For a balanced perspective, or at least one that could conceivably be called delicately off-, I should also touch on the other main topic of this blog: so here is my history with music, its place in my life then and now, and (an overview of) the way my mental illness and my musical life wind around each other.
As you may be completely unsurprised to learn, music has always played an important role in my life. In the earlier days, a lot of it was church-based – choirs, musicals, hymns, etc. – but it’s always around (isn’t it?). I have so many fond memories, most especially of performing with my family in the musicals my aunt directed. Then when I was 11, I suddenly and unexpectedly started projecting, and things changed. I started getting attention for my voice. I got the lead in a church musical – not one of my aunt’s musicals but one at the church my parents and siblings and I usually attended. (I remember exactly one of the songs and still sing it sometimes. I learned how to fake snore for the role, which was difficult because even then I struggled to do things I didn’t already know how to do in front of other people.)
Direct road from this musical to joining my first audition choir, and if I recall correctly this was alongside my childhood best friend who was in the process of losing interest in me at that point. After a few years I found that the choir just didn’t suit me that well, though looking back I can appreciate that it was a good experience (let me tell you, Choir Camp was a lot less lonely than Brownie Camp). Actually, it might just be that depression was starting to rear its ugly head at that point in my life. Interestingly, I currently have not one but two (I think?) Facebook friends who I originally met in this choir. I say “Facebook friends” because I am always very nervous to apply the unmoderated title of “friend” to someone who hasn’t directly told me it applies.
I think the next time of interest, musically, would be high school. I was in a lot of choirs in high school. Four, actually: choir, jazz choir, the girls’ choir, and even for a while, the boys’ choir. I didn’t share the love of the choir director that most of the school seemed to, but choirs were really important to me throughout high school. When I wasn’t spending lunch hour in rehearsals, I often spent it holed up alone in an empty classroom or the basement. The school musicals were largely less successful for me. I ignored two of them and missed so many rehearsals for another that I just… didn’t appear in the first act. But Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty, in which I was cast as a Maiden, sticks out as something magical. Lip-synching backstage with a friend and actually getting included in the Warm Fuzzies to some degree really meant something.
To be honest, I don’t remember exactly when I started private voice lessons. My first teacher made me so miserable that one day I just walked out of my lesson and never looked back. Teacher two was more my speed, and carried me through a first-place pop and second-place musical theatre result in local competitions and on to my audition for vocal performance at university. Teacher three was assigned when I got into that vocal performance program.
That first university degree was when everything started to really fall apart. I was alternating between episodes of depression and hypomania, with anxiety thrown into the mix. There were some wonderful things that happened then, not least of which was meeting – and, bonus, singing with! – Adam for the first time. I met so many wonderful people thanks to another choir (sensing a theme?) called Tone Cluster which I joined when I was looking for an alternative to the university choir for my degree requirements. And I did make some friends actually at school. But by the time I made it through the program in definitely-more-years-than-it’s-supposed-to-take, I was kind of broken. Sometime in there I left the church (can’t say exactly when that was, but it was… complicated… I will say that being an atheist was a factor, but so were church politics).
After my graduating recital, I stopped performing, and eventually I more or less stopped singing altogether. My mood was very low, and losing that creative outlet due to a lack of motivation didn’t help.
When I tried to go back to it, stage fright hit me hard and for the first time in my life. I had never, never worried about performing before. It didn’t help that my voice wouldn’t do what I wanted it to do. I tried to join a community choir, but it ended (very literally) in tears. And I think I blamed the tears, out loud, on “all the people,” which sounds very rude and not at all like what I intended to say; I was overwhelmed just being out of the house and around mostly strangers.
I realized that before I could sing around other people again, I had to sing around one other person: a voice teacher. Cue the fourth teacher.
Teacher four? I can’t say enough about her. She very gently brought me from feeling like I didn’t have a voice anymore to… well, here.
As far as writing music, I had only done a little of that before university. See an example of preteen me’s angst below.
Life is a joke
My life is a joke
Sometimes I wonder but I can’t figure it out
And what’s love all about
Now where have I heard that beforeI tell you I love you
-me, age tween, “I Hold On”
I feel like part of you
You smile and my heart’s gone… again
That’s why I hold on
Since I started lessons with teacher four, I’ve become far more prolific. I write a range of music that often has a bit of a Broadway flavour, whether it’s otherwise influenced by rock, pop, country, or jazz (and yes, that’s more or less the broad categories you’ll find me playing in).
I’m now, in fact, on teacher five, as four has taken a step back from teaching for the moment. I was so sad to lose her as a teacher, but the new one is really amazing too. So I look forward to the next chapter of learning about my voice, songwriting, and performing.
Well, that’s about it for a quick history of my musical life (excluding piano lessons). Come back next week for something probably at least a little bit different.