Man makes music, finds love in Moses Lake

Editor’s note: This article corrects an initial version of the story that incorrectly stated when Hanna Bishop moved to Moses Lake and when Norman Lane started playing the organ. This version also clarifies the first song Lane played for Bishop, which was “Northwest Raindrops.”

MOSES LAKE — When Norman Lane moved from western Washington to Moses Lake two years ago, he was in pretty bad shape.

Lane, now 58, says he had a severe form of sleep apnea that couldn't effectively be treated and didn't allow him to get more than a few minutes of rest at a time. This limited his ability to perform daily tasks, much less hold down a job. His former wife succumbed to liver failure from alcoholism a year earlier and he was barely scraping by, living with his stepchildren.

"I was pretty devastated, unable to do anything but sit there with the walls closing in and grieve for her," he says.

So he decided to pick up and head east, moving in with his son in Moses Lake and hoping for a miracle.

That "miracle" turned out to be Hanna Bishop, a teacher who had herself moved to the area one month after Lane and was working as a substitute while seeking full time employment.

"When I met her and started falling in love with her I followed her all around town like a puppy dog," Lane says. "We walked everywhere and she got me eating healthier. I lost about 80 pounds and as the weight came down, my health improved."

Eventually, his sleep apnea lessened and Lane was able to work again, first at Walmart, then as a forklift driver, and finally as a lead janitor with the City of Moses Lake.

But he still had a problem - how to woo the girl of his dreams?

"What am I going to do? Try and impress the girl with my athletic prowess? I was disabled at the time," recalls Lane.

After some thought, he opted to unveil his secret weapon: music.

Lane says his love of sound began with the classical music his parents would listen to when he was still a toddler.

"I remember being 4 years old, riding with my parents in the car and being exposed to that kind of music and the inspiration would come," he says. "I was already having musical ideas. Whole symphonies running through my head and no way to express any of it to them or get any of it out. It was a long journey between that moment where it first gripped me to when I could get involved with doing it myself."

He began with the harmonica in second grade, then the electronic organ, moving to the flutophone and the trumpet in his sixth grade year before finding the piano and the guitar in high school.

Lane says he majored in music at college for a couple years, but realized it wasn't a good fit.

"What I found is that my gifts don't lend themselves to training," he says. "I wasn't in to learning other people's music, I was interested from the get-go in making my own."

He got involved with playing worship music in church for a time before composing his own, gradually transitioning from 12-string guitar to a synthesizer/computer arrangement that allowed him to delve into creating more electronic, instrumental music.

By the time he met Bishop, Lane had written and recorded several compositions. One afternoon, while the couple was sitting together in the park, he decided to play her a track he'd composed called Summer Rain. But the first piece he shared her with her was “Northwest Raindrops.”

"I share my heart with my music. After hearing it her eyes were a little misty and she leaned in close and said, 'that speaks deep,'" Lane recalls. "She told me later that was the moment she knew she could love me."

He followed this up by writing Bishop a song of her own, which he sang for her at their wedding reception this past April.

"I told everybody, well he's the first man that wrote me a song so of course I married him," Bishop says, smiling.

Lane says he's still coming up with new compositions, a process made easier for part-time musicians like himself via computer software, which essentially acts as a studio in a box.

"The tools allow me to get an idea, rough it out and start to work with it," he says. "I can try thousands of different instruments, I can change the notes around and take out any wrong notes to polish it up and turn it into what I want it to be. The software doesn't break the bank and is available for someone like me - a janitor - to buy."

He's currently in the process of mastering some of his compositions to put on a CD, which he hopes to sell at Red Door Consignment in Moses Lake.

Along with making music, Lane is also a writer - authoring several spiritual essays and a science fiction novel - as well as an avid photographer. He holds up a digital tablet to display a few examples of his photos, taken on his recent honeymoon with his new bride.

"This town has been good to me, and best of all, I met my wonderful love here," Lane says, squeezing Bishop's hand. "I've been given a brand new life here in Moses Lake."

To hear or purchase Lane's music, visit www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=127307&content=music. To read his writing, visit www.scribd.com/nwskywatcher, or to contact Lane directly, send an email to hokpatuui@yahoo.com.