Here's To Your Illusions
How I'm learning to sound like myself.
Show prep has taken over my life, and that means I am useless for anything else. As my Instagram followers may have seen, my solo evening “Ingenue You When” returns to NYC on April 9, this time at Green Room 42 (there's a livestream option too) and as usual I’m nervous and scared and wondering what in the world I’ve undertaken. In other words, I’m smack-dab in the middle of the process part and it feels like time is rushing away.
I practice a lot. I also worry a lot - the two seem to go hand-in-hand for me. It goes kind of like this:
“There’s only a month left.”
“I’ll never be ready.”
“Better practice.”
Spends 10 minutes warming up, trying not to think, singing the opening of the show. What was the middle thing?
“Oh geez, I don’t even have a place to stay yet…” Panicked, runs to computer. It’s also my brother-in-law’s birthday, I don’t know what I’m wearing on the 9th, I haven’t called my mom, and and and…
Back to practicing. Sort of.
I couldn’t tell you how it’s going; if there’s progress I wouldn’t know about it because real life intrudes every few seconds, it seems, and I end up feeling I need those seconds back. Oh I know real life won’t stop rearing her frustrating head, but this practice thing needs a little push towards progress.
You may remember I gave my students an assignment at the beginning of the semester to record their practice in little bits to jump past their fear of listening to themselves. I promised that I would do it with them because I hate it, too, and so I have; procedure is warm-up as you normally would and then sing a short phrase. When you feel brave, listen back, re-do the phrase. So here’s a glimpse into …progress, sort of, like in math class when you show your work. This is a tiny, out-of-context clip of “Here’s To Your Illusions” from the musical Flahooley (because yes there is a musical called Flahooley).
Listen, if you please:
I heard this clip and thought hmmmm - it’s ok, a little casual-sounding, I don’t know what the point is. It’s tossed off, not considered. Not particularly well-done. And I don’t really sound much like myself.
Here’s the second time through.
I will often mistake wanting to seem effortless or casual with singing casually. The opposite is required. Lyrics are words and must be clear but I forget that it’s my instrument that conveys those words and to do it honestly, I have to show up to the song with my whole voice, my whole self. And that will be when I sound like me - not good or bad, necessarily, but like me. This lyric by Yip Harburg: here’s to all your dreams, here’s to your illusions, requires care, even if you don’t know where it’s going or what came before. To me, it’s weighted: hope and melancholy. Treating the words and the musical line with care, stepping into them fully and with your whole voice creates a sound with heart and clarity and truth, whatever that truth happens to be. And if you’re lucky, it will sound effortless, too.
At least, that’s the idea. But let’s be clear: I’m pretty aware that when I’m too careful or withheld my sound gets fussy and my intention gets lost; also aware that I approach speech-like singing - that’s making sure sung text actually sounds like words - in that overly casual way. I just don’t always know when I’ve gone too far in either direction in the moment. But I’m working on it; I doubt I’ll ever stop taking lessons, or, miracle of miracles, using the voice memos app on my phone. It’s a balancing act, like my life, with all its details and vulnerabilities and foibles, the to-do list a mile long and unanswered messages; parents, husband, son; mundane dinner. It’s all part of me. Learning to sound like myself is part of my living, with all the living that it entails.
Because that’s really the point, isn’t? To share ourselves so we’re less lonely, to say we are less different from another than we think we are. To hopefully make a little joy. The act of making music is inherently generous. Sure, it’s brave, it takes hard work, but it’s more than that. It’s really an act of giving, it’s hopeful. It says “Here. This thing I made that is part of me - it's for you."
The best gifts show care and consideration - they’re given with thought and with truth. I don’t always like how I sound, even when I do get the show-up-with-your-whole-voice thing sort of right. But that part’s not really for me to judge. It’s for me to care and to consider, and then to give it away in the hope that it will be accepted in the spirit it was given, with no expectation of anything else. Showing up as you, fully - that’s what counts.
"There's a point...when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities."
-Ursula K. Le Guin, brilliant author of “A Wrinkle In Time” and more…
If you’d like to hear the song in context and the rest of its lovely lyrics, consider coming to the show, in person or online. I’d love to have you there.
I still have no idea what I’m going to wear, though…
And as a postscript, here’s the video from the performance: