Singing Away Your Sorrows

I was always told that it’s the largest transitions and the most sudden changes in your life that should scare you the most, that are justified above all other experiences for being able to reach past your outer defenses and grab hold of your heart and mind. In my own life, these transitions have come in the form of moving, whether that be packing my things to live hundreds of miles away from my entire extended family and the life I’ve always known, or simply moving between schools, friend groups, and communities. Each has come with its own anxieties, its own troubles and turmoil, but each has also been bold, attacking me head on, making it straightforward to counter them directly and eventually conquer them. They are events to fear, but they are events that eventually pass. What I was never told to fear was the smaller, quieter changes which creep slowly into your life and grab hold of you before you even know of their presence.

When I first entered college, I was excited. I was freer than I ever was, chasing my passions with the greatest intensity I had ever known, all alongside a group of people who not just accepted me, but appreciated me for who I was. I had plenty of much-needed distance between myself and my home, whose walls had once protected me but eventually confined me as I grew, and I was grateful for it. The transition still brought me some anxieties, since day-to-day life suddenly required greater responsibility on my part, but overall, it was joyous and exhilarating. What didn’t occur to me was that even if my life was now separate from that of the rest of my family, time didn’t just stop for them while I was away. It’s one of those things that’s obvious when you spell it out, but a shock when life makes you remember that fact.

I think it’s a mix of being more aware of the reality of the world while simultaneously being less protected from it that makes the little things which sneak up on you hit so much harder. All of a sudden, the room you’ve known your whole life, a safe haven that’s practically an extension of yourself, has been redecorated to fit the needs of someone else. The home you come back to isn’t quite as “home” as the one you left. All of a sudden, your dad is on a diet because of a heart scare, your grandfather was in the hospital a week ago but he’s mostly better now, and your grandmother has hearing aids and white hair. You’re getting closer to your prime, but those you love are only getting older and weaker. You know all of these things, but they creep up on you so slowly that by the time you’ve realized things have changed, it’s already swept you off your feet and there’s nothing you can do to make things how they once were. Where sudden transitions can be confronted and conquered, the slow changes create a pain that doesn’t just go away.

As reality has grown crueler, or at least its impact on me more powerful, I’ve found myself relying more creative outlets to keep myself grounded and sane. For me, that’s singing in a choir, creating music alongside dozens of peers using only my own body as an instrument. If you commit yourself to the art of it, and pursue mastery, you learn many techniques which help you not only to produce a powerful and purposeful sound, but also to heal yourself within. To have any substance behind your voice, you must have strength in your core, a fortified stance ready to take on whatever is thrown at you, and focused control over your breath. To sing with any range requires you to relax your body, to fix your posture, and to release tension built up by the stresses of the day. To sing the notes of a score on-pitch and on-beat requires your utmost focus, and you must push the anxieties of the small, creeping changes out of your mind. To sing with passion and expression requires you to release your emotions, to take all of the sadness and anger, the joy and love, the faith and belonging and caring you have within you and bring it to the surface, free of the bottle once keeping them deep inside. And to do all of this within a choir requires you to “listen louder than you sing”, to keep your ear focused on the singing of those around you, often to the point where it’s hard not to find empathy for those next to you. As much as I enjoy creating music in of itself, it’s the cathartic effect it has on me that truly makes it so fulfilling.

I will admit, all of this requires work. Controlling your breath, building your strength, even forcing yourself to relax takes energy, and there are some days where I know that I’m left with barely enough to get myself into bed, let alone out of it again. But still, I find it within myself to sing, because unlike so many other things in my life, singing is something that can leave me with more energy coming out than I had going in. Growing up in the States, so many of us are shaped by the concept of consumerism and the idea that everything comes from a finite, depletable source, that things are consumed when they are spent, but the truth is, compassion and love and joy, whose source is within oneself, can grow as they are spent. When I show up to rehearsal dreading the work that has to be done, it tires me out, and I leave exhausted, ready for a snowstorm or illness to cancel the next rehearsal. But when I enter the recital salon thankful for the opportunity to express myself through song, to use my body to create music alongside a small community which loves the art form just as much as I do, I can put my compassion, love, and joy into my singing, and I leave the salon energized in spite of the slow, creeping changes which long to get under my skin and crush my heart. It is the love of singing that gets me through each day, that helps me cope with the reality of life being a bitch, and as I get closer to the point where I may lose the ones I love, when the slow, creeping monster of change will show its face again, I know that I may not be ready, I know that I may be knocked down and beaten and bruised, but I also know that I will not be broken, because song can heal the deepest of wounds.

Featured Image: Virginia Tech Chamber Singers