TRANSCRIPT
I’ve noticed a new change in myself just in the past year or so that my singing voice has changed. My speaking voice perhaps, perhaps it’s changed but I don’t really notice it but I see it in my singing voice that my voice is fuller when I sing. I’m able to hold notes longer. My voice is richer. But those are external ways to describe it. The way I feel it internally is that my voice is now more me. My singing voice is more connected to the depths of me. I have recordings of myself from 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago even, almost 35 years ago. And what I notice is that my voice was tighter. It was more squeezed. It was more constricted. And it stayed that way for a long time. And I could fake it. I could sing in a deeper and richer way but it never felt right. It never felt sincere. And what was important to me when I sang 30, 35 years ago and still is important to me now in my mid-50s is that my singing voice had to feel sincere for me. It had to feel connected to who I was, to my authentic self. And what I’ve come to realize is that my authentic real self 20, 30, 35 years ago was much more constricted.
And so what I’m getting at with all this, the reason that I’m making this video and putting it on this channel is that my changing voice is a sign to me that I have changed, that I have grown, that I’ve connected more to me on the inside. And this is just one reflection of it. I’ve seen other that tell me that I’ve changed, that I’ve grown, different thoughts that I have, different insights that I have, different ways that I relate to people, different dreams that I have, different insights I have into myself and into others, different ways in which I trust myself better, my intuition is healthier now, my ability to defend myself is better. Now these are all different ways that I know that I’ve changed but this voice thing it’s just the newest one that I realized it and it’s so hopeful to me because on this healing path, the path of healing from trauma, healing from childhood traumas, I lost a lot. Well, I lost my connection with my family system and my parents. I had to let them go to be able to move forward in my life. I had to free myself from the hooks that they had in me, in my throat. I lost my inheritance. I lost my connection with my greater family system. I have experienced a lot of disapproval from others for having broken away from my parents. I’m certainly much less normal because I’ve become more healed and more real.
We live in such a fake, sick world that what I’ve seen, what I’ve observed in so many others and in my own past is that when I was more troubled, confused, shut down, traumatized, dissociated, split off I was more acceptable to the world, more acceptable to the rules of the norm, more acceptable to teachers and conventionally accepted leaders. Probably would have been much easier for me to have a normal career and make a lot of money and be conventionally lauded and respected and had I made a YouTube channel then I probably would have gotten a lot less personal criticism. It probably would have been a lot more boring. It certainly would have been a lot less helpful to a lot fewer people but it would have been less stressful for me for sure just to make an average boring YouTube channel talking about who knows what. So yeah, I’ve sacrificed a lot and for that reason the little indications that I’ve grown things like my voice becoming richer and deeper bigger more beautiful even. That’s very hopeful and pleasure producing for me.
But let me analyze it a little bit more. Why? Why has my voice gotten bigger and richer and more sonorous when I sing? Well I really connect it specifically to breaking away from my father. When I was a child my father was considered by himself and by others to have a beautiful voice. He had a deep, rich baritone and he could hold his tones long and there was something beautiful about his voice in a way. But I remember when he would sing, he would switch very quickly. He would start to sing and then suddenly he would it was like almost like on an organ when you would add an extra special something. He would do he’d start singing like this and suddenly he would go like this. And I remember at a certain point in my life as a teenager, it was when I first realized it that it was fake. Yes, people considered it beautiful but there was a fakeness to it. He had to put some special artificial lens. Some it was almost like he was singing into a machine that made him sound bigger than he was and this was what people considered to be beautiful. And that affected me because when I started singing, especially once I started playing guitar when I was 20 years old, I didn’t want to add that special fake addition to my voice that my dad did and in a way it was like I stubbornly insisted on having a voice that reflected the truth of inner me and the truth of inner me was I was pretty screwed up then. I was pretty lost and constricted and split off from myself and even though I loved to sing and I wrote a lot of songs and I did my best to express myself through my lyrics and my voice I was constricted and I wasn’t going to change that damn it because that’s how I felt I was and that’s who I was and in a way it gave me an honest mirror into me.
And then there’s another thing about my relationship with my dad. It is that my dad from the time I was very young was terribly threatened by my voice. And here I use the word voice a little differently, metaphorically even. My dad was threatened by me being honest, threatened my by me being real because my realness despised him, despised the harm he was causing. My dad used his voice to attack me repeatedly, to say horrible things to me and to put me down and to squelch me and make me small to rage at me, to humiliate me. And I did. I shrunk and I became small to become more acceptable to him. I shriveled away and when I sang it reflected this. And what I see now all these decades later in many ways decades away from him, 16 years since I’ve seen him or spoken with him, heard his voice I’m more free now and my voice, my singing voice, probably even my regular spoken voice reflects this.
I know this also, my thoughts are more free which is why I can speak so much more fluently about these deep and real topics. When I was younger it was like my dad’s hands, his metaphorical hands, had been so embedded in my psyche that they came out and they constricted me. I couldn’t even speak the truth. What I could say is my dad loved me. He loves me more than anyone. He I even believed in in a way what he told me that he loved me unconditionally. It was such a lie. And yet, I wanted to believe it. I wanted to believe that I had a dad who loved me. I idealized my dad. And my mom, too. I idealized my parents my parents’ relationship. I idealized my family system. And the consequence of that was that I devalued myself. And my voice reflected that. How could I be an authentic person who sang freely?
Now, it’s interesting. I watched a video of Aretha Franklin yesterday. An old video of her singing and this purity of tone came out of her. And does that mean that she was uh healthy emotional person, an emotionally healed person? I don’t think so at all. I think the evidence is well, in a lot of ways pretty opposite that she was probably very emotionally unhealthy, probably very traumatized. But I think with some people, they can have certain split-off sides of themself that somehow retain a psychologically split-off connection with their true self and can be free in spite of how traumatized they are. I think that was not the case with me and my singing voice. I’ve known other people directly, very personally, who have beautiful natural singing voices. Not like my dad, where it’s an artificial put-on. Maybe he had a beautiful voice in a way, but he put on all this extra that made it more beautiful and acceptable to society. But I’ve known some people who have naturally beautiful singing voices who are also very screwed-up people. And it’s like somehow their singing voice escaped the trauma. Or maybe even sing in beautiful ways in spite of the trauma. Somehow that part of them stayed alive. And I think that’s true for all of us to one degree or other. Certain parts of our personality, certain parts of our expressions, can stay alive no matter how bad it is, how bad our histories are, how traumatized we are, how screwed-up and harmed and pained and split-off we are. It’s true for me. No matter how bad things were going in my life as a kid, there were parts of me that remained beautiful and alive and bright, lovely. My voice wasn’t one of those parts. And so now I can watch my voice heal and grow and use it as an indicator of my ongoing process. And I value that. And I also wonder how it will continue to develop and become more full and more real as I grow older and continue to heal.