Sing the Space is an event that my choir director holds on the Second Sunday of every month from six to six-thirty. It is a free group vocal improvisation session in a very echoey Skyspace structure called “Within Without.”

  I had done vocal improvisations before I had attended my first Sing the Space. I thought they were so-so. I had mostly done them with people who weren’t necessarily committed in rooms that did not reverberate well and had a lot of background noise.

  Now, I don’t think that everyone who goes to Sing the Space is a singer. I think they all sing, but not many do it as their job. But I don’t think that matters. As Harold Hill in The Music Man says, “Singing is just sustained talking.” It isn’t, but it sort of is.

  I’ve had nearly nine months to reflect on why the experience of being in a room that has rumbling resonant frequencies with a few other singing people was so transformative, and I still don’t think I entirely know why. But here’s my best guess.

  I am someone who does not rest that much. The few times I do, it is either late at night, or I am thinking about the next thing, or I am doing chores or something like that. But Sing the Space was a small period each month where I could just sit and enjoy being a part of music that doesn’t have any stakes or final product. And I know it sounds trivial, but doing something that didn’t mean anything and didn’t have an effect on my future was very unfamiliar and meditative to me.

  I guess you’d call it a hobby. For a lot of people, music is their hobby. Music is what they do to unwind or relax. For some, it’s some kind of craft or visual art. For some, it’s acting. But for me, I love those things and have such an innate desire and need to be creative and artistic that I cannot for the life of me see myself doing something else as a career.

  But that little echoey room gives me some much-needed rest each month.