From the time I was 15 or 16 until six years ago I was a singer, a country singer. One day I went to rehearsal with a band I was singing with and the rehearsal leader told me I could perform so many slow songs. Truth is I am a balladeer. I only learned 3 or 4 up tempo songs in my 20 year career. They don't have any emotion punch to them. So I left rehearsal and never sang again.
Partly because I was burnt out but mainly because the kind of music I felt like singing did not fit into the available venues. Plus being a gay man in the country western genre was hard. I put on this character that I felt they could get into and tried to be someone I wasn't singing songs I could feel connected too and getting through the God aweful uptempo songs I had to do to play their reindeer games.
A dear friend has politely pressured me to sing again for my friends and families enjoyment. I agreed and next tuesday I will make noise into a microphone for the first time in years. This time I am just going to be me singing songs that move me. I am also going to the recording studio sometime soon and record myself singing the songs I've always been moved to sing. I love old cabaret standards like "Moonlight in Vermont" and "That's all" and I may even do my tribute to some Broadway ballads and show stoppers.
I wish I had the self esteem and enlightment to do it before. But you know, sometimes things just take a while to get ripe.
Simply making the decision to do it made me feel freedom from old ideas, in this one istance I know that what I think about me is more important than what others think about me. I was so many things to so many people I walked around expecting to be called out an imposter at any moment. It is a miserable way not to live a life. I guess I really felt that I was so inherently wrong I need to hide behind a character I thought would be more likeable than my own.
I am very exciting I got to this point and I will let you know how it all turns out.
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