what a nice voice.
To be a SINGER, like any vocation-identity, suggests all sorts of weird requirements besides the obvious ones. I bet aspiring Writers picture long days spent sitting on sun-drenched leather furniture with ink stains all over their hands, and similarly, being a SINGER, to me, was this fantasy involving less unruly hair and a better face. When I was little, and wanted more than anything in the world to be a SINGER, I had hopes that adolescence would deliver me a different appearance and demeanor, more appropriate for the career I dreamed of. No Debbie Gibson could walk around with a giant rat's nest + a long face under her big black hat.*
I never had a pretty voice. (The first few times someone at shul commented on my beautiful voice, I thought they must be mistaken, hearing some pretty girl nearby and thinking it was me.) Given that weird, arrested innocence sound that all Disney heroines have, I had an uphill battle before me if I wanted to be a real singer. At times, I worked hard at feigning the 'goodness' that went along with singerdom in my mind. I tried to do things real singers must do, like wash my hair 2x a day, attempt to wear clean white tee-shirts, and reorganize my body fat distribution. My inevitable failures in these areas sealed the deal: i could never be a SINGER. Strangely, typically, I had a simultaneous un-crushable will to become a singer, even if I had to modify the fantasy completely.
It's interesting that all of one's insecurities and failures or perceived failures relative to oppressive norms are easily attached to our deepest desires. This isn't news, of course. We take in these racist, sexist, transphobic, fatphobic, ableist norms, and our sense of possibility and potential are appropriately circumscribed in our minds. Ah, colonization. But of course, since colonization seeks to curtail and de-legitimize desire, I didn't tend to fixate on my in/ability to be, say, an astronaut. Being a singer was my holy grail, and even as a middle class white girl whose parents paid for music lessons and music camp - I felt confident I could not be the thing I wanted to be, at least, in the way I wanted to be it.
Singing is the most moving and vulnerable thing I do. Sometimes I think it's my only release valve, the only thing ensuring my rage and bile don't boil over and kill everyone. When I was little, and dreamed about being something I have since rejected (a pretty Broadway lady or pop star who sang pretty songs about highly unreal situations, such as the need to "shake your love" or perhaps, escape to a castle on a cloud), I didn't know how to use it that way. I just tried to conform my desires to a standard I was struggling to even identify. Punk rock proved a mixed bag for me. It gave me space to reject the "pretty voice" I couldn't find in myself, and space to purge adolescent feelings through song. On the other hand, I chose it over pursuing vocal training, and in so doing, rejected the part of myself that wanted to take good care of this thing I had - both the gift and the desire.
A voice is a delicate thing. I don't care if you're singing grindcore or opera - it's a delicate, little thing, and everything shows in it. Not everyone will notice all the things that show, but they could if they wanted to. Our voices, like our fingerprints, are totally unique. The shape of our mouths, the way our tongues move, our lung capacity, the cavities in our heads and how clogged up our sinuses are -- all these gross, biological traits make our voices ours. I have permanent scar tissue on my vocal folds from making myself throw up when I was a teenager, making my voice less gentle than it once could have been. It is hard for me to do proper, diaphragmatic breathing because I learned very young to hold my stomach in, and never unlearned it. I didn't take care of my voice after I was about 11 years old, until I was about 26.
Taking care of the thing you love most means risking finding out it's rotten inside. Finding out you totally suck and why were you ever trying? It means saying to yourself: I have this thing and I want it to be okay, so it deserves my attention. How embarrassing! We were raised not to make a big deal out of anything we weren't sure we could succeed at, and success had a very vaguely defined, high bar. My sister got a story published in Cricket Magazine when she was like, 8 years old, and our mother was very disappointed in the story's lack of originality. It didn't go up on the refrigerator, or become a part of family lore - it just got buried in a pile of burdensome papers, or possibly thrown away. Or maybe my sister kept it somewhere, hidden along with other parts of herself she couldn't quite shut the door on, despite lack of encouragement. I should ask her.
I don't regret what I have done with my voice, there's no point to that. I don't know what would have happened if my parents had allowed me to move to New York, like I begged them to, when I was a kid, for voice lessons and Broadway auditions. How should I know? I know that my music teachers always found me, sooner or later, singing well in the group, sort of scared of singing alone. I know in some families singing is a comfortable group activity, where you aren't expected to prove something, where showing off annoying harmonies is a fun a part of the game. In our family this was not the case. Even when I was very, very little, and hadn't yet decided I would never be a pop star, I knew that singing -- "really singing" -- was something I had to do in private.
