So I was listening to an incredible episode of This American Life called Batman (thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/544/transcript) which was about a blind man, Daniel Kish, who uses tongue clicking to navigate the world. Its basically a form of human echolocation which essentially allows him to see the world around him in such a way that the brain structures related to sight light up in tests on subjects such as himself and others (to my understanding, though he is not able to see colours, nor things that are far away, he can see a very clear picture of his immediate surroundings so much that he is able to ride a bike and lives a very independent life.) It was a very fascinating, inspiring and moving episode but the premise of the episode has got me thinking about one small challenge in my own life, singing. See, the episode posits the idea that other people’s ideas of us can alter what we are capable of and I do believe this is true, I know that when I am around people who believe me to be stupid, or incapable, I can almost feel my IQ dropping, whereas when I feel my ideas or talents being respected, I shine. So, I’ve always had this idea that I am a terrible singer and this has been reinforced over the years by the feedback I have received. However, our latest project once again has elements of musical comedy and I have vowed to myself to learn to sing well, instead of simply embracing the awful as I did in Slutmonster! I have been receiving awesome lessons from Nelson Gardner (who is quite honestly a brilliant, patient, encouraging teacher and if you have the desire to learn to sing, I’d highly recommend him) and while I do suspect my singing is improving and sometimes even have these incredible moments when I think “Is that MY voice?” as soon as I feel like -maybe- I am capable of being a good singer, it is as if my voice literally gets trapped in my throat and I choke. So, intellectually I believe that 99% of being a good artist is putting in the long hours of hard work and tedious practice, yet mustering that discipline when it comes to singing has been surprisingly challenging to me and I think I’m starting to truly realise why - I’m still telling myself that I’m a bad singer, that this is an objective, unalterable truth, and getting over that is perhaps the biggest difficulty. So I’m curious, does anyone have any similar experiences? Have you been able to overcome such negative self-talk so that you are able to achieve something you didn’t believe yourself to be capable of? If so, how? Tips, tricks, stories and things that inspire you are so very welcome because I’d determined to get over this self-sabotaging shit and just concentrate on getting on with giving this project everything that I possibly can. ...And that is how the story of an incredible blind man expanded my ideas of what it is to be human and inspired me to learn how to sing dirty songs for the internet.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 03:25:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015