JoyMusic: Something to move to and something to sing with

Last week, at some point, I shared about a list of women only artists that I made on Spotify. I embedded the player. Which was cool. Until it didn’t show up in the email version of this that a lot of you are reading. GRRR! So here’s the list. Just click. From now on, I’ll embed (cause cool) AND share a link the old school way.

A student/friend (Linda Soto for those of you who know her) sent me this song the other day and it was an instant love. SO FUN.

My favorite song for vocal warmup right now is this older Peter Gabriel (and my warmups are usually him… he gets everything going with putting strain).

I would LOVE to hear what is really moving YOU right now! You know I am always looking for new stuff.

Making ugly noise to get to the beauty

I wrote these words about 2 weeks ago on someone else’s post on Facebook:

I keep thinking about this as I venture further into my singing lessons. I keep thinking about a documentary about the making of the Joshua Tree (I can't find it to watch it again... it seems to have disappeared...)... Anyway, there's this part where Bono has written the words for I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and the music was already done. But he has to figure out HOW to sing it... BONO... right? And whoa... it struck me exactly this... he had NO FEAR of sounding AWFUL and THAT is why he can do what he does. So now when I'm practicing, I push like that... just like I would do in dance, of course, but singing for me has been such a fear thing that it's more tender and vulnerable... but I push like that... where can I go that it's BAD... because RIGHT AROUND THERE... that's where you'll find awesome hanging out. 

I wrote that about 2 weeks ago, and since then, so much has changed.

So that little story — and this adventure I’m taking with singing — remember, it’s literal for me, but it’s simultaneously one giant metaphor for all of us, and it’s all about living life fully.

Over the last two weeks, because I’ve been willing to make ugly noises, to falter, to crack, to just sound like OUCH!, I’ve started to truly find my voice.

And under all that fear that I’ve lived with for so long, what am I finding?

That my voice is BIG and it’s sassy and ferocious and demanding.

It makes me think about my honest dance. I’m an aggressive mover when I’m fully in my body, so it’s no wonder that I’m an aggressive singer. (If the word aggressive makes you uncomfortable, sit with that because it’s my preferred word here and if it triggers you in some way, that’s your trigger to pay attention to. I stop to say this because over my life when I use that word, so many WOMEN correct me and say I mean assertive. No. I mean aggressive.)

I also don’t think it’s a coinkydink that once my singing lessons started, my shoulders reached new levels of healing. During a Peony Method class this week, I could feel my whole body connected in a way it hasn’t been for almost two years, thanks to a lot of factors, including Peony’s death and two frozen shoulders.

And they were frozen, for sure. The shots I got were totally necessary, but there’s some woo here, isn’t there?

Shoulders… how many times (if you’ve been in classes with me for long) have you heard me say, “Many women are weak in the shoulder area and that makes sense because it’s the connection space between heart and throat… how many of us are not saying what needs to be said and it’s stuck right at that shoulder level?”

I was obviously talking to myself.

Stuckness and Grand Gestures

I was having a delightful as usual discussion with Deb Globus (you may know of her work with Storybeads), and we were discussing stuckness, and she said, “you need a grand gesture!”

What? Because that phrase instantly rang a bell for me. And over the coming days, it took me right back to the true start of my healing, when I started to dance again about 14 years ago. (And this is relevant to today but I’ll get there…)

Once I knew that dance was that important, I ordered my first pair of capezio ballet slippers in forever. They came and I didn’t like the feel, but I used them as a talisman (and still have them).

But I knew I needed to do something significant that would keep me on track, so I signed up for a training at Kripalu. I found something called YogaDance that seemed like a good fit.

This was about more than dance. I would have to TRAVEL. I would have to leave the cats and the almost agoraphobic love of my house and my very own spaces. It was a very, very, very big deal.

And to keep myself committed, I announced it on my then blog, BlissChick, which had a significant readership, full of humans who were more than willing to make sure my ass got in that seat on that bus and traveled to Massachusetts.

I followed through, as most of you know, and over the next few years actually went to Kripalu about ten times, gathering and synthesizing everything I could get my brain and hands and feet on until we’re in present day and all of that has become The Peony Method.

But back to now… and this feeling of stuck. I didn’t put it all together but within DAYS of talking to Deb, I signed up for that first private singing lesson.

And it took a couple more weeks to remember that discussion and see how it had worked its freaking magicks.

I’ve never doubted my ability to move/dance. I always feel confident and I don’t care who is in the room or space with me. I feel the same way about acting.

But singing is something so fragile to me…this is even bigger than that trip to Kripalu. Truly.

