Back in January, I picked START as my keyword for this year.

I chose it because I hate starting starting can be challenging for me and I had some projects I really wanted to start (and finish) this year.

(The universe confirmed my keyword choice by showing up with the funds for me to start a vocal improv project.)

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Now, I am a solid finisher — I love crossing things off lists and chipping away until it’s all done.

But starting? Starting always feels trickier.

I think it’s because I don’t know what I’m doing. *rueful grin*

By the time a project is nearing completion, I can see what needs to happen and in what order. When I’m starting out, the to-do items seem tangled up like a big knotted mess of yarn and I can’t figure out where to begin pulling.

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What is interesting is that this starting struggle doesn’t show up when I’m spontaneously singing.

When I begin an improvisation, I only worry about starting. I don’t get tangled up in what comes next because I honestly have no idea what that might be. I just find my way to a workable idea and hang on.

And then at some point I’m not starting anymore; I’m in the middle, working my way towards the finish (ah … much better).

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See, I’m a think-y gal and it can get me into trouble, particularly at the beginning of new things.

I hem. I haw. I procrastinate and work in circles.

While improvising has strengthened my intuition and made me more comfortable trusting my instincts, I prefer to understand how and why things work.

I enjoy considering, pondering, cogitating, etc.

(I think, therefore I am.)

I like to plan.

Plan the work and work the plan. In that order.

And, to me, it seems that in order to do something, I should understand what that something is first.

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This showed up when I was learning to sing in contemporary styles.

I wanted to understand how I should be attempting something. Which register? What vocal placement? How high should I lift my palate and where should my tongue be?

Well, there was no single answer and no answer that was right in all styles.

That’s because singing is an experiential process. You understand what you are doing AFTER a good long while of trying things out and discovering what works and what doesn’t.

It is also an individual experience, because every singer — and  his/her vocal anatomy — is unique. Even the best teacher can’t tell you how things will feel and sound in your body. (You’re the only one in there after all. *smile*).

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So.

Sometimes I won’t get to understand first. (*sigh*)

I will have to wade in, muck it up in order to figure it out.

I will have to make mistakes and do things over.

After all, it is right there in the etymology of the word – “under” “stand.” As in one thing stands under another. As in what happens next is standing on what you figure out now/first.

I might not like it, but I’ll keep starting to understand.

Because I write this blog and because, at times, I like to procrastinate writing this blog, I read other blogs from time to time.

The ones I like frequently contain short, pithy posts (by short, pithy … *smile*) by  clever – and concise – bloggers.

I appreciate the brevity of these bloggers. (Say that 10 times fast. *smile*) They say a lot in a little, or say not so much, but still in a few words and I enjoy having just enough food for thought with my morning coffee.

Yet while I like short posts, I can rarely write them. (The only short posts I seem to write are quotes by other people. *grin*)

I have things to work out.

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See, if I’m present or lucky (or both) when I sit down to write or step forward to sing, I have an explosion of thought or the spark of an idea and the rest of the thought (the parts that complete the thought?) spreads out like the rays of a firework.

In the spark-y, exploding moment, everything is crystalline, but then like trails of light in a dark sky, the clarity begins to fade.

Ideally, I could take time to gather/recall the spark and those light ribbons in order to capture and convey the complete firework thought/idea. (I frequently save these thoughts in text messages to myself.) But, sometimes no matter how hard I try, the full firework is gone. I remember its brilliance, but I cannot find a way to share it or clarify it.

In my spontaneous singing, I work to listen as I invent so that I can repeat those things I find “spark-y.” It’s kind of like hitting the record button or taking a picture. I think of it as fixing the firework in my mind’s eye.

If I work to make sure the initial “recording” has lots of information, I can sometimes keep more of the idea as I work through it. Then tinkering with it actually makes it clearer.

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Fixing the firework shows up in my writing as well as my singing.

Take this blog, for example.

The degree to which I tinker with a blog post and how much it is like or different from the original firework-thought intrigues, fascinates and often surprises me. More important (to me), it feels a lot like what happens when I improvise.

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Why does this matter?

Well, as I work on a latest improv project, I realize that it helps me to understand (because we know I like to understand things! *grin*) how I think and organize and integrate ideas and inspirations. Understanding has become a big theme in my improvising and teaching. And it’s a part of my creative process (regardless of the medium).

Catching that glimpse of an idea firework out of the corner of my eye and fixing the image in my memory so I can further examine and contemplate it to recreate or reinvent it has led me to all sorts of discoveries (like this one about how I like to work *smile*)

And, maybe taking some time to think about (or notice, if that’s more you’re cup of tea) how you like to work and create and organize and integrate could help you do the thing that you do better.

When I tell people that I teach voice, a surprising (well, surprising to me *smile*) number of them ask me what that means. That’s when I usually say “I teach singing lessons” or “I teach people how to sing.” But as I stand on the other side of another semester of teaching including the last middle school musical, I realize that it’s more than that.

See, I have discovered that teaching people to sing has a lot to do with allowing people to be themselves.

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I especially see this with young students. They want to sound like all those singers they love. They contort their young voices into imitations of what their favorite singers are doing. And sometimes it is successful, but it rarely sounds natural. Because that is not how their voices sound.

So we have to spend time learning what our “real” voices sound like. The easiest and most natural way each student can sing the note or the song or the exercise. And we often have to let go of an idea of how we want to sound to accept the way that we actually sound.

Let me be clear, this is not about dashing hopes or setting limits, this is about exploring the instrument each of us is given and finding the fantastic sounds each singer can create with his/her voice. Easily and naturally. One student might have to work slowly and for a long time at something that seems to come easily to everyone else. Another might have a flair for interpretation or improvisation. Every singer has something she wishes she did better and something he takes for granted that everyone else can do.

But I have come to understand that we have to love our voices for what they are, not what we wish them to be. And in doing that we learn to love our selves a little bit more.

I am fascinated and gratified to discover (and rediscover) how much of our identities are attached to our voices. That’s why my favorite way to meet singers is by singing with them. (And, it is part of why I started Songtaneous all those year ago.) I have a number people who I see rarely but know very well because we have sung together.

Singing makes connections and communities. And teaching voice always, always, always teaches me something about myself.