I sing. I love to sing. I sing every day and sometimes I don’t even realize I’m singing. As a kid I never thought I could or would be a professional singer. In fact, I was taught in the traditional surroundings that I grew up in that God gave me my voice so it wasn’t right to charge someone to hear it. I can’t begin to go into how I got over that and became okay with being paid as a singer.
Another blog, another day… as a child I was surrounded by music at home and at church. It was both first nature AND a second language for me. I did everything with music. I learned with it. I processed my thoughts with it. I would create songs and sing them about what I wanted for Christmas around the house. When I watched television, every commercial break was a writing session. I rewrote the commercials and arranged them to say what I wanted them to say and made up harmonies and “gospelized” everything. I could riff my way thru every McDonald’s commercial before my Kindergarten graduation.
Everywhere I looked and turned there was music. I thought everyone “did it.” It wasn’t until starting pre-K and participating in the singalongs with the other students that I realized everyone didn’t do what everyone in my house and in my family did. I would listen and I
couldn’t understand why someone would sing in a “note” that was different than the music the cassette played. Could “Monica” hear that the teacher was playing the piano and she was singing in a completely different key?
I didn’t “discover” that I could sing. I discovered that everyone couldn’t sing, that everyone didn’t sing and it was a culture shock. Children really do learn what they live and I lived music every day. I think about the hymn “His Eye is on the Sparrow” and hearing it over and over again in church growing up. I learned it. I learned all of the words at a very young age and could sing it better than most people around me including the adults all the while never really paying attention to what the words really said or meant.
Now, as a writer, words are everything to me. They are my medicine, my answers, my drug and my weapons and I know how to use them to accomplish exactly what I want to do with them.
I sing, but unlike the song says, I don’t always sing because I’m happy or because I’m free. Sometimes I sing because I’m not happy and I sing because Im not so free, but no matter what, I keep singing. I sing myself happy. I sing until I get free. Music has been a GIFT like no other to me. Its my therapy and I don’t know where I’d be without it.
The making of my new CD “KELLY,” was all about writing and singing me closer to 100% self love, self acceptance and my own freedom!
I don’t have all the answers and I’m really not sure that it’s even possible to get to 100% of ANYTHING in this lifetime, but with some balance and allowing myself the room to grow and makes mistakes, I am committed to work to get as close to 100% of who Kelly is supposed to be.
I invite you to do the same for yourselves. Life really is a journey. Choose your path wisely. It will absolutely give back to you what you give to it and to others.
Until the next one…
Kells