive Director & President of the Staten Island Museum. She took up piano at age 5. She had trained until age 7 at Manhattan’s Third Street Music School and continued for many more years at the Jewish Community Center of S.I.’s Dorothy Delson Kuhn Music Institute. There she met vocal coach Elizabeth McCullough, who worked with her through high school. She is a graduate of Staten Island Technical High School and Binghamton University, where she received a degree in theatre.

“Hey, Nathaniel,” you might ask, “didn’t you go to SI Tech?” Yes, I did, and Ingrid and I were pretty friendly for a short while. In fact, next time I’m at my folks’ place (though that may be a year or so in the making), I’ll go and dig up some photos of us (real photos? not on flickr? Yeh, we’re talking old school disposable camera photos circa 1994/1995).

This isn’t, of course, to take any ownership of Ingrid, her talents or her success. Probably more accurately, I knew the girl who would some day grow to be the woman pictured above (though she doesn’t look as if she has aged a bit. Of course, her lyrics reveal a maturity that says otherwise….). I’m sure neither one of us is the same person. But despite that recognition, I can’t help but feel a sense of – not pride, as that would indicate I played even a small role, which I did not – satisfaction.

I think this satisfaction comes from bearing witness. Ingrid has the same ‘humble beginnings to myspace find to nearly a rock star’ bio on her web site, in the NY Times, and various other places (that last link is a nice interview). But I know it not as a press release – it’s all true. I’ve been to her house on Van Duzer Street on Staten Island; I’ve met her parents; I’m pretty sure I was even in a school show with her (yes, I used to sing and play music in a past life…). Even back then (she was 14 or 15 when we met), Ingrid was generous, quirky, did her own thing, down to earth (see aforementioned interview), and had a similar style to the one she has now: I liked her immediately.

We haven’t been friends since I graduated in 1995, but I do remember running into her, must’ve been around 2001, when I was at NYU; I don’t remember much about the conversation (other than the standard, Staten Island / high school friend thing of poking a bit of fun at each other), but I recall that she was content doing a bit of acting, playing music, figuring things out. I looked her up a few years later (around the time Friendster was popular and I also was feeling minor nostalgia/homesickness living in Johannesburg, so looking up high school buddies), and found her web site and downloaded a few MP3s. Still doing her thing. I had meant to email her and say how I liked the tracks, but never got around to it, and my guess is that she’s pretty aware of the fact that lots of people like them by now :)

It’s just nice to see, you know? It’s a real story of someone who did not claw or suffer or change to get some success. She was content to do her thing before she was a rock star, and from what I can tell, she’s continuing on that track now, as she says, “taking it slow.”

Congratulations, Ingrid. I’m a different kind of fan to the one I was in our former incarnations, but you can add me as one for sure. I wish you more and more success.

Sidenote: also check out Ingrid’s “dutch pop” (ha) side project, Ingrid&Andrew

Sidenote 2: and if you like that, and speaking of talented musicians I went to high school with, also check out João Orecchia (that’s his site; here’s his myspace) – who I do still know very well; he is my daughter’s god father – and his Johannesburg-based band 5 Men 3 Missing (again, their site. myspace). Awesome stuff.