(5 min read)
Since you’re reading my blog right now (hello, thank you), you quite likely think of me as a writer. And if you do, you’re not wrong; writing is both a profession and a passion for me. But as much as I adore writing, it was not my first great creative love. That would be music.
Music has always been my most potent passion – listening to it, playing it, writing it, and the magic that happens when you share it with other people. For me, that magic manifests itself most potently when I’m singing in front of an audience. There’s a sort of symbiosis that occurs between performer and listener, a kind of energy exchange, forging a connection that can bond strangers in seconds and precludes loneliness, creating a sort of micro-community, if only for the duration of the song or the set.
And then there’s the making of the music itself. There is no activity that brings me greater joy; no matter how bad, sad, or mad my mood, when I start to sing, it all just… melts away, leaving my heart happier and my soul lighter in an instant. Harmonising with another singer gets me giddy with enjoyment. Singing certain notes makes me feel like I’m flying.* Like I said: no greater joy.
A glutton for punishment
Unfortunately, there is also probably nothing that has brought me more extreme angst than singing in front of people. And I don’t just mean a touch of pre-performance nerves. For as long as I can remember, I have been plagued with a visceral, debilitating stage fright when faced with the prospect of singing in front of literally any other person. And actually, not even necessarily a person: when I started songwriting a few years ago, even using a flipping dictaphone app to record a few lines would initially have me sweating, my voice quivering. Completely alone in my apartment.
Meanwhile, approaching an actual audition or performance, I’d be sick to my stomach for days, eventually losing my appetite altogether. Awaiting my turn to sing, my whole body would shake, the trembling so violent I couldn’t write my own name or use my phone (say, to register for the aforementioned audition or performance); my teeth would chatter and my nails would go blue; and I’d lose the sensation in my fingers and toes. Most problematically of all, my vocal cords would almost completely close up. I probably don’t have to explain why that’s an issue for a singer.
And yet. Despite all this, and despite the fact that it was, for many years, borderline impossible for me to have a positive experience singing in front of others, for some almost-unfathomable reason… I kept doing it. I couldn’t help myself.
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I have had SO MANY deeply mortifying experiences, in audition rooms and public places, because I just wouldn’t quit… and neither would the godforsaken stage fright. It stole my breath, warped my voice, made the notes shake in a way that clearly had nothing to do with my vibrato, and completely flattened my range, obliterating the higher and lower notes alike. It actually got to the point where I was more frightened of the stage fright than of the performances themselves. The stage fright couldn’t sing for sh*t. And neither could I, when it took the wheel.
It certainly seemed to put any kind of career in music firmly out of the question – not that I believed that was something I could sensibly aspire to anyway. I always thought I had a nice enough voice, and there were a couple of songs I felt I sang fairly well… but my confidence around my vocal ability has always oscillated wildly, with a tendency to rest on the pessimistic end of the scale.
A large part of that pessimism came from being a soprano with a penchant for musical theatre. My favourite musical of all time (and something of an obsession of mine) is Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera, and the female lead in that show is a soprano. But those parts are few and far between on the West End and Broadway and the vast majority of principle female roles are written for mezzo-sopranos – i.e. women with lower voices than mine, and, crucially, an incredible high belt. Which I categorically do not have. Unlike all the girls around teenage-me who were the “good singers”. Ergo, I concluded, I was not a good singer.
I was endlessly frustrated that I had to switch into my head voice (that higher, airier sound) when other girls could keep belting with power, and I was ashamed of my inability to sing (well) the go-to audition songs at the time, like Popular from Wicked, and Part of Your World from The Little Mermaid – never mind the vast majority of female pop songs. They sounded too high in my voice, sometimes kind of pretty at best, but just not… right. Sure, I could do a decent Christine Daaé from Phantom (for an untrained teen, anyway), but… it wasn’t what I thought people wanted. It wasn’t popular (or Popular), it wasn’t cool, and it was a weirdly limited niche.
