HOW TO BE A PASSIONATE SINGER AND A FRUSTRATED POPSTAR

The Oxford American Dictionary defines passionate as 

passionate |ˈpa sh ənit|adjective                                                      showing or caused by strong feelings or a strong belief. 

Clearly, they said nothing about having to have talent in order to be passionate, so there. I can call myself a passionate (albeit a wannabe second-rate, off-key) singer. Ha.

Last night, my officemates and I went to a local videoke bar and rented a private room. The funny thing is that at the lobby of the establishment, they have pictures of the different theme rooms. Choosing a videoke room isn't an entirely comfortable experience. I can imagine it's akin to choosing a theme room in a motel—no, I won't even go there.

Anyway, it oddly feels like you're off to do something illegal because when you go to a videoke bar, you assume a wholly different personality. You might as well adopt an alias. For a couple of hours, you are a popstar or a rockstar. (Personally, I prefer to be a popstar because it's so out of my character.)

Because of the personality shift, the need for privacy comes in. Obviously, not everyone is willing to go and sing (off-key) in front of total strangers who, if I may add, will not even remember your name, but will remember your vocal stylistics or lack thereof. Hence the need for the private videoke rooms, although I must admit that I'm still at a loss as to why the management saw the need to put themes for such places.

Singing is not for the weakhearted; I'm quite sure many real singers will tell us that. It is an entirely humbling process to put yourself out there to offer what you have, only to be judged by people. To be honest, I feel that passionate off-key singers are made of sterner stuff. They know they will be criticized for even attempting to sing (or more like squawk), but they just take all the punches and give the world the finger.

I have to say, though, that not all passionate singers are willing to shed inhibitions at the drop of a hat. In our case, we needed a whole pitcher of Dutch courage just to loosen the nerves. After a round or two of drinks, we were punching in the codes to the best songs you could ever sing on videoke: Backstreet Boys' I Want It That Way, Britney Spears' Oops... I Did It Again, Bon Jovi's Living On A Prayer, and the immortally damaging Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.

Frankly, I can be quite territorial with the mic. I realized this after seeing the pictures we took; I was holding a mic in most of the photos. Call me selfish, but then again, that is how I become passion personified—I sing pop songs to show the world what I'm (not) made of.

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Notes:

1. For the record, we banned real singers from the videoke party. We just felt that real singers would take the fun out of our attempts to be ridiculous singers. Real singers would really sing, and we think that that is not in the spirit of drunken videoke.

2. The whole "How to" thing is inspired by Umberto Eco's How To Travel With A Salmon And Other Stories—really cool stuff in there. I'm imploring people to read it.