Once, I called in to the am radio advice show i listened to every night -- TalkNet (We Care) -- and asked about getting over stage fright. I remember feeling like a faker for even calling (mostly I just wanted to be on the radio). For one thing, I didn't have stage fright. I could do anything. But on the other hand, I knew the most terrifying thing in the world to me would be singing for one person, or two -- worst of all, my family. Ironically, the advice I was given was to practice singing for a small audience -- my sisters or parents -- and then working my way up to a big crowd. I remember thinking that was the advice a normal child would need.
Singing for my family was like the absolute worst nightmare imaginable. At school, I could play expert, like I did with everything I liked, and teach kids all the parts to my favorite musicals, moving adeptly back and forth from the Christine role to the Phantom role to accommodate the other kids' vocal ranges. (Or, my 8 year old determination of their vocal ranges, anyway.) I could 'explain' the nuances of pop music that most kids my age had never even heard - I was in charge. At home, with my family? I fantasized that if I just practiced alone enough, one day someone would notice I could really sing, and I wouldn't have to explain anything. But until that day, it wasn't something I wanted to do in front of any of them.
Riot Grrrl, for me, was both an opportunity to embrace the ragged edges of my voice and my self, and to express rage in a fairly straightforward way: screaming. It was about giving up on being a SINGER, as I had imagined it when I was young. It makes me sad for my kid-self, when I look back at it, because while giving up on bleaching my hair and singing vapid love songs is all fine and good, it was also giving up on a different dream, a whole world of possibilities, and a kind of vulnerability. It was, like the choice to just accept that I was 'bad' and not worry about it and fuck everyone who can't deal with it, a survival strategy that worked, but required serious loss. So, when I was 13, I made a choice about who I was - what kind of singer, what kind of person - embraced some important parts of who I had been, and threw out some. I grew up; I hardened.
It's fine and good to be tough. It gets you through lots of things. It can also be boring, depressing, defeating, and lonely. As I've learned to care for my voice, having run it into the ground on occasion, I've found that I can't just be tough, and be the kind of singer I want to be. Nuanced expression requires emotional range that you can't fake. Literally, to sing in certain ways requires relaxing the tough parts, thinning the scar tissue. So my voice betrays both the confidence I hear so much about from others, as well as all of its brokenness.
Belting is easy - I can adapt my high school singing style into a powerful belt, though it's less screamy than it once was, and hopefully more in tune. Singing softly has always been hard, since I gave up on being a SINGER. When I sing softly I feel certain my voice will break, and it reminds me of my failure to sing like a Disney girl, whereas when I'm belting, I always feel strong - even though it sometimes becomes physically painful. Pain is normal, a normal price for honest emotional expression, and perhaps a punishment I accepted when I gave up on being that other kind of SINGER.
The biggest challenge of all for me, is not seeing belting and gentler singing as two completely distinct acts. Creating a through path from one to the other is what I've worked on the most on this past tour, a thing that has felt utterly impossible in the past.Showing the continuity from one kind of singing to another feels like exposing this entire lifetime of trauma expressed through and about singing. Bringing together these parts I've tried so hard to keep separate for my own sanity -- each with their own bundle of emotional tangents affixed -- is like allowing myself to be both confident and terrified, *on a stage*. I actually love that feeling, because it's so full of life. Like last night when Naomi dumped a bunch of legos on the floor and it filled me with anxiety -- don't put them away, I'm very curious about this feeling! Do I feel like I'm going to get punished now? Or just that something impossible is maybe possible? Or that my presence will ruin everything? My buttons don't get pushed very easily, and I like finding out what happens when they do, so I do it to myself on stage, even though probably nobody else is aware of it. It feels safer there, then say, in a room with 2 people.
