THE DOCTOR IS IN

RED HOT (OKAY, WARM PINK) MAMA

Monday night was my voice class performance. On Sunday three of my classmates—the ones I went to Maine with—and I held a marathon rehearsal. We ran through our individual songs several times; Beth, Antonietta and I rehearsed “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” and Florrie and I practiced “Sisters.” After each run-through, the “audience” (whoever wasn’t singing) gave the others feedback.

Everyone agreed that my voice and delivery were stronger than they’d ever been in class. But Beth said, “You’re still holding something back.”

“When we had that party in Maine,” she said, “and everybody was singing, I kept hearing this beautiful, clear, confident voice, and I’d turn around to see who it was—and it was always you.”

“Yeah, but I was drinking,” I told her. “That wasn’t really me.”

“The music isn’t in the wine,” she said. “It’s in you. Wine just relaxes you enough to let it come out. So just skip the wine, and relax and sing.”

We talked about what my friend Bill had said, about giving myself permission to be a “bad girl,” a “red hot mama.” “She’s in there,” my friends assured me. “We’ve heard her.”

On Monday, I swam for an hour and a half, in an effort to wear out any tension my body might be holding. I did breathing and vocal exercises. Ben and I practiced “Desperado” over and over. I did yoga and more breathing exercises. By the time I arrived at the studio for warm-ups, I was so relaxed I felt like a piece of overcooked spaghetti.

As I stood for my first number (our number; Ben backed me up on guitar and vocally), “Desperado,” I looked around the room at the dear friend who had come to hear all of my performances; at the classmates and teacher I’ve worked and struggled with and supported for over a year now; and at my son, who is becoming such an amazing musician and, even better, a really great person. What I felt wasn’t “bad girlness” or “red hotness”—it was love, mixed with a heightened awareness of shared vulnerability. I wasn't nervous at all, but I was suddenly afraid I’d break down as I sang about alienation and the futility of isolation and defenses.

I didn’t cry, but I poured all of my feelings into the song, and the response was enthusiastic (which it would have been if I’d fallen flat on my face—this is an extraordinarily supportive group—but people told me afterwards how moved they were). The rest of the songs—mine and others’—went really well. And I kept having that feeling of love mixed with tremendous sadness.

A few of us went out after the performance, including our teacher, Martha. People again said how “strong” my voice sounded. I was pleased to hear it, and I didn’t disagree—this is what I’ve been working toward, and I’ve been aware of real progress—but I felt the descriptor left something out. I said this to Martha. “It’s not that I don’t feel strong,” I told her, “but there’s something deeper going on that’s not strength, that has nothing to do with strength—that sometimes feels like the opposite, like I want to cry all the time.”

“You’re opening up,” she said. “That’s evident in the way you hold yourself, in the way you use your voice and your body. You’re feeling more and expressing what you feel.”

We talked a little about how singers whose voices we think of as “strong” have traditionally struggled with tremendous vulnerability. I thought about how Aaron Frankel had described singing in public as “the most naked you’ll ever be.”

I don’t intend to go the way of those great singers who crashed and burned. Neither my gift nor my personality is big or dramatic enough for that. But I have an enhanced understanding now of how singing, writing, any art that uses your whole self, can make you feel skinless, affected by everything—how important it is to nurture this condition, and, at the same time, how critical it is to protect this “skinless” self from the onslaughts of the everyday world. As George Eliot says, "If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence."

Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D.,is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself,she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity(Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog, and she is a regular monthly panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.

Comments

[M.J. Rose]

I've loved every second of you sharing all this with us. Is there a video of the performance. I'd love to see it and am so happy for you!

[DrSue]

MJ, thanks so much. There's no video of Monday night's performance, but our actual cabaret performance may be filmed, and if so I'll share it if it's not too embarrassing.