I did it! I did it!” my wife screamed as she came crashing through our bedroom door with tears in her eyes. “I finally made the connection!”
For the last hour she had been running through some scales and arias. I was reading an interesting book and had not really been listening, so it surprised me when she came into the room so abruptly.
“What connection?” I asked.
“I’ve been singing for the past twenty years,” she said, “but not until today have I understood what everyone has been talking about. The connection, the support–I finally feel it!” she said excitedly. “Come in here and listen to this!”
She grabbed my hand, pulled me into the living room and plucked out a note on the piano. “Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore . . .”
I smiled as I listened to a big, beautiful sound fill the room. I always knew she was a good singer, but something big had just happened. The breath control, the spin, the support and pitch were all working together to produce a sound I’d never heard before.
“Whoa, where did that come from?” I asked as she finished the last note of the aria.
“Right here!” she said, as she took my hand and put it on her solar plexus, all the while literally jumping with joy.
I congratulated her and told her that I always knew she had it in her. That same connection had come somewhat recently for me, too, about five years earlier, and I knew exactly what she was feeling: the sense that everything in your body is corresponding in complete unison to create the ideal sound. It’s a feeling you can’t read about or intellectualize. It’s the inner you expressing itself through this beautiful instrument which is your voice.
I started thinking of the whole process that had evolved through the years to finally make my connection.
It began when I started to integrate the spiritual concepts my wife and I often discussed into every aspect of my life. Reading and re-reading inspirational books from both eastern and western traditions, I gradually let go of my childhood image of God as a white-bearded father figure and began to experience God (or whatever you choose to call It) as the divine presence within me, waiting to be expressed through me. This was a real mind shift, a revelation. Knowing that I was no longer alone made me more confident in myself.
One important step in my journey has been learning to forgive, to clean up petty grudges and other issues that have prevented me from moving forward. My progress as an artist had often been derailed by what Neale David Walsch in Conversations with God describes as the “initiating thought”–the first thought related to a new experience. My first negative initiating thought about being a musician occurred during a performance when I was six. My mother, right in the middle of my first piano recital, shook her head in disapproval and “tsk’ed” her tongue when I made a mistake. From that point on I was nervous in front of a crowd, always awaiting their disapproval. I then realized that just because I had reinforced that initiating thought all my life didn’t mean I had to continue this destructive attitude. I forgave my mother and then forgave myself.
Forgiveness has also enabled me to be more supportive and happy about other people’s success instead of negative, jealous, or cynical. Through prayer and meditation, I continue to open myself to the Source within and am more able to see the good in everyone. In place of desperation is a secure belief that there are plenty of performing opportunities and success to go around. By changing the way I look at things, I allow myself to open up to the endless possibilities inherent in us all, therefore changing my voice and my life. I no longer just react to what happens in my life–I consciously create my life. By prayer and meditation I try to let God’s love and grace express itself through me, as me.
One day as I warmed up and sang through a few arias, it felt like every cell in my body was happy! The vibration and resonance made me feel alive on a new level. The art of singing now seems more significant, a spiritual event in which, in the words of Joachim Ernst-Berendt, “audible music reflects the inaudible.”
By opening my heart I have welcomed new ideas and insights about technique. Auditioning is now a completely different experience–a joyous one–in which I share my voice not as a selfish act but as a natural outpouring of something greater than myself.
I am lucky to be with a woman who has long been on a similar path. In the weeks following her vocal breakthrough, I gave more thought to the bigger story behind discovering such a connection. It’s the inner connection. A gift of love.
