My loving passion for music bubbling to the surface again. I was so nervous, tight and afraid of the music when I packed the heavy equipment into my big backpack a couple weeks ago. Something in me knew I needed to face the music, literally. I just knew that if I showed up in Bali with paintbrushes I would have a jolly good time on the beach but something would be hiding deep down, something inside me was being ignored. It was a little girl.
It took a few uncomfortable days of croaking sounds out of my throat, whisper over the guitar with hesitant vibrations, crying and feeling very young and vulnerable, wishing I felt like a grown up woman all confident and sexy again. WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?! I felt crippled on the inside. Why was I so afraid of being heard? Why did I not feel good enough? Why do other people get to make music freely and joyfully while I have to hide and be quiet? I escaped facing these questions by creating visual artwork; photographs, videos, paintings, journaling. I would speak silently to paper. I would play with my eyes, observing, safe. Safe in the silence. I also stuffed other people’s music into my ears; headphones always in my pocket, on my neck or transporting me to another layer of reality. Since I was a little girl I would put on headphones and step into my own movie. I carefully chose the soundtrack for each moment. I remember being in high school on a school bus, leaning my head against the window, all the other kids were talking and laughing with each other. I kept to myself as usual and turned up the volume. Raindrops trailed down the glass and I watched the forested streets of Woodinville, WA pass by. Headphones off, I was awkwardly different than everyone around me. Headphones on, I was living in a magical story and I loved being me, alive, feeling beauty all around me. I escaped into music, it comforted me and gave me so much meaning. In the music I was in my own world, not to be seen or heard by anyone else. I disappeared, happily while a part of me still wished to be seen (because I liked myself and thought everyone else might like me too if they ever got a chance to see me).
I see flashbacks of myself sitting with a cello between my legs. I’m on the far left side of the junior high orchestra room. My whole body feels sick with the displeasure of not being good enough. The other kids are a couple years ahead of me in musical skills. I just showed up, a new kid from a private school who had been receiving one-on-one music classes for a year, entering into the chaotic swarm of public school kids who aren’t welcoming. I was suddenly a very small fish who couldn’t read music quickly enough to keep up. I ran. I dropped the cello and avoided the music teacher. That music teacher made a joke of me for years to come. When my brother showed up in his classroom years later, he recognized our last name on the roster. “You’re sister dropped out of orchestra?” He made a big deal about it. My brother told me how often he mentioned my moment of quitting. This planted a strongly rooted seed in my psyche. I was a music drop-out. I wasn’t allowed to play music anymore. Other people stick with music. I’m not good enough, not respected enough to keep going. I’m not welcome in the music room anymore and if I do walk in, I’ll be teased. I watched my brother and his friends fill their schedules with music classes, form bands, perform and grow as artists. I sang in the shadows, praying no one would hear my voice.
I would curl up in a ball and die of embarrassment whenever someone caught me singing. It was mortifying because when I thought I was alone, truly alone, I would really go for it. I put myself out there entirely so when I was caught, I was entirely exposed.
I would sing Celine Dion, Enya, Mariah Carry, Christina Aguilera, Whitney Houston. I sang the songs that demanded BIG voices. I sang the songs that made my voice show up with power. It felt AMAZING to open up and let these big sounds out…so long as nobody hear it….because what if I was actually really bad? What if I thought I was good, like that Asian guy on American Idol who thought he was amazing, and then the entire world laughed in my face at my foolishness. American Idol fucked me over. I watched humans reveal their vulnerable voices and they were mocked. This was my nightmare.
This little girl inside me showed me another flashback. I stood in the center of the portable classroom. Three teachers at behind a long desk, staring at me, waiting for me to sing. I was required to audition for the school musical. Every student was required to audition. The week leading up to this terrifying moment I had secretly rehearsed “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from the Wizard of Oz. I loved singing this beautiful song and I thought I was good enough at it that I could actually be a good performer on stage. In the audition, I chickened out and sang, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, begging the teachers to assign me to stage crew and keep me behind the curtain. I remember feeling relief and disappointment. I felt the cost of avoiding the fear. I had taken something from myself in order to stay comfortable.
