Monday, December 12, 2011

Singing

"Are you ready?"

"I was born ready."

Yes, I said those words, but on some level I was in hard core "fake it until you make it" mode with my tough talk and pretending I knew what to tell the band to lead them in this song. I was rehearsing for a performance last night when that mini-conversation took place.

The deeply honest truth is that it's very, very hard for me to sing. Physically, I have a lot of allergies and breathing issues, so singing isn't exactly a natural fit, but it is what I love. I love music, and though I play a bunch of instruments poorly, singing is what makes me feel the feeling of making something that can be pretty and moving. I often say that singing is the only thing I do JUST for fun (though at this time of the year this ceases to be true because I'm rehearsing so much). Like, I swim, and I have a good time, but there's a little counter in the back of my head keeping track of how much cardio I got out of it. I am starting to not hate running, but I still do it because it's what I have to do. And I love to cook, but seriously, cooking for myself every week means that there are some times where it's just exhausting and oh-so boring.

I love to sing in a group (and do sing in a choir), and when timing, and phrasing, and harmony all come together in the same moment, it frequently moves me to tears (you know, little ones that I wipe away quickly and blink back so that the people I'm singing with don't think I'm a weirdly over-emotional freak). But singing solo is a little like going out into the world without skin.

I stood up at last spring's performance and talked about the Vocal Performance Class (Henceforth called VPC - a class about learning not just to sing solo but to lead the band) I introduced my journey through the class by saying taking this class felt like naked skydiving. Scary, and vulnerable, and exhilarating but you're sure if you can just open up, and land right, it'll be all fine. And people laughed. And I was hiding behind that joke, so it was ok that they laughed. On the other side of that joke the truth was, I felt adrenaline up there, but real concern about not landing. About just falling and falling. And failing. Most of that class had felt to me like I wasn't quite where I needed to be. Technique is one thing, performing is another. It turns out I'm so not prepared for the later that the former often goes out the window.

It surprises a lot of people that opening up and being emotionally honest was my challenge. That's because there's this thing with me, where people think they know me, but they don't. It's not their fault - it's mine. I was talking about it with a member of the spring class and saying that because I'm open, and very not-interested-in-beating-around-the-bush and will answer just about any question, people assume they are close with me or understand me deeply. My clients see professional me, and my honesty with them, and assume they know who I am. One of them told me, "Well, you really struggle with seeing any grey areas between the black and white requirements." Umm, actually, I was just on the phone that morning arguing why her situation might not fit our current definitions and thus she might need to be exempt from something. No grey my ass.

I have friends who I like, but who never hear my difficult or revealing stories, but because they've heard my honest views on marriage equality, or my story about one of the least honest things I've ever done (it involved a Zamfir, The Pan flute master cd), or my joke about mayonaise (don't ask unless you really want to know) they think they're on the inside. I love all my friends, and I choose them carefully, but the truth is there's people who get into the foyer, people who are in the living room, and people who can come all the way into the kitchen and see the mess, and imperfection, but also the heart and warmth of me. It's much more about my hesitation to trust, my holding back than about any one friend being better suited for kitchen-time than another. I have an amazing friend, who started out as being "just" the partner of my BFF and then grew into a separate friendship. I cherish him. It's been 10 years since we found the speed and rhythm and and feel of our friendship, and along the way we have discovered how much we love each other and how much we have in common. and how fun it is for both of us to know and love my BFF. But even still, it wasn't until this fall that I had the courage to let him all the way in and to messily (with crying and snot, and everything) admit to him some of the deep, dark places my heart has gone. Ten Years! It's not like he hadn't put his time in or shown he was trustworthy or given me love and support and understanding.

I let people in enough so that I can be me, while also holding them back from coming all the way in. how was I supposed to let them all in, all at once, a whole audience full?

And when it came time for my vocal coach to give me feedback last spring, she just kept on saying, "I know you! You're expressive. You're open! You're emotional." And I kept on thinking, "You THINK you know me." Not because she hadn't seen real things about me, not because she was wrong about me being an expressive person, but because she felt like she could say definitively that there was a deeper place inside me that I was covering up. I was guarded, I was defensive, and I did and do struggle to express myself fully when singing solo. She wasn't wrong. But, she kept on naming specific things that were deep inside of me, and I wasn't always sure she was naming things that really resided there or that she could be sure she had seen. She and I had known each other for 2 years then, but only know each other on a more personal level for about 9 months. She was past the foyer, but not in the kitchen.