--------------------
*OUCH!: "You know what sucks? That those stupid, round hats teeny-boppers (New Kids on the Block, Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, Mayim Bialik and friends) wore in 1988 are now apparently back in style. We had such a hat in the late 80s, and to further accentuate our pubescent awkwardness we cut the top off so that our pony tail could sprout through, a wilted flower of hair spritzed to life with a bottle LA Looks hairspray that we kept in our Kaboodle. That hat was ugly then, and it’s even uglier now - so why then is Ashlee Simpson shoving one on top of her head?" (From TheFabLife.com)
I never had a pretty voice. (The first few times someone at shul commented on my beautiful voice, I thought they must be mistaken, hearing some pretty girl nearby and thinking it was me.) Given that weird, arrested innocence sound that all Disney heroines have, I had an uphill battle before me if I wanted to be a real singer. At times, I worked hard at feigning the 'goodness' that went along with singerdom in my mind. I tried to do things real singers must do, like wash my hair 2x a day, attempt to wear clean white tee-shirts, and reorganize my body fat distribution. My inevitable failures in these areas sealed the deal: i could never be a SINGER. Strangely, typically, I had a simultaneous un-crushable will to become a singer, even if I had to modify the fantasy completely.
It's interesting that all of one's insecurities and failures or perceived failures relative to oppressive norms are easily attached to our deepest desires. This isn't news, of course. We take in these racist, sexist, transphobic, fatphobic, ableist norms, and our sense of possibility and potential are appropriately circumscribed in our minds. Ah, colonization. But of course, since colonization seeks to curtail and de-legitimize desire, I didn't tend to fixate on my in/ability to be, say, an astronaut. Being a singer was my holy grail, and even as a middle class white girl whose parents paid for music lessons and music camp - I felt confident I could not be the thing I wanted to be, at least, in the way I wanted to be it.
Singing is the most moving and vulnerable thing I do. Sometimes I think it's my only release valve, the only thing ensuring my rage and bile don't boil over and kill everyone. When I was little, and dreamed about being something I have since rejected (a pretty Broadway lady or pop star who sang pretty songs about highly unreal situations, such as the need to "shake your love" or perhaps, escape to a castle on a cloud), I didn't know how to use it that way. I just tried to conform my desires to a standard I was struggling to even identify. Punk rock proved a mixed bag for me. It gave me space to reject the "pretty voice" I couldn't find in myself, and space to purge adolescent feelings through song. On the other hand, I chose it over pursuing vocal training, and in so doing, rejected the part of myself that wanted to take good care of this thing I had - both the gift and the desire.
A voice is a delicate thing. I don't care if you're singing grindcore or opera - it's a delicate, little thing, and everything shows in it. Not everyone will notice all the things that show, but they could if they wanted to. Our voices, like our fingerprints, are totally unique. The shape of our mouths, the way our tongues move, our lung capacity, the cavities in our heads and how clogged up our sinuses are -- all these gross, biological traits make our voices ours. I have permanent scar tissue on my vocal folds from making myself throw up when I was a teenager, making my voice less gentle than it once could have been. It is hard for me to do proper, diaphragmatic breathing because I learned very young to hold my stomach in, and never unlearned it. I didn't take care of my voice after I was about 11 years old, until I was about 26.
Taking care of the thing you love most means risking finding out it's rotten inside. Finding out you totally suck and why were you ever trying? It means saying to yourself: I have this thing and I want it to be okay, so it deserves my attention. How embarrassing! We were raised not to make a big deal out of anything we weren't sure we could succeed at, and success had a very vaguely defined, high bar. My sister got a story published in Cricket Magazine when she was like, 8 years old, and our mother was very disappointed in the story's lack of originality. It didn't go up on the refrigerator, or become a part of family lore - it just got buried in a pile of burdensome papers, or possibly thrown away. Or maybe my sister kept it somewhere, hidden along with other parts of herself she couldn't quite shut the door on, despite lack of encouragement. I should ask her.
I don't regret what I have done with my voice, there's no point to that. I don't know what would have happened if my parents had allowed me to move to New York, like I begged them to, when I was a kid, for voice lessons and Broadway auditions. How should I know? I know that my music teachers always found me, sooner or later, singing well in the group, sort of scared of singing alone. I know in some families singing is a comfortable group activity, where you aren't expected to prove something, where showing off annoying harmonies is a fun a part of the game. In our family this was not the case. Even when I was very, very little, and hadn't yet decided I would never be a pop star, I knew that singing -- "really singing" -- was something I had to do in private.