That pattern of quiting and avoiding continued for the next fifteen years. I was in choir but didn’t raise my hand when they asked “Who wants to audition for the solo?” I pretended I wasn’t interested when my college roommate invited me to go with her to audition for the A capella group. My universe was well known for our A cappella grouups so this was a very deep robbing of opportunity from my soul. There was something there for me and I didn’t take it and I can never go back to choose differently.
Well into adulthood, this little girl would take over my body anytime I was in a position to make music in front of other people. I would feel her tension creep into my limbs, her stiffness would close up my throat, her ashamed eyes would dull over my sparkling sight, and I would bow out of the scene to let someone else make the noise. It was killing my soul. I was a songbird trapped in a cage. Looking back I’m smiling. When I was a teenager my mom took me to see the film Mansfield Park, based on the novel by Jane Austen. There is a scene in this movie when Edward reads from “The Starling” by Lawrence Sterne. I memorized this excerpt and would recite it to myself (in an English accent) often throughout my teenage years.
”I was interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy with a voice which I took to be that of a child, which complained it could not get out. I looked up and down the passage, and seeing neither man, woman, nor child, I went out without further attention. In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over, and looking up, I saw it was a starling hung in a little cage. “I can’t get out! I can’t get out!” said the starling. I stood looking at the bird; and to every person who came through the passage it ran fluttering to the side towards which they approached it, with the same lamentation of its captivity. “I can’t get out!” said the starling.
“God help thee!” said I, “but I’ll help thee out, cost what it will;” so I turned about the cage to get to the door;—it was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. I took both hands to it. The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his breast against it as if impatient. “I fear, poor creature,” said I, “I cannot set thee at liberty.” “No,” said the starling; “I can’t get out! I can’t get out!” said the starling.”
When I was 25, I let the bird out of the cage. I was in a yoga teacher training and the healing work of yoga finally pried the bars open and out flew my voice. I sang like an opera singer in a room with thirty supportive adults around me. That was the beginning of my singing and music journey, out in the open, finally facing the fear and finding the joy. That was the moment I started to show up as a grown woman who was taking control of this music situation to steer it in a direction that felt good. By the time I was in my mid-twenties I was utterly sick of living with this hidden love of music, pained to the core by the very possible reality that my voice might stay locked away until the day I die. There was another quote I memorized as a teenager that guided me to the breakthrough moment:
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ”
The magic words were, “Let the bird out of the cage.” My yoga teacher said this to me after I’d been standing in front of the room silent, shaking and crying. I’d been trying to sing for thirty minutes and everyone waited patiently as I looked the fear straight in the face. “Let the bird out of the cage,” was all I needed to finally hear and my voice cracked. I was done with being painfully stuck inside myself. I sang and I sang loudly. The whole room of people stood in ovation, tears, goosebumps. They told me I needed to sing, I needed to pursue music, I needed to do karaoke, become a professional singer, perform. My yoga teacher told me to start singing for the yoga classes I taught. “Sing at the end of every class. Sing, chant, use your voice even if it shakes.” Other mantras that helped me find the guts to sing to my yoga students that first year out of the closet:
“Speak truth, even if your voice shakes.”
“If your knees are shaking, you’re on the right path.”
After years of pushing through the fear, why did I still get sucked into it? I arrived in Bali and I felt like the twelve year old girl with the cello between her legs. I thought we’d gotten passed this! Why does she keep showing up in my body? Doesn’t she disappear, grow up, realize that I know how to perform now, that I’m not scared anymore? I cursed myself for not bringing painting supplies. If I were painting, I wouldn’t be feeling these shitty emotions. I would just be playing on the beach. I called a girlfriend in Seattle and asked her opinion. Should I be forcing myself to make music when I’m feeling so much icky resistance to it. It’s not as fun as painting. Maybe I should just be a painter. She asked me why I was pushing myself to make music, why I was choosing to sit alone in a room with me and the music, through the discomfort. I just knew something in me needed to be faced. Something was hiding. Painting wouldn’t be wholeheartedly fun while something scary was hiding in the closet. I wondered, what would it take to start having fun making music with the same freedom I feel when I paint? Surely, that joyful childlike playful creative fun is possible in any art form. It’s not about the medium, it’s about the energy I bring to it. So why is the energy contracting so tightly when I open my mouth to sing? Why is it flowing so freely when I pick up a paintbrush?