“Nobody wants to listen to that”
I’d like to say I got past this self-consciousness as I grew out of my teens, but it was only compounded in my twenties. As a student, I started playing street music as part of a male-female duo, which was a great (life-changing!) experience for me in many ways – but my busking partner was also highly critical of my head voice, and would push me incessantly to sing in ways that were neither natural nor healthy for my vocal type. He was also very dismissive of my desire to try busking musical theatre songs, sneering that “nobody wants to listen to that”, and other sweet sentiments along similar lines.
Unfortunately, this sentiment was echoed, albeit somewhat less forcefully, by a litany of random men in subsequent years, both in relationships and when I was on the dating apps in Paris. For a while, my dating profile mentioned that I was a “musicien du métro” (licensed busker in the Paris metro), and although the general attitude towards this fact was that of keen interest, a LOT of people felt compelled to weigh in on my repertoire. For example, one time, I mentioned to a guy I had literally just struck up a conversation with that I was learning Time To Say Goodbye. His response? “Oh no, don’t do that”. He had never heard me sing. Another man – who also hadn’t heard me sing – responded to my interest in performing Edith Piaf songs with an eloquent “ew”. And then there was the boyfriend who took issue with my natural vibrato (“stop doing that”). Aaand the one kept insisting I should really stick to singing on the lower side. And so on. And so forth.
What the hell happened?
Bizarrely enough, none of these entirely unsolicited opinions did much for my confidence. (I’m sure it’s totally incidental that they all came from men.) And I all but shelved my performance aspirations altogether throughout a substantial chunk of my 20s. Except… I could never fully put them away, not permanently. Despite feeling it was a pretty pointless endeavour, I kept coming back to music anyway, kept persevering in small ways – very slowly, and sometimes very painfully. And it has taken me probably coming up for two decades (Christ.) of on/off efforts to get to this point, but…
Something has happened in the last year or so that I genuinely did not believe possible. Something that has meant I was able to do my first paid singing gig without a hitch this July. And I was able to stand on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh this August, and sing not only musical theatre, but also bloody opera songs (of all things!) with an ease and enjoyment that I never imagined I could experience in a situation like that. I’m deeply wary to trust in the permanence of this development, but it seems like my lifelong stage fright – with all the accompanying angst, and self-consciousness, and sickening dread – has just… gone? And whether or not it endures (please God, let it endure), I can’t stop marvelling at the gift of finally, finally being able to do what I love most without it feeling like a godawful ordeal.
An exciting new adventure…
When I started this blog in 2018, it was all about documenting my adventures as an expat in Paris. Over the years, it has evolved to be more generally muse-y, and now I’d like to shift the focus again to start talking about my journey with music – the adventure that my life is very much centred around these days. I’m going to be writing in more depth about trying to overcome my performance fears (feat. some extremely embarrassing ventures beyond the confines of my comfort zone), as well as sharing my busking escapades and insights as a female street performer, delving into my experience performing for the first time at the Edinburgh Fringe, and explaining the work I’ve been doing to train my voice and learn to sing classical music. There’ll also be some other bits about trying to build an independent creative life in Paris. And, honestly, probably still the occasional muse. I have a lot of thoughts, okay?
I’m not gonna lie, it’s a pretty weird (and wonderful) life I’m living these days. And that makes this a pretty weird (and wonderful???) niche as far as blogs go. I’m not quite sure if that means it’s going to be interesting to a lot of people, or nobody at all.** Fingers crossed for the former. I guess only time will tell. But if you are interested in joining me on this journey, then thanks very much for being here – and I hope you enjoy the ride.
If you’d like to give a girl a hand in her creative endeavours (because I am quite often asked how people can do that), sharing my blog posts and (especially) my music clips on your social media is an incredible help. And if you don’t feel like going quite that far, then liking and commenting on my posts – on this blog directly and on Instagram / Facebook / TikTok / YouTube – is also a super helpful way to get them in front of other people. All three together: the Holy Trinity Of Supporting A Starving Striving Artist.
Oh, and I almost forgot… don’t forget to subscribe!
*The last note in Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again, from The Phantom of the Opera, for example.
**Actually I know someone will read it – at least a few someones – because nobody cheerleads like an Irish aunt. And mine are especially excellent.
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