Singing

"Though singing incompetent I have recently in the privacy of driving my car, and a couple of times to amuse my young child while driving, given my rendition of a Native North American Indian chant along the lines of the lone horseman on a cliff near the end of  Dances With Wolves. Improvizing in this way (and please with no offense to Native Americans) I've been astonished to find the experience strangely uplifting. In my case it might have something to do with leaving the everyday convention, the tired cliches of singing, and getting back to the roots of the will to sing out. I mean like flat out, on the level, telling God how one feels, for real. S/he can handle it, good singing or bad, I figure."

Barry

In the above I groped with the subject of self-expression in a response to someone else's journal. Another respondent praised this response earning me the enmity of that confused and extremely upsetting Blogger.  So, in my own space I'm gonna go deeper into the subject, something that has, frankly occupied my attention for a very long time.

Self-expression is partly an athletic endeavor. Many of us, depending to some degree on ethnic roots, are actually taught to be non-expressive, rigid, tense. Think Senator John Kerry struggling manfully to express himself over at least a thirty year span, from Vietnam to the election of 2004. He proves that good intention is not enough to acquire expressiveness as an adult. (Although by sheer force of will and intellect he did well anyway!) Most of the time, for a locked up adult, the chances of having a breakthrough in physically manifested self-expression such as in dance, singing or athletics, is damn near zero. So, extroadinary measures are called for. Clinton's saxophone playing used to put me off, but in the context of this discussion I see his playing in an entirely different light.

Because this subject is so out-of-bounds, not usual, I'll mull it over for a while and post again on this subject.

Barry