In My Mind

I was rehearsing with a wonderful artist who was singing one of their original songs. He was singing very tight and completely in his head. I asked him if he was emotionally connected to it.

He said no. Just trying to get through it.

I asked what his focus was - he was trying to channel memories of when he wrote the song and the relationship he was in at that time. Trying to reconnect to the past puts you in your head. Your emotions are in your body and get expressed through your voice. If you're on stage or anywhere trying to reconnect to the past, you're actually not in the room, not in the moment.

Trying to get yourself back into the mindset of when you wrote a song, how it inspired you, or what it was about when you wrote it, means you're trying to reinvent the past. That moment of inspiration is over and gone. You can't recapture it. The way a song made you feel will always be part of the song, but just as you grow and evolve, your relationship to a song will too. If a song was inspired by melancholy feeling, chances are that song will continue to bring out feelings of sadness, as you touch the same emotional pool again and again. But your relationship to sadness and how you express it will change over time too. Bittersweet, nostalgic… the weight of it changing as you move further from the experience.

You don’t need to relive your pain every time you sing a song. That would be brutal. Your relationship to that song will constantly change, so rather than being in your head or trying to find an old feeling, sing the song and express what you feel now, in the moment, what the words mean to you right now and I have no doubt it will resonate.

Give it a try + LMK how it goes!!
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