Patiently now, I sit in a garden with thirty-four years of living in this body. It’s been nine years since my moment of great courage in that yoga studio, nine years of sharing my voice openly. I’m drinking a flat white coffee and writing thoughts in a pink Moleskin journal. I looked out over the Bali Sea, speckled with jukungs (Balinese outrigger fishing boats). I see long black fins flip up toward the blue sky and sink below the surface (freedivers heading down to the depths). I ask this little girl, this part of me who has felt so tight and afraid, What do you need me to know? Suddenly, she isn’t taking over my body anymore. I don’t feel tight. I am relaxed. I don’t feel young. I am a woman all grown up and completely comfortable. I don’t see flashbacks behind my eyelids. I see flowers and ocean and an invisible preteen sitting beside me at this round garden table. How can I help you? My heart opens up for this little girl. She wants to make music but she’s nervous. She feels like she has to figure it out by herself, she feels like nobody is helping her the way she needs to be helped. She shows me the orchestra room again. She tells me she wishes an adult had sat down to help her learn music slowly at her pace. She tells me she feels pressured to perform like an adult woman. She feels like she’s being told to make music with the confidence of a thirty-four year old woman with a lifetime of experience and skills but she’s only twelve and she’s not good enough yet. She wants guidance and encouragement. She doesn’t want to be criticized and critiqued. She doesn’t want her brother and his friends to tease her and mock her. She doesn’t want to perform online or stage yet. She just needs help learning how to play music in a way that feels fun for her.
My imagination is strong. My heart is compassionate. I love helping children learn in a way that is custom to their needs. I love sharing my passion with people in a way that removes all the intimidating energy. I love to teach music, yoga, painting, journaling, living to people from a place of ease. It doesn’t need to be such a big scary perfectionist hard disciplined beat-yourself-up experience. We can make it so so simple and so so playful and easy. We don’t ask too much of ourselves. Just start with one simple string pluck. Just take one breath. Make one stroke. That’s it. Just one stroke and let it ring out, savor the sensations that ripple through your body as the sound or the color or the movement ripples into the universe after you play it. You make the sound and then you enjoy the sound you made. You smear paint on the canvas and then you enjoy the way the color fills your eyes. You lift a camera to the sky and play with the way the light beam shifts in the air and creates golden sparkles. KEEP IT SIMPLE. In the simplicity there is so much room for easy joy. When there is joy, there is space to absorb and learn and understand. As we understand there is no more fear. There is just expanding play. I know how to teach a little girl how to fall in love with making music in a way that helps her feel safe, supported, empowered and eager to continue. I know how to make people of all ages feel safe and open. This little girl needed an adult like me to help her learn music. I wasn’t there for her back then. I can be here for her now.
As the little girl felt my presence, her energy softened, my body softened. I left the garden and invited her to come with me to play guitar. She’s been following me around the village and we’re becoming friends. I’m enjoying letting her dip her toes into the music. She’s making friends with another part of me that has suddenly showed up again. This other part is also a little girl. She’s the little girl who wears big T-shirts and loves to DJ. She’s the girl who is totally in love with music and isn’t shy about it at all. She’s the girl who loves dance parties and making playlists and creating all sorts of silly sounds with her voice. She’s the girl who loves being mischievous when we’re writing music. She’s a little girl full of little girl funny creature energy. She’s the little girl that teaches the adults how to play music.
So now, I’m in Bali learning to freedive and I’ve got two little girls hanging out with me, both excited to make music. One who needs my gentle guidance and she’s growing her confidence. The other who makes me laugh with her wild attitude. One is sweet and sensitive and the other is wonderfully boisterous. I’ve got the two of them teaming up to make these mermaid songs, under my guidance. The part of me who loves painting is chillin’ in the corner watching all of this unfold, grateful it’s finally being taken care of.
That’s enough for today.
Love and Rainbows,
Cha Wilde and all of my parts
PS: If you’d like to learn more about this concept of interacting with the different “parts” inside of you, check out Internal Family Systems.
