Yesterday I took my first voice lesson. I followed my new teacher into the bowels of a local music conservatory, and we landed in a sunny room large enough to hold a choir. I clung to my big cozy sweater for comfort as she asked me, almost like a therapist, what brought me there.
“I miss singing,” I said. “I sang as a kid in choirs, but when I got older, singing started to hurt. There’s a painful straining on the right side of my throat and I can’t sing for very long. I never learned proper technique and wondered if that might help. I’m a terrible breather too. Like, when I run, I feel I can never get enough air.”
She shared her optimism that all these things could be improved upon.
After we did some full body stretches and she took her seat at the piano, I asked if I should stay standing. I already knew the answer of course, but, even standing, I kept one knee in contact with the bench for comfort. How is it that such a subtle brush with another object can help you feel more hidden? It’s akin to the image of an ostrich with its head in the sand; it’s ridiculous, yet the comfort and sense of being less exposed are very real.
Thankfully my teacher was easygoing; I immediately understood there’d be no judgment. After feeling out together where my range was, she wanted to hear a song. The first that came to mind was “Ain’t No Sunshine.” (The judgment-free zone was never more beneficial than when I accidentally attributed this favorite of mine to Otis Redding rather than Bill Withers.)
My voice was weak and shaky. I felt out of breath immediately. I was self-conscious about my timing…
Yet that love of singing found me.
I drifted away from my comfort-bench to wander across the grass green carpet. Focus and enjoyment slowly replaced the desire to hide.
When the song was finished, she told me my voice had soul. There was no compliment she could’ve chosen from her quiver that would have struck me more acutely.
I felt light and tingly as I skipped down the stairs out of the building afterward. I hadn’t anticipated how nervous I’d feel in that room. Nervous but not anxious. Not pathological. Just a little shaky from doing something vulnerable. And afterwards I reaped the rush, the sense of accomplishment, the defeat of discomfort.
When my teacher’d asked me that therapist-like question at the beginning of our session — What brought you here? — there was a whole second answer she didn’t know about:
“My self-esteem is in tatters. I feel like I’ve spent more than two decades in therapy mostly to appease the same people who caused my original wounds. I got a lot out of it, but I hit a wall a long time ago, and now it feels more like I’m doing penance for things that were outside my control. I want to move forward. I want to stop treating myself like a constant patient. I want to learn new things. I want to rebuild my self-esteem and sense of joy because that’s what I need most right now.”
