PRACTICE
Yesterday I briefly mentioned that part of the goal of this exercise is to try and make my practice of writing more regular, as I attempt to push past the inner critics that paralyze me. It’s tempting to describe this phenomenon as ‘writer’s block’, but I’m not quite sure I am willing to dignify it with such iconic terminology. It feels more like paralysis than a block, and it never feels like I can’t write. It’s just too easy to find any excuse not to write. If and when I do find the discipline to show up at the page, that is when the voice of my inner critic roars all sorts of viciously unkind things at me. Yet it’s the simple act of showing up at the page that I find most challenging.
More than anything, singing has taught me the importance of showing up to the page each day. Because it’s my profession, I can usually force myself into the practice room, even when excuses to avoid singing abound. With the constant deadlines of performance looming, the work simply has to be done. The stakes are too high for it not to be: if a singer shows up to an engagement ill-prepared, at best, you won’t be hired back – at worst, you’ll be fired. And so, with the constant anxiety of not being adequately prepared keeping the fire under my ass lit, I’ve become an expert at pushing past the myriad excuses my mind concocts in order to avoid carving out time to make music most days.
That’s not to say that it’s smooth sailing all the time, and that my disciplined halo burns ever-bright. The part of my brain containing all of my self-doubt works tirelessly to validate itself and seemingly has boundless creativity. New excuses to shun practicing manifest themselves constantly. For a while, I was fussy about being in perfect voice. If I felt even the slightest bit off, I told myself it wasn’t worth it. I eventually realized that there is great value in practicing when you’re not in perfect voice, because what singer is in ideal voice at all times? I had an acting teacher in high school once tell me that technique is for bad days, and that the vast majority of your days are going to be far less than perfect. He was right, and the same applies to singing. Still, new reasons keep coming: Not enough sleep the night before, it’s getting too late in the day, I ate the wrong thing at lunch, I really should spend the day cleaning my office so I can focus better, I don’t have time…
The not-enough-time excuse is a really tricky one. When CAIC came into my life, I began wearing other professional hats in addition to my tenorial one, dipping my toes into the waters of concert production, artistic administration, artistic planning, and teaching. Soon, it became really easy to lose the entire day to emails. Add to that the increasing responsibilities we artists have managing our careers, which now can include everything from executive producing our own records to managing our social media presences, which can be a full time job in and of itself. We are told that all or most of these things are crucial to our careers (they are), and it really can feel like we don’t have enough time.
Over the years, I’ve learned that I won’t have enough time to practice unless I make it, and if I want to be a singer, the singing has to come first. The last part of that lesson has really unpacked a lot of layers for me – it’s shown me that having the discipline to show up in the practice room with regularity is the first step in taking myself seriously as an artist. And if I can’t take myself seriously as an artist, how can I expect the world around me to do the same?
During the course of the pandemic, as I’ve watched my concert calendar and most of my income evaporate into thin air, the struggle to keep that discipline has been real. I’ve seen a lot of my colleagues share their experiences with that struggle on social media over the past year, encouraging everyone to remain gentle with themselves rather than self-flagellate for not doing anything as we sit and wait for some sign of hope that we will be able to return to our stages soon. They are right about the need to be compassionate with ourselves as we grieve what we have lost. Bruising ourselves is the main goal of our inner critics.
In my practice room at home in San Francisco, CA.
Yet as the pandemic has raged on, the only place I have to go to make music most days is my practice room. And one of the other lessons I have learned over the years is that if I succumb to those excuses and don’t prioritize even just a little bit of time each day to make music, I am miserable. I’ve come to understand that I need to make music in order to be happy and that the act of singing is engaging with my life’s breath. So as much as I have been able to muster up the energy over the course of this last year, I sing a bit each weekday, occasionally working towards the deadline of a recording session, but most often without any goal, aside from the doing. On those days, the goals reveal themselves, and I feel the progress, even though I might just be doing the vocal equivalent of running on a treadmill. In keeping this mostly daily effort during this seemingly endless lockdown, practice has become a form of prayer. Each time I sing, I’m sending just a bit more energy out into the universe to call for a quicker return to the wilds of the concert hall, where music can go back to being a communal activity again, doing what it does best when it runs free: gathering us as communities, highlighting the bonds that stitch our societies together.