Voice My Fears

I love making music. It sometimes frustrates me to recall how long it took me to harness my musical mojo. But I suppose it happened when the time was right, largely because the circumstances were bad.

I spent my childhood and early youth playing lead roles in school plays. I stood, proudly, to altar left praising the Lord with my chords. Singing, natch. Then I became an awkward teen and, for a variety of reasons, lost all sense of self-belief; and it just didn’t come back.

So, for the best part of a decade, I believed I had no creative talent, and certainly not something worth offering up to the public. I sang quietly in my bedroom and loudly in my car, but never in front of people - other than an occasional drunken outburst - for fear they would recoil in horror or, worse, point and laugh at me.

In my early 20’s I met a boy I rather liked and confessed to him that I… y’know… occasionally sing… y'know… and have… y’know… written some… y'know... songs.

He demanded I sing. So, stutteringly, I sang.

He didn’t laugh, but he was sort of horrified. “You have a great voice” he said “but you sing with an American accent”.



Wait. What?

How could that be true? I’d been singing to myself for years. I’d know if I sang with an American accent. Then it occurred to me that, although I had indeed been singing, I’d never really listened to myself properly.

So I did and, by jove, he was right.

From that moment I vowed to rediscover my voice, and thus I began clearing another path on the great musical adventure I find myself on now. I found my voice. I found that making music is awesome. It took a fair bit longer for me to find my confidence though.



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