And it’s changing my life, because that’s what grand gestures do. I feel more focused. I feel more energetic.

I might still feel a wee bit stuck but I can feel the momentum coming back. I can feel my capacity for dreaming returning. I can feel words again. I am interested and curious in ways I was just… not. (That was the scariest thing to me… no curiosity.)

So I’m here to tell you that there’s nothing like this idea of grand gestures to get you out of even a very serious rut. When I started to dance again, I had been chronically depressed for a decade and at times it was life threatening. But something in me was still just ever so slightly open enough to allow for the tidal waves of changes that dance brought.

I’m certainly no less open to that idea now and I’m already feeling the rising, living waters that singing is bringing.

What grand gesture do YOU need?

Singing class update!

I meant to write about this much closer to when it happened (Monday the 14th), but the week got away from me really fast. (Side note: Is anyone else feeling just extra time smooshed lately?)

Singing class…

I had Craig drive me because it was starting to get dark AND I was so damn nervous that I didn’t want to even think about how to get there or parking or anything.

I walked in and there were a LOT of kids there, coming and going for their various lessons. The thing that made me giggle right away was the “welcome our new students” sign that had my name on it.

I figure everyone else on that was likely under the age of 12. HA

My teacher arrived right on time. Molly. She’s 27 so I could be her mom. (Another HA)

But here’s the thing. Before I went I told Craig, “I am just focusing on thinking that this Molly person is basically me but with singing instead of dance… She just wants me to LOVE singing and she just wants me to HAVE singing in my life…and she just believes in me automatically because I am showing up.”

Well… somehow I manifested a mini me. We had so much in common from music to being sci-fi/fantasy nerds to thinking a lot about neurodivergence and yes… her thoughts about teaching singing are exactly mine about getting people to dance: that we’re meant to do this.

She also kept reminding me that my fears around singing won’t just magically disappear and that this will take time. That helped because I would have expected myself to be clear of fear at our next lesson. Which is redonk.

We talked a LOT but we finally did some warm up stuff. She offered me two options that my body immediately rejected and then during a third she was using the sound “me” and I said…yeah… but could you make up some words instead of just that syllable?

Which she did and then I was fine! Well, I was okay to warm up with her.

Then she asked me to sing something I like with it playing on my phone. I chose this.

I WAS SO DAMN NERVOUS, but when I closed my eyes at one point, I felt like she got to kinda hear what I actually sound like.

And LIKE ME as a teacher, she was often saying things like, “OH! THAT WAS GOOD!” Just what I need. (Just what we all need.)

I learned that I’m an Alto TWO; thus my love of singing with tenors.

I have another lesson Monday the 21st and I am making a singing playlist on Spotify and practicing a bit each day.

I’m obsessed. Which is when I’m at my healthiest.

What will you regret?

I’ve told these two stories before but they’re important to me. They’re what I call “joy gems.” They’re touchstones and talismans.

One of the my favorite memories: I am about 4 and I am staying with my GrandAunt Ardelle and she’s in the kitchen making us dinner. I’m singing about that fact. When I stop, she yells, “MORE!” and I hear her laughing her laughter that was so full of love.

Another with her: I was about 13/14 (she would die when I was just 15) and we are visiting. I am sitting on the small settee with my mother, and Ardelle asks me what I think I want to be when I grow up. I know. My heart is full of it and has been full of it since I was so small, but I say, “I don’t know” and shrug in that teenager way, and she says, “OH! I always just thought you’d be a singer!” So offhanded, so SURE sounding.

I took those words and those memories and I stored them. Over the years, I learned to hide this part of me… this part of me that was pure and raw desire.

But I got too good at hiding it and the thing I loved most in this world — even more than dance (but thank God for dance) — this thing I loved most became this thing that I feared most.

I sing but only by myself in very limited and hidden ways.

And I lay awake at night some nights and I KNOW this is what I will regret.

I will regret this hiding of my voice… a hiding of a singing voice that results, of course, in a hiding of my larger truer voice in this world.

I think, even my writing voice is not yet my truest voice because I hide my song.

No more.

Monday the 14th at 5 PM I have a voice lesson — a half hour assessment to meet a teacher and see if we can work together and then I’ll start weekly classes.

Thinking of this MAKES. ME. WANT. TO. PUKE.

I want to cancel. I won’t cancel.

I think I might die. I probably won’t.

My heart races and my skin gets clamy even at the thought of this half hour on this coming Monday.

But I will go and I will report back.

And I want to know from you: what will be your regret? What small movement can you take toward eradicating it?