Once, I called in to the am radio advice show i listened to every night -- TalkNet (We Care) -- and asked about getting over stage fright. I remember feeling like a faker for even calling (mostly I just wanted to be on the radio). For one thing, I didn't have stage fright. I could do anything. But on the other hand, I knew the most terrifying thing in the world to me would be singing for one person, or two -- worst of all, my family. Ironically, the advice I was given was to practice singing for a small audience -- my sisters or parents -- and then working my way up to a big crowd. I remember thinking that was the advice a normal child would need.
Singing for my family was like the absolute worst nightmare imaginable. At school, I could play expert, like I did with everything I liked, and teach kids all the parts to my favorite musicals, moving adeptly back and forth from the Christine role to the Phantom role to accommodate the other kids' vocal ranges. (Or, my 8 year old determination of their vocal ranges, anyway.) I could 'explain' the nuances of pop music that most kids my age had never even heard - I was in charge. At home, with my family? I fantasized that if I just practiced alone enough, one day someone would notice I could really sing, and I wouldn't have to explain anything. But until that day, it wasn't something I wanted to do in front of any of them.
Riot Grrrl, for me, was both an opportunity to embrace the ragged edges of my voice and my self, and to express rage in a fairly straightforward way: screaming. It was about giving up on being a SINGER, as I had imagined it when I was young. It makes me sad for my kid-self, when I look back at it, because while giving up on bleaching my hair and singing vapid love songs is all fine and good, it was also giving up on a different dream, a whole world of possibilities, and a kind of vulnerability. It was, like the choice to just accept that I was 'bad' and not worry about it and fuck everyone who can't deal with it, a survival strategy that worked, but required serious loss. So, when I was 13, I made a choice about who I was - what kind of singer, what kind of person - embraced some important parts of who I had been, and threw out some. I grew up; I hardened.
It's fine and good to be tough. It gets you through lots of things. It can also be boring, depressing, defeating, and lonely. As I've learned to care for my voice, having run it into the ground on occasion, I've found that I can't just be tough, and be the kind of singer I want to be. Nuanced expression requires emotional range that you can't fake. Literally, to sing in certain ways requires relaxing the tough parts, thinning the scar tissue. So my voice betrays both the confidence I hear so much about from others, as well as all of its brokenness.
Belting is easy - I can adapt my high school singing style into a powerful belt, though it's less screamy than it once was, and hopefully more in tune. Singing softly has always been hard, since I gave up on being a SINGER. When I sing softly I feel certain my voice will break, and it reminds me of my failure to sing like a Disney girl, whereas when I'm belting, I always feel strong - even though it sometimes becomes physically painful. Pain is normal, a normal price for honest emotional expression, and perhaps a punishment I accepted when I gave up on being that other kind of SINGER.
The biggest challenge of all for me, is not seeing belting and gentler singing as two completely distinct acts. Creating a through path from one to the other is what I've worked on the most on this past tour, a thing that has felt utterly impossible in the past.Showing the continuity from one kind of singing to another feels like exposing this entire lifetime of trauma expressed through and about singing. Bringing together these parts I've tried so hard to keep separate for my own sanity -- each with their own bundle of emotional tangents affixed -- is like allowing myself to be both confident and terrified, *on a stage*. I actually love that feeling, because it's so full of life. Like last night when Naomi dumped a bunch of legos on the floor and it filled me with anxiety -- don't put them away, I'm very curious about this feeling! Do I feel like I'm going to get punished now? Or just that something impossible is maybe possible? Or that my presence will ruin everything? My buttons don't get pushed very easily, and I like finding out what happens when they do, so I do it to myself on stage, even though probably nobody else is aware of it. It feels safer there, then say, in a room with 2 people.
--------------------
*OUCH!: "You know what sucks? That those stupid, round hats teeny-boppers (New Kids on the Block, Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, Mayim Bialik and friends) wore in 1988 are now apparently back in style. We had such a hat in the late 80s, and to further accentuate our pubescent awkwardness we cut the top off so that our pony tail could sprout through, a wilted flower of hair spritzed to life with a bottle LA Looks hairspray that we kept in our Kaboodle. That hat was ugly then, and it’s even uglier now - so why then is Ashlee Simpson shoving one on top of her head?" (From TheFabLife.com)