In keeping with today’s theme of the Sun-Pluto conjunction, I have a little personal history to share. For as long as I could remember, I sang. When I was five, my uncles would throw dollar bills onto the living room floor, telling me those were mine if I’d sing them a song. As a shy, reclusive child my mother had to push me out onto that living room floor to perform and be out among other people. It wasn’t long before I learned that one of the few ways I could be before other people without getting teased mercilessly by my older cousins — which happened a lot — was by performing. You might say singing saved my young life.
When I was eight, I started playing the piano and singing along to the radio. I mimicked operatic arias on the record player. I made up my own tunes. None of the music was complete enough to make a song, but I just played and played. I joined the high school choral group, making friends with the art crowd, freeing myself from needing the approval of the ‘cool kids’ who shunned me. I became a member of an art clique that nobody understood, but smart enough for all our teachers to favor. Music became a muscle that shielded me from nasty scrapes of cruel adolescence. But it was not enough to protect me from the cruelty of life.
I was 18 when my father died, two weeks before going away to school. I was then a soul amputee. Singing no longer had meaning for me. I could not bring myself to sing, and because of her profound grief, Mama could not bear to hear the sound of music in the house. I lost the music in my home and in my voice. But it had to find a way through somewhere. The music moved into my sexuality, used to fill the wound caused by my father’s loss.
It was in the halls of the art department that I found another part of myself previously declared missing. When I found acting classes in my senior year, missing limbs re-appeared. It was then for the first time in four years that I felt true happiness. I acted, danced. I was in a show at least once a year if not more. I had to work at a ‘real job’, because I needed to eat. This has been my life for the last 30-plus years since graduating college. The pieces sewn back together, the spirit alive and functioning as best it could. Yet, music was still lost to me. It was unreachable, a mystery. Inaccessible.
As the years went on, with failed relationships and unfulfilled dreams, I found myself trying to detach from my body, trying to escape from my feelings. I didn’t know what I was feeling. I needed to re-learn how to access my heart, which had become a stranger. I had to become my own heart’s archeologist.
The little five-year-old me who found her courage to sing before her uncles brought the torch with her for both of us to carry down into the labyrinth. To go further down, we had to sing. To sing was to release memories, to run oxygen through the sluggish chambers of my feelings. I was beginning to feel my emotional body through my diaphragm, and I found new musical notes, like when blood reaches an arm or leg that’s been asleep, allowing it to tingle and revive. Even though the words to express them weren’t there, the notes were and the feelings started to flow.
I started to search for more notes, and more, until there was no control. The notes were helping me find the truth lying asleep within my personal tombs. I had been numbed for all these years. Not just the early death of my father but the numbness from living a life not fully realized. It was singing: ballads and blues; tiny whispers and melodies; strange riffs and scat that helped me tell the stories of my life through the notes coming from my body. These were my stories, my songs, long waiting to be told. I was making a discovery: I needed music back like a medicine. Singing was healing my scars.
On Solstice Night, I had the great good fortune to party with my musician friends, hosted by Keith Terry of International Body Music Festival fame. I call Keith — a musician, dancer and a scholar of music from across the world — a life teacher. Creating music is intensely personal, internal and fragile. By learning from and making music with others across the planet, Keith learned the value of supporting others, no matter their range or experience in this ethereal thing called music.
As is the custom, everyone invited brought their instruments to the party to jam the night away. There were enclaves of music everywhere, from bluegrass to blues and jazz. This solstice I found myself drawn to the blues. The man was playing a rocking road-house song called “Don’t Be an Evil Woman,” on a guitar that looked like an old friend. Between each chorus was a rambling guitar riff that allowed a singer to scat her way through, teasing, coaxing, and putting up a fuss without words, only music. We were singing of a man begging his woman to be true, and his woman clearly intending to do no good. At the end of the duet, we wound up finding ourselves meeting halfway in a dissonance that ended with an arrival on the same note. Somehow, we understood each other through the music. His song and mine told a story.
