Sharing what you write is vulnerable. Yes. Singing in front of people, talking into a microphone, walking on stage, is vulnerable. Yes. Why bother doing the thing that makes your knees shake? Why put yourself in that desperately uncomfortable position? Why go outside the comfort zone? Why?
Tonight, I played my new electronic music to the ladies at the Doe Bay yoga retreat. We sat in the living room, wine glasses all around and listening ears. “For the past year,” I told them, “I’ve been developing a new kind of music that revolves around balancing chakras.” I gave my talk and played them examples. My fingers were shaky on the keyboard. I didn’t know what to do with my feet. I sang with my eyes closed. I usually play with my eyes closed to help me go inside my own world, a protective cocoon, shutting out the audience as much as possible so I can connect with the music. I start to feel awkward with my eyes closed though. It’s weird to close people off visually when I’m there to connect with them but it’s also extremely uncomfortable and weird to make eye contact or worse, look off into the middle direction of nowhere.
I believe that with enough practice, enough shows, I’m going to find my ease with the eyes of crowd lingering on my movements. I’ll let the tingles drip off of me and I’ll be able to play not only the music, but the crowd. The work I’ve done on the chakras is opening up worlds of understanding about how human beings function as energetic creatures, especially when we’re in community or crowds. One sound can make us all feel the same, or at least a very similar, sensation and do a similar movement together. Crowd control through sound is effective and with mindful application of chakra knowledge, I can influence the crowd towards healing, harmony and inspiration.
In between each song, I told the women the stories behind the music. This is the most rewarding moment; the moment when I get to share 100% of myself, the truth, the raw bits, the details that are so real I can feel hairs stand up in the room and sometimes I wonder if it’s too much. I’m making people uncomfortable. I’m saying things they hardly let themselves think. They ask me questions…
Yes, I felt insecure and awkward the first time I heard my own voice coming out of the speakers. Your voice sounds weird to YOU until you listen to yourself so much that your brain equalizes. I’ve spent so many hours recording myself and listening back that now my voice sounds the same inside and outside. Like everything, the more you do it, the more you get used to it and the days when it “sounded weird” feel very long ago.
”I can’t believe you’re singing what you wrote,” said the woman who feels insecure and way too vulnerable sharing what she writes. She was talking about me singing my lyrics in front of everybody and explaining what I’ve wrote so publicly. Yes, sharing can be vulnerable, and you might feel crippled, paralyzed by your fear, your nerves. It passes…if you take action and do it. Thinking will make it worse. Taking action will make it better. If you write something. Share it. If you can say it, sing it. Put it out there for us because we all long for more inspiration from others, more intimacy and more connection. Put it out there for yourself because you long for expression, to be free from yourself and the ways you’ve held back, to make room for something new to flow in. Put it out there for us, humans are born to create. Don’t fuck up the flow by overthinking it. Share what is coming into you. We’re all channels, just like the radio, and the people who love you and the people who love what is flowing through you, are eagerly waiting for your channel to broadcast from the mountaintops. Share now.
Yes, everyone in the room is showing up with totally different energy levels, life backgrounds, moods and all the chakras of all the people in the room may be totally out of wack. It would be ridiculous to think that everyone is on the same page. Can the music get us there? Can my intro to the show, the opening speech where I explain the chakras and how I’ve created music to balance chakras do it? If I begin the show playing sounds from each chakra and aligning, attuning us all to those sounds, will it bring us to the same page? Similar to a yoga class with a meditation and OM chant at the beginning. Is this how we can connect everyone before the music begins? All this will be explored by me on stage this coming year. Let’s begin the research. If you would like to attend a show with me and see this project grow in person, check out my upcoming shows. I would love to see you there!
VIDEO: "Jump the Picket Fence” by Cha Wilde — LIVE at Doe Bay 2020 — I’m recovering from the flu and it was difficult to sing at this retreat. I don’t know if you can tell in this recording that I’m sick but regardless, I decided to share the recording because it was this moment when I first performed this song and it had such an impact that sick or not sick sounding, I believe there in some magic in it for you. ;)
The song in this video (above) is called" “Jump the Picket Fence” and it was the most popular song of the weekend with these yoga retreat ladies. They asked me to play it again and again. Why? This song is a Wilde card ;) if I ever wrote one. Of all the songs on my new album, I felt like this is the dark horse. One by one, the songs appeared and I felt strong and proud each time, but this little guy made me blush a little. Maybe it’s because it’s more like a ‘love song’ than my usual ‘run wild and naked and do crazy things’. Although, that’s EXACTLY what this song is about. Perhaps, this song hit that message more on the head, more literally than any other song I’ve ever written. I’m often eluding to freedom and wild life choices but in this song, I straight up say, “take your clothes off” “be naked with me” “jump the picket fence” “Be wilde!” I couldn’t be more direct. And here I am blushing because the song starts with an admission of love, admitting that I was shy to kiss somebody, saying out loud that I was shy. I’m more shy of being shy than I am of doing the things that make most people shy. This song is about a girl I wanted to kiss because she was so elegant and beautiful. I met her at a day party in the summer and she and I stood in the corner of the garden whispering about how both of us wanted to kiss girls but often felt awkward about how to do it. I was totally talking to her about this while having those feelings about her simultaneously. I don’t know if those feelings were mutual. So this song has felt extra vulnerable and embarrassing for me and because it’s exposing my weakness, I’ve always wondered if this song was weak. Now that I’m performing it and seeing how it’s hitting people (for whatever reason, whatever meaning they find in it), I’m realizing that my vulnerability is probably what is packing power into this song. There is an electronic version of this song that Davey has called a “masterpiece” hah! Yes! Fuck yes. I put the final touches on the electronic version before leaving Orcas Island and I rocked out to it most of the drive home to Bellevue. I’m so excited to share it with these retreat ladies and to have their fingerprints on the final version (because of the feedback they gave me to help me finish it).
LOVE,
CHA🍍WILDE