I'm studying voice, and I've reached the hard part: my teacher wants me to sing with feeling. You see, I'm a living, breathing, walking contradiction. I'm a very emotional person who presents a very even-keeled view of myself to the world; I've spent the past 50-plus years making my shell stronger, smoother, and harder. I don't share my feelings; I'm calm. I'm rational. I handle things.
I do my feeling in private.
How can this be the next step? It's not fair. I love the technical aspects of singing: it's fun to find the perfect pitch, to feel my voice resonating with the guitar or the piano, to make the sound waves match up; I like my breathing exercises; I like learning where my lips, tongue, epiglottis and breath need to go to make a good sound; I revel in warm-up exercises and am startled when I lay claim to a new, even higher, note. I'd be perfectly comfortable staying in this analytical phase forever.
But no.
Apparently, music is about feelings. About sharing feelings. About communicating feelings. I'm having trouble with that; I'm not sure I remember how to do that; I know I'm not comfortable doing that.
But I'm going to try.
Step one is this post; you're not only getting my confession; you're getting a piece of my abstract art. I loved painting abstracts; I loved shutting off my brain and letting my emotions fill the canvas. It was the one thing I let myself do that was completely irrational. But even that became too difficult for me; I set down my paints over 20 years ago.
Today I thought I'd try an abstract in Photoshop. It may not taste like paint, but the feeling is still there.
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