• "I learn by going where I need to go" - Theodore Roethke. 

    I sit at my desk and listen to the cars move by as small birds chirp at my windowsill. This is the beauty writing and listening. It is linking things together. The deep flow when we name things as they are.

     “Traffic moves underneath the old pine where birds chirp and next to me my dog lies snoring.”

    Our writing life can not be separated from our lives as a whole.
    We are not separate from it.
    Our writing is our life.

     I am reminded of a funny t-shirt that says - “Beware, I am a writer. Your stories may be used in my next book - or something to that effect.” Yes - when we write we travel landscapes unfamiliar to many and few can follow us into the caves and caverns, or fly with us as we penetrate the clouds or morph ourselves into a crumbling leaf.

     Writing should be done for the sake of writing. 
    It is an invitation to claim joy, 
    an invitation to claim your voice.

     Singing is the same for me. Simply with singing, you are not only pouring onto paper - with singing you are the paper - the morphed leaf - the bird song. As a writer your job is to get the words to sing off the page. As a singer,  your job is to hold the words in your mouth, to mold them with your tongue, to give them breath, to shape them with your emotions and memory. 

    You cells are the paper,
    your tones the ink,
    and then when finished,
    your joy is to give them as a gift to the world. 

    What do you get in return?
    Utter bliss. 

    If you do it well, the world gives it all back to you and more.
    Then connecting color to breath and breath to sound and sound to story
    you start again creating the eternal circle we call life. 

    Our voice is connected to our bloodstream and the breath I sing with could have been your last exhale. It's human nature to express ourselves. Writing claims our world. When we were very young we realized quickly that writing has power. It is immediate. We are so small and tiny and still have the power to  move people around with only a few small babbled sounds. “ Mama, eat, stay, MaaaaMaaaaa, NOW!!!!!!” Parents are our first audience. We realize rather quickly that even short sounds have great meaning. Little big poets, we practice naming things. “Mooo” said the cow and “woof woof” goes the dog. 

    We make sense of our world and our processes through voicing what we feel and think. It helps us sort things out and brings clarity. It is a powerful form of prayer and meditation, connecting us both to our own insights and to a higher and deeper level of inner guidance. When we name things we link ourselves to what is important to us. 

    Writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living. When you open up so wide that you can freely SING the lines of truth that you wrote from the depths of your inner well, you are liberated. 

    When your singer’s voice meets the writers voice
    and has an intimate love affair,
    this is the moment of awakening.
    All fears dissolve with finding and living
    your true voice in our  world. 

    5 Steps to finding your voice in this world.

    Inspired thought and activated heart.  

    Step 1 - MUSINGS

    Talking to the page. Write your most intimate musings into a journal.  Know you are safe and can close the cover and hold it close to your heart anytime you need to. Write every day and know that the key to being free as a writer is feeling safe. The key is trusting your voice and that you are in a critic free zone. So ask your judges to leave the room and become your best friend. 

    Step 2 - SPEAK YOUR TRUTH

    The second step is to speak your truth with utter clarity. Practice reading your journal out loud. Practice reading other writers that you resonate out loud. Practice hearing your voice in a room while speaking solely your truth. Practice feeling comfortable with the uncomfortable until you can keep your speaking voice open and clear while sharing your life stories. 

    Step 3 - SING IT

    Adding height and depth of spoken word through melodic lines. As writers we want the words to sing off the page. As speakers we are there to lift the the words off the page and let them hit air. We go from hearing them internally in our mind, to voicing them to the world. As singers we get to do the almost impossible. We get to take the words and not only lift them off the page, we get to move them horizontally and vertically through time and space. Instead of using the white page to reflect off, we now use the walls of a room for reflection. 

    Step 4 - SHARE IT WITH OTHERS

    Empower your voice to be there for you 24/7 and keep standing in your truth when you start sharing your words, speeches, songs with a bigger audience. 

    As singers-songwriters we work on both aspects. Writing the truth on the paper. Speaking the truth in our lines, and singing the truth to larger audiences. The words are carried into spaces  filled with fellow travelers and listening hearts and then the magic begins. The tone is set and we begin to fill up the people’s bodies and souls with sound. Pour into them love and trigger their imaginations. 

    Step 5 - VOICING ESSENCE IS TRUSTING THE SKIES AND FLYING

    Yes, the last step is to dare to expose your heart until  you are sure you will fall from the cliff. You teeter on the ledge of no return as you stretch into voicing the things you used to only write secretly underneath the bed covers in your journals. You look out into the audience. Their eyes full of expectancy and the room is still. Can you trust in your journey? Will your voice hold you? Are your words solid? Are they based on truth or mere fiction.   

    The audience waits in anticipation as you open your mouth to sing. You catch your breath and begin to fall. It is the same feeling as falling in love. You never know which direction it will go when you open your soul. The person in front of you can embrace your purity or walk away. 

    The voice path is the path of love. It is the path of the heart. You decide to open. And the opening is not to one person, sitting across from you at a dinner table. The opening is to 100 people staring at you from straight backed chairs. The opening is for 500 people looking at you from the back of the room, waiting for you to slip off the edge. 

    So why take the voice path? Why seek after the pure essence or your being, when it is more comfortable working in a grocery store or staying hidden from view? 

    You take the voice path because it is liberating. 

    When you allow yourself to voice who you truly are and risk standing front and center and the audience catches you, this is the moment that god enters playing field. When they all fly with you, you come back to the moment that you were a child, when one MA MA… could make the room come to a stand still and everyone would listen to what you had to say. 

    And when you stand with open hands, and they with open mouths, you will know that you are bringing them stars gathered from some of your darkest nights as a writer. You create poems, songs, books and concerts and soon your life's work has given you a felt path through the world we live in. 

    Giving voice is our birthright. It gives us the keys to the kingdom. Call it the angels or the muses, call it intuition or spirit guides, by listening to our inner voice and bringing it out into our world, everything reverberates around us. Giving voice to who we are, connects us to something larger than ourselves that allows us to live with greater vigor and utter aliveness.

  • May you have the courage to persevere and stay true to your inner voice and clearest vision of how we may create a healthy and vibrant world.  Stay Gold!