
Here are some things that may not be connected. But draw the circle wider, and perhaps they are.
I went to the Zoo yesterday. Blog fans, if you are ever in San Diego, go to the Zoo. I had heard about the Zoo, I had heard about big sprawling beautiful Balboa Park, but with various comings and goings, hadn’t made it there yet. Yesterday, at 9 a.m. It was 75 degrees, there was not a cloud in the sky, (don’t hate me!) and it was Sunday. If you can’t go to the Zoo on such a day, when can you go?
It was a lovely, quiet morning; a good time to watch and be moved. Such an immense amount of beauty in such unusual forms. I looked for a long time at the koalas (and wondered if they were, in fact, alive – they were so still) and at those living mountains, the elephants. I watched small feathered jewels of birds hop around their enclosures; their feathers at times so bright and at other times so intricately marked that they took my breath away. Tigers playing, rolling on top of each other, nipping and running. Funny bright meerkats, standing at attention, watching for who knows what. Being what they are, completely what they are.
Fast forward to my class today. One of my students is singing a piece; it is lovely, but something is missing. It is not easy to know what to say, since it is already very good. I ask him to tell us what, specifically, the song means to him, what he thinks about when he is singing it, what story he is trying to tell. He begins to tell us- though it isn’t easy, and why should it be, to express such things to relative strangers? But he does and the story becomes more specific, unique, poignant. Then I made the request that that be the story he would tell, in his singing, only that. And this young fellow did just that; and we all sat, moved, spellbound, hearing something unique and alive and completely true.
Where is the connection? I marvel sometimes at just how difficult it is for us, for human beings, to be just
what we are, to be simply true. I know that the moments when I experience this as a singer, are the most satisfying – simply because I am lost, lost in the music, in my own truth. And hearing it in others never ceases to amaze me: it is a quality that can’t be bought or sold or manufactured and everyone who loves listening to voices recognizes it. It’s the sound of being completely who you are. If you happen upon this site, and have never experienced this phenomenon, I hope someday that you do. It makes time stop. It changes your life. For me, it is one of the great gifts of living.