But, without knowing it, even though she was naming different things than I feel, she was still helping me to describe the place I needed to let everyone into in order to perform with all of me and be fully engaged with the audience. I needed to find the courage to let everyone into the kitchen. Or at least let them see it. And she kept pushing me. At times, she would even say, "Start over. I'm not feeling it." Or "This isn't believable." She didn't say it meanly, but man, it always felt like I was driving somewhere thinking I was on course and then finding out I had driven into a deep forest, off-roading. You know the forest - it's the one in Wizard of Oz where the witch is hiding and the trees throw apples at travelers just for walking there.

I wasn't lost because I hadn't understood what she was asking of me or where she wanted me to go. I literally didn't know how to get there. She kept saying, "you know everyone here. What's the worst that can happen from going there?" But the point for me wasn't whether or not they would judge me, but that there was a lock between me and that room and I didn't have the key.

I focused on technique, and did some planned performance moves in one of my songs and that loosened things up a lot but I knew I wasn't where everyone else was. So, I stood up in front of our audience and made my naked skydiving joke, and did my "fun" song and felt like, "Ok, this could be do-able." I made the audience laugh and get into it. I did! Me and my performance!

Of course, I had a royal freak-out moments before but kept it mostly under wraps (minus the moment that saw me clawing for the paper that had my lyrics on it, looking at it, and then putting it back away . . . after singing the song for 3 months. Yeah. Security blanket anyone?) and it also helped that I took my glasses off and drank a not insignificant amount of vodka with pineapple juice.

But my second song, the song whose lyrics said:

(Gravity, Sara Bareilles)
Set me free, leave me be. I don't want to fall another moment into your gravity.
Here I am and I stand so tall, just the way I'm supposed to be.
But you're on to me and all over me.

I live here on my knees as I

Try to make you see that you're
Everything I think I need here on the ground.
But you're neither friend nor foe though I
Can't seem to let you go.
The one thing that I still know is that you're keeping me down
You're keeping me down, yeah, yeah, yeah
You're onto me, onto me and all over

Something always brings me back to you

It never takes too long


Well, it wasn't an option to be funny or stagey. I just had to open up the vault and hope that what came out was something that the audience could bear. And a funny thing happened. Because I was nervous, that feeling sailed me past the wall into other emotions. It melted my skin off, and I was so raw that there was nothing to stop my feelings and the audiences' from osmosing and blending together. It was scary, it was awful, it was painful but doing it made me feel I was giving something, getting something, and strong enough to do it. As I sang I wondered, "Why does the light look wobbly?" and realized it was because I was feeling so much that I had been moved to tears, and not a tiny tear I could blink away like at choir. Where crying or showing that emotion usually makes me feel scared about being so vulnerable, I left the stage shaky, but feeling weirdly strong for all that I also felt spent. It was an amazing experience. There was a rush of energy, and it went by so fast but I felt so amazed by how empowering it was, and how that feeling of toughness was able to join tenderness and mix perfectly. I can't speak for how it was for the audience, but for me, I left the stage having had a moment of knowing exactly how I felt and being able to invite 50 people into that moment with me and be ok with whatever they thought about it. It was that pure, and deep - it was just undeniable so whatever anyone else felt about it was beyond unimportant.

By the way, I am acutely aware of how corny and over the top that sounds. But I can't pull any other words from my brain to describe it.

It's with a lot of trepidation that I approach that moment this time around. I've peeled the skin back even further this fall. I literally feel like my nerves are exposed sometimes when we are rehearsing. I have cried in lessons and gotten shivers and heat flashes in rehearsals with the band. These kind of big, revelatory moments don't happen to someone analytical like me. These stories feel so baring that it's  like nakedness would be a step towards protection! What's amazing is that I keep choosing these songs! I choose them. I obviously want this, on some level, but getting there is exhausting.

Right now I'm tired, but anticipating a rush of energy and hoping to share something deep and big and scary and moving with everyone. It is the thing that lets me know there are deeper places in me. Places I can call on when things are sad or hard. There's a part of me that knows that if I could tap into that place more, I could stop needing to look externally for things . . . validation, comfort, you know, those things. I'd like to find those things in places other than my job, my relationships, my dinner. So, I keep doing scary-ass things. Next up, skydiving. But I'll probably try it with my clothes on first.

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