LET IT GO

There is craft and there is art.  There is technique, and there is music.  The Enlightenment, Western world view believes in progression-seeds become flowers, babies become adults, time is linear and attempt leads to attainment.  By this truth formula, any child can be taught to play a note on the piano, and with time and practice, necessarily become a virtuoso.  Strewn on the wayside to this perfection are the hordes of children who simply gave up.  It was not lack of call, that kept them from becoming musicians, it was a lack of self-discipline and focus.

This is a worldview that creates music out of a machine.  Speed and accuracy on a violin can often overawe the crowd into a belief that it has experienced something profound.  A young person who can mimic Frank Sinatra's singing style becomes an overnight sensation, and people use math and electricity to reproduce a composer's intent, without even knowing how to read that composer's music.  Technical proficiency gets the seal of approval.  Efficiency, the machine-maker's panacaea, is awarded the highest honor.

Yet, music is feeling, and machines do not feel.  Children, though full of feeling, do not yet own their feelings.  The composer's mind can only be communicated through a sympathy of experience.  To lift music from a state of organized sound to an expression of human importance requires more than technique.  Speed, fluency and production must be released as milestones of achievement.

To sing, we have to let go of perfection.  We have to let go of progression and allow for inspiration-the infusion of spirit, the life of breath.  True singing is not owned-it goes past ownership to generosity.  It goes to a place where the ability to play the notes is not the point, but the tool.  True singing comes from a place of authentic human communication.  While using our minds to control the flow of air, the accuracy of pitch and the brilliance of diction, we run the very real risk of binding the content in a casket buried six feet under our egos' fears of rejection.

Singing is not a controlled fall.  Singing is not the end result of metronomic repetition.  Singing is not reproducible results, or an even flame.  On its way to perfection, singing comes in fits and starts.  It erupts.  It occurs.  It is messy, visceral, raw, unrefined, and terrifying.  Until the singer can let go her hold on feeling through the vehicle of sound, whether that be iPad or Stradivarius, there will only be technique.  There will only be craft.  There will only be skill.  The singer will be brilliant in spirit, but only dimly lit with soul.


A SOUL FILLED SINGER

POWER

I had a new experience recently.  Having been asked to lead singing for a Christmas party at an assisted living center, one of the party requested O Holy Night.  I led out in singing the first verse, and many people joined me, but when I started the second verse, most people dropped out.  That was not the surprising part of my evening.  After I had sung that song, there was a break in the singing while Santa delivered gifts to the gathered people.  At that time, the event organizer came to me and said "Go ahead and lead a few more songs, but try to stay away from the Christian stuff."  

Though I am not any kind of advocate for proselytizing, I have to admit that this really threw me.  Clearly, there are lots of Christmas songs that aren't Christian-Frosty the Snowman, Gramma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, and I'll Be Home for Christmas, to name a few, but I was unsure what he actually meant by "Christian stuff."   Did he mean Silent Night, Holy Night, or Away in the Manger?  What about The First Noel and Joy to the World?  I have never been asked to lead singing for a Christmas Party where I wasn't supposed to lead Christmas songs.

After reflecting, I believe that something happened during the singing of O Holy Night that stirred in the organizer.  I believe that something about that performance said something to the audience about belief.  Perhaps the party-goers were suddenly being asked for something they weren't quite ready to give.  Maybe they heard something that worried them at a deep level, and rather than look at that thing, they asked me to stop singing about it.  What I mean is this: I sang with conviction.  I sang from a place of belief.  I sang words, that for me, have an important meaning, and that meaning, carried on breath imbued with conviction had power. 

Power vibrates through systems-it thrums down the threads that connect us.  We can feel the foundations of the world tottering and trembling when something with power shifts within a space.  The singer has access to that power.  The singer can resonate with that power.  The singer can channel that power.  Empowered, the singer becomes an agent of enlightenment, exposing the real world that lies below the surfaces of our conventions.