In a recent conversation with one of my coaches, she asked me: How do you want to show up? In the world. In your own life. How are you NOT showing up yet that you’d like to change? What’s are the REAL reasons you find that difficult?
I was surprised at what I wrote and how quickly and passionately it poured out of my fingers:
How do I want to show up?
Big. Loud. Tender. Passionate. In my questions. In what I love. In sharing my vision and experience of this gift of sense and sound and passion and desire, the experience of humanity.
I want to show up as a woman who tells stories with music. A woman who creates the words and music that open a door for the power and the achingly beautiful humanity of the human voice – in every way it speaks.
Because …
“Once you’ve heard the angels sing, no matter where or when.
Your heart will beat at the walls of your life longing to hear it again.”
(a line from my show ‘What the Hell are you doing in the Waiting Room for Heaven??’)
Because … the human voice speaking passion, tenderness, longing, is the most beautiful, heartbreaking, meaningful thing I’ve ever experienced.
The human voice speaking passion, tenderness, longing, is the most beautiful, heartbreaking, meaningful thing I know Share on XIt defines the experience of life to me.
And everything I do – performing, composing, coaching – is to make a place, a way, a path, a doorway, a vehicle to hear that true voice – of myself, of my students, the symphonies and chamber ensembles I play with, the individual players – the instrument itself and everything I touch. I mean, yes, even my pots and pans. And the fence posts I run my hands over when I’m walking through my neighborhood.
So how do I want to show up?
- First of all: right in the MIDDLE of that voice, in every meaning the ‘middle’ has
- Second: As the one who can call that voice forth – from myself, from others
I admit it: I want the world to sing to me. I want to hear the world singing to me.
In truth, I want to command it to sing, like a conductor who pulls forth an impossible crescendo, like a child asking to be sung to, like a day that’s so beautiful my father bursts into song.
I admit it: I want the world to sing to me. I want to HEAR the world singing to ME. Share on XBecause, for me, the human voice speaking the truth of love, or pain, or longing or joy is the greatest human experience there is.
AND BY THE WAY … I mean the human voice as it exists as the expression of human character, not as a sound, although I also love the sound. But if I were deaf, it would still be the human voice I love and experience.
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Am now totally embarrassed to post this — but THIS is how I want to show up. OWNING what I love, OWNING my passion, whether it embarrasses me and others or not, whether it’s well-honed or not.
THIS is how I want to show up. OWNING what I love, OWNING my passion Share on XOwning it and proud of owning it, whatever others may think of it.
Standing in my ownership of what I love, like a pig stands ecstatic in a mud-hole, just because … I love what I love.
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