Thursday, August 27, 2009

Keeping My Light Under the Proverbial Bushel

I am a fence sitter, or at least that is a judgment of others that I have found to be true. Possessed of decent abilities in many areas, I have had a hard time making full commitments to many of my undertakings. Take, for instance, this blog. I have thought of writing a blog for a long time and now I am finally doing it, but I haven't told bloody anyone that it is here. (OK, one person, but he is an old friend, a writer and will probably forgive me if he finds time to read it and sees it as somehow offensive.)

My fear of telling anyone about this blog is a lot like my reasons for not doing many things. If I tell them, they might learn too much about me. (Ignoring the fact that such undertakings are fundamentally exhibitionistic to begin with.) My coworkers might see it and guess, or read blatantly, about my true feelings towards my work. (Although not necessarily bad, I fear that someone might try to use this information against me.) People might tell me I am a bad writer. (Fair enough, I attended conservatories rather than colleges of letters and sciences.) They might loose respect for me, but this of course assumes that there was some there to begin with. Maybe my ideas are good, but I don't want to broadcast them until they are perfected. (So they wait in solitude for perfection to magically rain down upon them.)

On and on it goes. Paralysis by analysis. Yet, in this pattern I see so much of my life and so many of my frustrations. A trained singer, I have more excuses than anyone for not doing certain auditions - and amazingly they resemble my reasons for telling no one about this blog. My years of sacrifice and work to become the performer that I now am are invalidated because I run backwards in fear towards what I had before, dreaming that it is somehow safer. Is it really safer to give up or endlessly defer my dreams? Safer to believe all of the bad things I've been told about my singing through the years but none of the good?

Somewhere inside me, slowly and deep down, action is beginning to stir and I think I will be trying for a few more auditions this Fall. The trick is to care about the preparation, the breath, the craft and form and to let the arrow land where it may, to let my small words land where they may and as they choose. And maybe I will tell a few more people about this blog as well.

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