Not everyone has music, but I believe we all have a song. An expression inside that operates at a level primary to our basic selves. It’s our voice — whether through our hands, our feet, the clanging we do as we work in the kitchen, read stories to our children, peer down the microscope or add a steel girder to an I-beam. All I’ve given you today was my story on how I re-discovered my song. It’s a song like a river, like a cake, like old grief. It’s tender and longing for love. What does your song sound like? What does it taste like? Do you have a picture of it? If you’re not alone, who is singing with you?
Fe: thanks for pointing me towards Ogun. I’ll have to read up! 🙂
Susy:
Naming and re-naming yourself is a potent act, and from what I read from you, healing. Thank you.
Dear Fe, I’m glad you were able to ‘circle back and reclaim an early part of yoursself that got lost along the way.’
Amanda:
When all else fails, scat will get you out of the woods. I’ve found that intonating just the feelings through notes says more than lyrics sometimes. Sometimes you can even remember the lyrics while scatting.
Keep your fellow Taurean Ella Fitzgerald close. She’s carrying your torch.
My name was “Susy” from birth till seventh grade. But as my adolescent hormones began to kick in, I decided I needed a more mature stature. My name became the more aloof and elegant “Susan.” But with every year that passed, I found myself fearfully hiding my wild child behind “Susan” rarely letting her out to play. In my 30’s a woman, a boss of mine I considered a hardass adversary, noticed my pain and called me “Susy” in such a loving voice, she changed my view of her forever. The clever severity of my youth yearned to meld with the buoyant tenderness I heard in her voice and reminded me of the love I had forgotten in the voices of those closest to me when I was young. That day was the day I taught everyone to call me “Susy” again. So you can call me “Susy” if you like, or “Suz,” or sometimes one and sometimes the other, but never separate “Susan” again. “Susan’s” only job anymore is to sign official documents. But that’s how I circled back and reclaimed an early part of myself that got lost along the way.
paraphrased from a horoscope from Rob Brezney that touched my heart and enabled me to put this actuality into words.
you know, i can’t quite say i “lost” my voice, but i have fallen so far away from the regular singing i loved 15 years ago, it feels like i need to take some voice lessons to tune the instrument back up — breath support and control and nasal resonators and everything all feel rusty. they come back to me at odd moments, but they are not at my fingertips as they once were. and so i feel a little cut off from freely expressing through song, with others.
in june, between the eclipses, i had a sudden opportunity to step on stage with a pair of jazz guitar virtuosos to since a song… but i panicked that i might not remember all the lyrics, and missed the chance to fill the room in the way that i know i have it in me to do.
i’ve wondered since then, given the timing, if it’s one of those dreams i was being offered but now must let go as a dream from a past “me” that is no longer part of the path i am walking — part of the “release” phase of the summer eclipses. but somehow, i can’t quite let it go… i know, when i let myself feel it, that singing is soul food — regardless of the performance aspect of it. but yeah, i get off on that part, too.
the night before last, i had a dream (i only recall a fragment) in which i was walking and standing in the most loving embrace with an amazing, beautiful young male friend from dance camp, complete with affectionate kisses. we were in some sort of intentional community or camp-type place. and as we stood in front of the person organizing chores/work tasks, still embracing, i said to the organizer with great eagerness and excitement how much i wanted to do the gardening — assuming i would not be taking the job from someone else or stepping on toes.
i’ve really been struggling lately with the choices and responsibilities in several aspects of my life. but i think what i get from this dream is that i really am supported by genuine desire — if/when i recognize it, by love, by beauty, perhaps even by my Mars in Cancer.
and even more than that — i really do want to do my own growing. despite whatever tendencies to want to believe that someone else has a claim to that process, it’s mine and i do want to grown my own soul’s garden.
MusicMan:
Hello.
You have just verbalized what I’ve felt intuitively about music and singing. I am going to re-print your comment and tape it to my piano. The whole thing. It is that concise.
Funny – it’s how everything is going, isn’t it? People around me have either fallen down or taken the next step. My brother-in-law is moving to acknowledge and learn more of the information he’s been intuitively processing about photography. I am doing the same thing with cooking and singing. We all want to sail.
Thanks for the keys to the Ferrari, MusicMan.
Mystes:
Neruda makes me sigh. Thanks sis.
