For many people, noticing that they are in an inspired state is something of an accident. It seems special, maybe even mystical. For the artist, however, this state is a practice and it is entered into daily.
Throughout my life I have explored many paths. However, on my personal journey nothing else has opened or deepened me as much as singing does. It would seem to be my “way” through life.
Practice is the essential element that has made singing a reliable creative ally — rigorous, intentional, daily practice. I have given years of my life to practicing details like perfecting the overtones of an “AH” vowel on a certain pitch, or mastering the articulation of a consonant so the high note is easier. Mundane details that require such intense concentration that my mind is scrubbed clean of every other thought. My heart is open and receiving because I am submerged in curiosity and not replaying a past encounter or projecting a possible future.
All misgiving disappears and without a single strategy or logical calculation I seem to know what to try next. It is not necessarily the key that unlocks the doorway to “success,” but it always opens into the next thing I need to learn. I emerge renewed, inspired and ready to interact with what life brings my way.
Singing becomes an inspirational practice when it is done with the kind of concentration and awareness that stops time and opens into unbounded creativity, when it focuses the mind and liberates the heart from its brokenness.
You do not have to have any special powers to enter into this state. All you have to do is practice every day with focus, intention and curiosity instead of with drive, urgency and expectation. This is the difference between perpetuating what is known and creating something that moves everyone to perceive life as never before. It is the difference between pushing to achieve ambitions and tuning-in to inspiration.
Here is a link to Tony Robins interview with 108-year-old Alice Herz Sommer, a pianist and holocaust survivor. She inspires my practice!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTwnlW5lscg&feature=related
amazing and quite true. “practice every day with focus, intention and curiosity instead of with drive, urgency and expectation.” This applies to so many other areas of life. Kind of like “let go and let God”