I wrote my first poem at around 12 years old. It was about a goldfish who was sad and lonely in his fishbowl. I loved writing poetry and songs as a child and an angsty teen.
I used words I didn’t understand at the time, like “assuage” and “caricature”. It was a time of unhinged, unbridled, pure, cringey, uninhibited creation.
When I was about 13, I wrote a song for The Parlotones. My mom knew someone who knew them, and I figured this was my in.
My mom would deliver my song lyrics, neatly handwritten on exam pad paper. The friend would be struck by their lyrical brilliance and wisdom and would hand them with haste to Kahn Morbee, the band’s lyricist and lead singer.
Kahn would be totally taken with my words and the song would be their next big hit.
Except, my mom never handed the lyrics to the friend. Worse, she lied to me that she did! Obviously, my child self was delusional. And yet, I miss this delusional, strong self-belief.
The song was written on the cusp of the development of self-consciousness. There was something pure and innocent in my desire to see my creations live outside myself and share them with others.
Music has a way of transmitting emotion in higher fidelity than any other medium. It enables you to feel things in your body, things there are no words for. The miracle of lyrics and sound coming together in vocals astonishes me.
At some point in 2022, waking up from a pandemic fog, my body started to feel compelled to sing.
Not only compelled to sing, but to find ways to express something. During the pandemic, it feels like I made myself small.
My life became about work and not much else. Working in the tech industry, I was expected to keep trucking along as if the world wasn’t falling apart around me.
It took all my strength to keep working. I worked and rested. Every day was the same, living in a state of repression and survival.
Since things have somewhat normalised, I feel I have started waking up. The person I have woken up to surprises me.
There is ugliness: I am sometimes angry, and sometimes avoidant, and my threat perception is sometimes unbelievably intense.
There is hope: COVID revealed how fragile everything is, and how everything is made up, so there is liberation in the idea that I can do whatever I want, within the boundaries of my privilege.
I can change careers again. I can work from anywhere, with reasonable Internet. I can make art and share it with others.
I can learn to sing and write songs with the shameless naivety I had at 12. I can explore myself with curiosity and without judgement, in theory.
I booked myself a private singing lesson. On the way to the lesson, I felt anxious. Fortunately, the instructor did not give me time to spiral in her presence. She jumped straight into the first exercise.
I hummed along to the piano with her, then did a few lip trills and some other strange but fun noises.
“You’re not tone-deaf, so that’s great,” she told me. The very low bar was cleared, but my singing is terrible.
She asked me for a song I like, and I sang it with the singer for two rounds. She loaded up the karaoke version. I started sweating.
I had to sing for this stranger as the only voice in the room. Not only that, I chose an emotional song that makes me want to cry. It was terrifying, but I did it!
Face me
Face me entirely
Tell me
Tell me what’s wrong here
I was singing these lyrics facing myself in a mirror in the studio, hearing my naked, trembling voice. I felt vulnerable. I also felt like there is something here, something I need to explore.
Something I need to be bad at for a long time until suddenly I’m not. Until my voice conveys emotion the way I want to express it.
The music I love most is music where the lyrics are embodied completely by the singer, where the self-consciousness of the individual drops for a moment and raw emotion pours out.
My vocal coach told me that vocals only work when the whole body is relaxed and open. The voice, with correct training, will flow out of you if you let it.
You need to get out of your own way for that to happen. So, this is my journey. I am getting out of my own way. I am finding my voice.
I am giving myself the freedom to express who I am.
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