Health As Art/Practice
When I started out singing I wasn’t thinking about healing or intention, chest voice or head voice, about chord structures or harmony, it’s questionable as to whether I was even thinking. Instead I would say I was feeling my way through the world in song. And at 48 I still am. But at 3, 4 and 5 years old I was singing myself through the day blissfully ignorant about what that meant and if that resulted in a recorded song or a performance. Producing results or work wasn’t the focus. As I got older I started thinking about words, interesting rhymes and the ability to conjure a captivating metaphor and catchy melody. I was in middle school and high school and still I was thinking about the joy (the positive endorphins) I felt being onstage, shining and sharing my love for music. That, and the love and joy I felt practicing and writing with my friends. (Unfortunately, music fellowship still doesn’t get emphasized enough in my opinion when it comes to studying music).
But as I got older I started to judge myself more and more on how much of a Mozart score I could analyze or whether I could hear a Major 7th (neither of which I was really good at) instead of trusting in my music intuition and artistic sensibility. Music started to feel like a seductive trap door. I kept being wooed towards it and then falling into a hidden dungeon.
But lately, I find myself feeling like I have been doing SO much deep work as I know many people are but currently I don’t have much product to show for it. And that’s when I started to realize that maybe health is actually a key component of my artistic practice. Not just because I need my body to be able to sing, write music, perform, but also because it’s grounding. However, it’s a daily challenge. Artists have been taught for yearsssss that what they produce is much more valuable than their state of being or health. Investors, patrons, galleries, presenters, record labels, agents and even fans have been happy to acquire the work of great artists at their own mental and physical expense.
But lately I’m claiming my place in the lineage of artists like Audre Lorde, Ana Mendieta, Maya Angelou and Frida Kahlo who fought for their hearts and bodies just as much as the “content” they created. So if you’ve been looking around to see what I’ve been doing lately, a lot of it isn’t visible but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. I’ve recently started a number of partnerships and collaborations that I’m SUPER excited about that will be developing over the coming months, some of which will be showcased at The Porch Sessions.
And if you’d like to know more about the intricacies of how I make health an art practice, drop me a line.