Sound

Have you ever come home from a restaurant, pulled your scarf, or your sweater, up over your head, experienced an unexpected whiff of onions, pancakes, tacos, or fried fish, and realized your clothes have become completely saturated in the smell of where you were?  I don’t know if it is like this for all singers, but I find my voice is like this, like a fabric that absorbs….or maybe voices should be described as wines, with heady notes, bright bouquets, or hints of citrus, they are complicatedly composed, from their environment.

I think one of the hardest, sometimes frightening things as a singer is to trust your own unique voice.  Just like with appearances, society dominates a lot of what we believe sounds beautiful.  It’s hard not to ask yourself, “should I be more Beyonce, or maybe a little Sia?”  “Am I a Merlot or a Riesling!?”  “Where do I fit??”

I remember when I was a little girl, belting some strange opera in a church, and two older women turned back to look at me, their eyes wide with surprise.  I think they were expecting an old lady, and instead they found this little girl with a heavy voice.  I didn’t have the light hearted childhood of a normal little girl, and my sound was different… I think this is the first time I ever felt shame about my voice.  I spent a good part of my high school years trying to squish and shave off parts of my sound to squeeze into the musical theater box, and after years of failing to fit, I quit singing completely. My voice withdrew into me like a flower closing up and crawling back under the dirt.  I wouldn’t even hum in the shower.  It wasn’t until several years later that I found my way into a recording studio with a friend, and for a laugh, I sang some verses on a hip hop song he was writing.  He was really encouraging, and so I started to sing again, in more studios with more producers; I started to get comfortable with hearing my voice played back to me, and even enjoyed uncovering its layers…I started to build a trusting relationship with my sounds.

Right now I find myself in Germany.  I have come here to record an album with my dear friend Nick.  If hearing your own voice is already scary then trusting ones self to sing a whole album of songs can be at times mildly terrifying.  Not only because you need to trust the tone of your voice, but because, like the wine that hints at the oak barrels it was aged in, those tones are going to resonate back to you the experiences that you have absorbed.

Which segues me into something that I was on the fence about discussing in my blog, because it has a lot to do with a person who’s story I don’t really feel I have the right to tell, but I am also realizing that it is a big part of my story, and probably going to be a part of my music as well.

A few months ago someone in my family who I am very close to went to a dark place, with a dark and dangerous drug.  There is really no undramatic, and probably no dramatic enough way, to describe how it
feels to see someone you love, hiding inside of the dirty fanged mouth of an animal that is digesting them slowly…or how badly you ache, and search with every cell in your being, to find a way to pry that mouth open and lure them out, before it kills them. Growing up my father was a drug addict, and I lost contact with him when I was 13.  I was so determined not to lose this person as well, that this choice took me to a place I didn’t even know I was capable of going to, to protect someone I love. I found myself on an island, and everyday pieces of the island, and pieces of me would disintegrate.  Eating, sleeping, working, relationships, all fell into the waves, until the island was just a disc, and I was a shaking stick figure rattling infront of this moster, with a sword like a toothpick next to its fangs, which I finally used as a jack to pry it’s mouth open wide enough, that I could reach a graspable hand in to the person I loved.  Addiction isn’t just a disease, it is a monster with a very unfair advantage.

At the same time, my boyfriend’s father died unexpectedly, and he found out his mother had sever Alzheimer’s.   It was a dark time.  He and I were like two dark peas in a dark pod.  Helping each other survive just by being able to be a mess together.

Eventually, thanks to perseverance, a little magic, a small army, love, and all of the powers that be, my boyfriend found a good nursing home for his mother, and the person I love faced their own fears in a way my father never had the courage to.  They fought their way through rehab, and have blossomed into a beautiful and creative light.  There are also no words to describe the pride you feel when you see a person pull themselves out of something that deep.

I too have started to normalize, in fact I was pretty sure I had bounced back amazingly until last night, when I heard a song Nick and I had been recording, and I wanted to cocoon into the nearest pile of blankets, and not butterfly out until I never had to hear that song again. “I have never heard you sing like this before,” Nick said to me, leaning in towards the speakers, not with criticism, but more with curiosity.  I wasn’t off key…but I knew what he was hearing, I didn’t sound like myself at all….I was like a sad ship, so heavy that it had halfway sunk into the sea.  It’s one thing to be sad in a moment that is passing, but to pull that old sadness out of you and hear it…is an eerie feeling.  And at 2 am I found myself crying on poor Nick’s shoulder, as our recording played, uncomfortably, back to me.

I had honestly decided not to sing about this experience because I didn’t want to wallow in  it, and using something this intimate that has so much to do with someone else, just felt a little cheap to me, and also too vulnerable.  Yet that is the thing about voices, once you build an honest relationship with them, they will not lie to you.  Somewhere inside of me is the sound of the first time I ever fell in love, my father walking through the living room singing House of the Rising Sun in a big, beautiful baritone, my high school dreams of being on Broadway, my new dreams of finishing this album, and the roller coaster of the last few months.  I started my new blog with this entry because I needed to remember, you can’t be any other voice then your own.  So even even when it’s uncomfortable I need to embrace all the parts of my story, trust myself, and sing my sounds.