A. T. Mann’s name came up recently. The Harmonic Concordance me thinks! My approach to Music as Therapy has been widely influenced by his beautifully illustrated book, “The Round Art”
Thats the thing with Astrology. The threads can run wide and deep; are varied and multi-faceted indeed!
He speaks of Octaves of Childhood and Maturity. He evens back-cycles into the Octave of Gestation; pre-birth experience! It is an ideal starting point for Music as Therapy as well as Studies of Birth, Childhood and Adolescent development.
I began by looking at my own parents charts; one passed, one 93 and long since settled in a care facility; Ma is sadly blind and suffering from dementia! By developing areas of their charts in my own behaviour, I progressed their development in me, and hence in the music that I write/ sing/ or indeed on rare occasions perform!
This led naturally to a study as far back as grand parents and a wide-angled view of families! The evidence is anecdotal, but after 27 years I can offer up a few insights!
We all are born with the ability to flow. The obvious dam builder, or blockage creator is too strict a toilet training; anal retensive by 5. Families can be a real pressure cooker! There are many others as you all know from personal experience and your work.
When working with people in musical forms, I sense that there is a flow, and impediments to the flow. It is a way of viewing in reverse light. Like the famous picture in black and white of two faces, facing each other. Only when you look again you see that the central body in reverse light is a vase!
So by focussing on the flow, rather than the impediments to that flow, we can progress it. Gently and gradually, the impediments recede. The voice becomes regular; the confidence grows. The smile returns!!
Eric, during a telephone app. some years ago, suddenly said.. “I love you Man!” Taken by surprise for a millisecond or two…I processed that I had touched on a subject close to his heart! Indeed our discussion had focussed on Chiron transits… and moved on to Pluto!
Well Fe Bongolan…” I love you Man!”
Here is how easy it really is!
1. Play all the white notes from middle C to the Octave! Number them 1-8
2. Play 1-3-5; 2-4-6;3-5-7; 4-6-8;5-7-9 etc
3. These are chords;Root Third Fifth;You have just Harmonised a major Scale!
4 Chords 1, 4 and 5 are Major Chords; the building blocks of every pop song, blues song and even soul music. Stevie Wonder is a bit more complex! Chords 2/3/6 and 7 are Minor; you can hear the mood change.
5 Take Chords 1/2/3/4/and5 and play Bob Dylans “Like a Rolling Stone” ; Visions of Johanna and Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowland are simply a change of Chord order! Not much to it really.
Everything else is you. The Soul of the music is flow; movement of your heart and all of those other Chakras.
To all of you I wish a peaceful contented and most of all creative day.
Start a choir, Make some noise!Play t5hose talking drums. We want to hear you in Africa!
Fe… “I love You Man!”
Paul Hill
Thank you, Fe, for this wistful arpeggio of present-past.
But hey Dame, I have *heard* that voice, and it is juicy, ripe and deep – big river of a voice just looking for the sea of its savor (savoir).
*****
Neruda’s Sonnet 78
I don’t have a “never”, I don’t have an “always”.
In the sand
Victory left its forgotten footprints.
I’m a poor man ready to love others who are like me.
I don’t know who you are. I love you. I don’t give or sell thorns.
Someone perhaps may know that I didn’t weave bloody
Crowns, that I fought against mockery
And that truly I filled the high tide of my soul.
I gave doves as repayment for vileness.
I don’t have a “never” because
I was, am, will be unique. And in the name
Of my changing love, I proclaim purity.
Death is only a stone of forgetting.
I love you, I kiss your mouth of happiness.
Let’s bring the wood and make fire on the mountain.
***********
Yes, like that . . .
Thanks for this very personal glimpse into your essence, Fe. It really sings to me. 🙂
Brendan wrote: “Even now I slip into a different world when I’m working with my hands on something.” It’s that way for me, too. Not so much in *fixing* things but more in creating them or even making them suitable for some purpose.
I’ve always enjoyed cooking, especially kneading & shaping bread, and chopping vegetables (with a good knife, of course). And folding origami. And dreaming up and hand-making Halloween costumes. And, kind of strangely, creating a tabbed index for a project at work. It was particularly satisfying because I had to figure out how to do it with less-than-optimal supplies. I was happy as a clam at high tide while at my desk putting sticky labels onto the colored tabs.
