Photo: Michael Gold
... a few words about music.
Important note: this work makes no medical claims, and it is up to you, dear reader, to use any information you find here responsibly and intelligently, toward yourself and others.
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“The Voice”
September 30, 2020
Nope, I’m not talking about the popular TV dog-and-pony show. I’m talking about YOUR voice—and how you automatically personalize it to yourself, if you’re like most people. That’s not necessarily a positive thing.
Why?
Our voices are perhaps the most fundamental way we express our own I AM in the world. (OK, I’m a singer; dancers might beg to disagree.). It’s hard to separate ourselves from such an intimate instrument. And for the last 2 weeks, I’ve been talking about how we want to find and employ our Essential Voice.
But personalizing is different from a pure expression of the spirit. Personalizing is when we identify with our voices , often in ways not especially productive to that spirit; when ego gets in the way. If it’s “my voice,” then I’m thinking, and maybe saying out loud, “my voice is really [fill in the blank] today.” Maybe my voice is in great shape today, and is doing me proud. Maybe my voice is tight, tired, phlegmy, etc. Maybe my [expletive deleted] voice is Behaving Badly.
See how that goes?
In the first opera I sang in, an amateur production Of Mozart’s Magic Flute in New York City, I heard a more experienced singer in the cast say something different. He referred to “the voice,” as professionals tend to do. This was immediately a liberating mental switch. “The voice” is the thing that’s great, or tight, or tired, phlegmy, etc., today. It’s an instrument. Or, if you prefer, maybe a relative or close friend. An entity separate from my own sense of self-worth.
Voices are instruments so inextricably connected to our own bodies, unlike a clarinet or a piano, that it’s hard to separate function from spirit—or judgment. If MY voice is letting me down today, it’s a short trip to feeling badly about MYself. If THE voice is having a not-so-good day, I can get some mentally healthy distance from that situation and its former hook into my own sense of self-worth. I can “go into analysis,” as certain characters say on the TV drama Westworld: shift gears from emotional reaction and from triggers to rational observation. I can ask myself what’s going wrong, and what do I already know that can help me do something about it? It doesn’t persist as a value judgment that shuts me, and any chance of real progress, down.
And if The Voice is doing fabulous things today, I can pat it on the back—and myself, while I’m at it, for taking good care of it—and say, “well done”!
To respond to this blog with your thoughts or questions, go here.
A workshop, "Finding Your Voice," is one I've given often, and have now moved online.
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©Danielle Woerner 2020
