Day before yesterday I was in one hell of a super cranky mood. Stalking through the streets of Midtown during the 5pm rush I could only chant to myself '17 days. 17 days. 17 days.' to stop myself from punching any unsuspecting street patron in the face. Anxiety and annoyance compounded with car horns, bodies not looking where they were going, bodies walking too slow, bodies standing chatting in the middle of the sidewalk, bodies, bodies, bodies. I was already in a bad mood and I was instantly getting one of my bouts of claustrophobia. Tension Tension Tension.
I was on my way to Brent's to record a song he'd asked me to sing on. Upon entering Brent's place he instantly launched into telling me about the song, playing bits of it and handing me sheet music. He gave me free reign to teach myself the tune. Sitting down at the keyboard and plucking/humming out the tune, my mind instantly focused on the task of song. It wasn't until twenty minutes later when we went into the other room to record and I had to sit in silence for a minute while he set everything up that I realized all of my anxiety and frustration and build up of my day was just...gone. I couldn't even remember what had been bothering me. It had been silently replaced by a stable and positive calm. All I had needed to do was sing for a few moments.
From the day I was born I was singing almost every moment I could. I would sing so loud sometimes that my mother would hear me in her car at the end of the driveway as she pulled in from work. It consumed me for years and I never thought a thing of it. I have a big voice and there was always so much space to fill it with in the air of Iowa. Shortly after I moved here I stopped singing. (which is hilarious because I moved here in part to pursue musical theatre) Unlike the grainbelt, New York felt like there was no space left to fill. Every space around me was already teeming with sound and noise. I was completely perplexed as to how to add to it. My song would become the background to the TV show my roommate was watching or the fight my upstairs neighbors were having. Every note from my mouth made me self conscious. So for the first time I swallowed it. The singing just stopped.
That was about the time I started getting terrible panic attacks for the first time in my life. I started battling anxiety and depression and couldn't find inspiration for anything. I never associated it with my loss of song until the February of 2009 when a friend asked me to record a line of a song for them. Sitting in my living room, a place I'd always found drab and never spent much time in, I set out to record the song. Once I let my voice free (for the first time in a long time) I felt this instant inspiring lightness, this rush of sheer joy shooting from my chest. I instantly rediscovered a limb that I never knew the purpose of in the past. A beautiful weapon for my happiness that I had been forced to neglect due my discomfort in my surroundings. How was I to know that singing was my major emotional healer? It had always been there, doing its work naturally without thought...until it wasn't.
Nowadays I always tell people that "I don't consider myself a singer in this phase of my life, but I am definitely a singer." Regardless of the fact that I can sing here now, I still rarely feel the moment arise when I can open up fully and unhindered and just belt the shit out of something. It's still not my norm.
I know that the living situation where I'm moving isn't all that different. It's still very urban and tightly knit, but I think the atmosphere will be one that brings my voice back to its full verve. It was always a way of life for me and after so many years of it being gone I feel like I'm just about ready to flex my rediscovered limb.
I think San Francisco is going to have to deal with the fact that I sing really really loud.
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