I have also been engaged in the process of recognizing and liberating my song. Most of what I’m doing is becoming aware of & clearing out limiting beliefs. What a trip this is!
Brendan:
Whether you teach or do, your life is a song to Ogun.
In Yoruban religion, the orisha Ogun would be your protector. He is the archetype of the engineer, the man who works with iron, and the one who repairs. His tools are the iron cauldron, the forge for casting, the hammer and tools. Its sacred duty, a revered skill. Vulcan, Hephaestus, there is a reason our world needs the one who works with tools.
indrani:
Thanks for the link. A good read!
aword:
I am holding on to that picture of you in the pink tutu. You must have been adorable.
A beautiful essay, Fe, and such a personal glimpse of you within.
I’ve always been happiest working on mechanical or electrical projects, fixing them, making them work better, even during my pre-teen years. I was a dam builder by 5, fort builder by 6, and a confirmed mad scientist tinkerer by 7.
Even now I slip into a different world when I’m working with my hands on something. It can be plumbing, a recalcitrant weed whacker, bicycles, radios: anything that isn’t “quite” right, I’m on it.
An recent insight of what makes me tick has told me that I what I am doing now, teaching, is an extension of that need to tinker. It’s deadly serious though, since you may inadvertently ‘fix’ someone the wrong way, and goddess knows that’s hard to undo. No, teaching about life is a big enough endeavor that I certainly don’t want to get anyone off on the wrong foot, so I must tread carefully. I’m wondering if my Chiron on my natal Sun has anything to do with this?
Doesn’t mean I’m quitting the machinery just yet though. 🙂
For sure Fe – especially with all the other happenings in the sky – Mercury going forward in Sag, Jupiter forward in Taurus, Venus doing all that Venusey stuff, Saturn in Libra, Pluto still in Capricorn, Uranus adding charge and assisting change, Neptune and Chiron encouraging soft landings (etc).
All this Pluto/Saturn work has been such a boon – it’s affecting everyone – including all those people I know who don’t give any credence to astrology – I mean, the number of relationships that will NOT survive Saturn in Libra is phenomenal – but how much more effective is it if we can actually understand these cycles and work consciously with with them? It’s been one of the hardest years of my life, but also one of the best – the hard work has also made it one of – if not *the* – the happiest.
Speaking of insight, and in the spirit of using the energies to “tie” off the cycles in preparation for the New Year (it’s lovely when the cycles fall in sync with our contemporary calendars!), here’s a grab from this very good article “IS IT LOVE OR IS IT PROJECTION? The Anima/Animus Phenomenon” by Rebeca E. Eigen (my daughter and I were discussing these ideas a few months ago – working that Saturn in Libra!):
“…an experience with the self is always a defeat for the ego but that…death of the ego (the self as you knew it) allows one to be reborn into one’s own wholeness as projections are taken back.”
(http://www.shadowdance.com/articles/isitloveorprojection.html)
Admittedly the article is a bit corny in places, and lacks depth in others, but as far as essentials go, it’s spot on, and Jung’s theories are beautifully explained – I found it very helpful.
Cheers 🙂
Fe:
Thank you for a heart-opening and inspiring piece.
And I, dressed in a puffy tutu-like dress and halloween-wig dug from Grandma’s attic, performed like-wise for barely-watching adult family.
For years prior and after I kept trying to “perform” in some way that would please them — this is a new era; the time of performing to please mySelf.
Cheers, Salud and Bravo, Fe! Thanks – with tears in my eyes – for publishing your heart.
Well Fe,
You turned out to be one cool kid yourself. I can relate to your reluctance to perform before the family grownups and your story reminds me of childhood memories of a song and dance routine I forced my younger brother to do with me. Nobody tossed $$ but we sure made them laugh (we WERE funny!) and that was good enough for me. Thanks for bringing that memory back and for sharing a part of yourself with us.
be
Indrani;
Pluto-Sun conjunction seems to be all about insight, doesn’t it?
That is a fabulous essay Fe. How wonderful is the gift of insight? Cheers, Indrani 🙂