Saturday, September 24, 2011

No. 157: To the Tune of Transformation

What if learning to sing is a process of transformation?

What if we singing students were taught that our voices, our True Voices, have qualities which mirror our True Selves: Courage, Strength, Uniqueness, Honesty, Purity, Integrity, Light, Love...?

What if these qualities, when we are guided on our individual paths to singing Truth, stream from our own expression of Voice, from our center, from the core of what drives us to learn, yet unborn and unrealized?

And what if these qualities were given each a different, radiant color that saturates our entire Being with its visual vibration as we learn to see it until, singing-rainbow-artists turned inside out, we become walking murals of Human Experience Who can allow any and all music made for our infinitely variable canvases, for our Selves, to come to life...?

What if...?

Thursday, September 22, 2011

No. 156: Do you love Voices?...

Do you love Voice? or just "singing"?

Could there be a danger in separating the two?

Voice implies infinite potential.  It gives space for asking questions, like "What, where, when, why, how...is (my) Voice?"

"Singing" brings with it all sorts of cultural conditioning and judgments, fear and disbelief. It implies a yes or no question: can I?  or can't I?  could I? or couldn't I?--or the even more destructive: should I?  or shouldn't I?

When we think of what we are doing not as "singing", but as "voicing" or "giving Voice to who we are" or "Becoming Voice", we open up a world of possibility.  We also open up an infinite space for Voice to breathe, to grow, and to strengthen in safety, honor, and respect.

With this perspective, there is no "us" and "them".  All of life becomes one radiant, vibrating mass of Love, with all the room we could ever need to be, and to become.

Monday, September 12, 2011

No. 155: Freedom's Challenge

The reality of life is, we are free.  We can achieve awareness of this reality by following the path toward finding true, organic Voice, which is, by nature, also free.  But will we, with the awareness of freedom granted us through the Classical School of Singing, step up and identify ourselves, completely, with the free nature we find in organic Voice?  If we can answer this challenge, opera, and indeed all singing, will move beyond simple surface entertainment, annoyance, expendability, or frivolity in society and in education.  We will see respect, honor, love, and acknowledgement of the organic Voice as a vehicle to change the world, a way to shift how humankind perceives itself.  This art form of singing, which we have created, and which, in small pockets still maintains its absolute integrity, reflects who we truly are.  Will we have the courage to speak, and sing, this truth?