Comments on: Finding my voice

By: mule ear boots

mule ear boots — Sun, 11 May 2008 14:20:28 +0000

[…] […]

By: Angelina

Angelina — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 07:15:01 +0000

First of all, I am so proud of you for just keeping at it and breaking through. When we spoke on the phone last spring the first thing I thought was “which is more gorgeous, her words or her voice?”

I’m so sorry that you got walking pneumonia though.

I’m so far behind in everything that this is old news now. I hope you’re totally recovered and having a great Thanksgiving!

By: sandra

sandra — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 19:38:35 +0000

You make me not want to blog at all. I’d rather read your posts than my own drivel. And forgive me for repeating myself, darling, but this is such a perfectly crafted idea for an essay. Just a bit of spit-shining and adjusting and it would be good to go.

To make this about me (because I have to, everyone hates me for it), I thought for years I was a horrible singer but it’s really just that I have a low, low, low range. I’m still bad, but if I stick low, I’m not horrific. And I “practiced” for months in my car for my someday-karaoke song, a specific song that I enjoyed singing and I know I didn’t crucify. It was total pretend. And that stuff never turns out like you picture it, right? No. Except it did. I sang the exact song I perfected to death in my car the first and only time I sang karaoke this past summer in the big city. I didn’t get laughed at, but more importantly than that, I enjoyed it so, so, so much.

By: Duriyah

Duriyah — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:50:27 +0000

That’s wonderful. Kudos to you for being so couragous and sticking with the singing!

I am that sort of person, and I do think that your illness is your body working at clearing out the pain you have around singing. You are really, deeply healing yourself, and that’s great!

By: Darcy

Darcy — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:43:18 +0000

Hmmm, I think I’m the sort of person Barbara isn’t, so wow, good for you and your body and all the healing y’all are doing. Very inspiring. Rock on!

By: Kelly

Kelly — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 15:53:42 +0000

Ha! Steven, that’s hilarious. And yay you for just letting her find her way. One other thing Saunis keeps telling me is to stop trying to imitate whoever sang it first, but to just find the reality of the song in me and let it come out however I need to sing it. And that might be really raw and punk and hard. And that would be perfect.

It really is pretty incredible how deeply damaged we can become from things we heard as children. Thanks so much for sharing that with me.

By: kate

kate — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 15:12:01 +0000

i am so choking up over here . . . you are so freakin awesome! you’re gorgeous and brave and stubborn and hilarious and your heart is so big the whole freakin world just hummed in gratitude and salutation . . . oh honey . . . so lovely . . .

By: steven

steven — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 14:27:56 +0000

I can’t sing a note until I get a chest cold and then I have an amazing baritone. What I really came to say is that there’s a lot of thing we tell ourselves we can’t do and if we tell ourselves long enough, we come to believe it. Some of these things are leftovers from things our parents said when we were kids, not realizing the impact (and therapy bills) they’d have.

My niece can’t sing a note, but she sings all day because it makes her happy and none of us would dare tell her to stop since shes already got enough irrational fear (cars going too fast, etc.) and we’d hate to set up a domino effect and make her self conscious of the things she’s truly great at like gymnastics.

My hope is that she gets control of her voice (she’s got the volume and projection thing) and a good teacher will help her find the notes. If not, I have a TON of 45’s from the London and San Francisco punk scenes I can play for her so she can learn that people like Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex and Deborah Iyall of Romeovoid weren’t the best singers, but had presence and vitality. That and I’d love to see her parent’s face when she sings “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!”