~The most annoying thing you can hear unless you have already “Found Your Voice…”
The reason I start with this little gem of a saying, is that I found it intensely irritating when I was writing to begin with… I mean, telling me to find my voice was a bit like telling me to become a person. It was patronising and disempowering. What it implied, of course, was that I didn’t have a voice to begin with, when I knew perfectly well that I had always been articulate. When I wanted to say something, by Zeus, it was said! I was always as gobby as absolute fuck.
So why then, were these patronising older and wiser types always telling me that I somehow wasn’t saying some mysterious arseing thing that wasn’t being said?! What did they WANT from me for god’s sake?
It turned out… They just wanted me to keep going. Nothing more. Just to keep ploughing through all the crippling angst and artistic self doubt and the bullshit of having to have a normal job and the prioritising every other shitting thing before I could get my guitar out and all of the not knowing who I was and all of that normal kind of early 20’s stuff you gotta do before you discover it sucks and that you have to make time to be you and it’s okay to value yourself.
The words “Find Your Voice” played on a loop in my mental merry-go-round at the time, and I found myself thinking about it from every angle. Of course at first I had assumed it had meant “Be more gooder at saying all of the things…” which of course is true (and will stay true infinitely, no matter how much you have become Sylvia Plath.) But then I realised that it could be about every aspect of your musical style. Certainly at the point I heard it, my performances were cripplingly shy. My musical style has always been a hotchpotch of stolen ideas from people who inspire me, (shhh, don’t tell anyone!) – but I needed to find out what worked for me in terms of a style I could call my own. So I guess maybe that could have been another aspect of that enraging phrase too. My melodic style has always been based on the melody of how things are said (often dramatically, very quietly into a bathroom mirror, at 3 in the morning.) That is a literal translation, I suppose, of how one finds one’s voice. Then that works its way into the song and you find yourself engaging more emotionally with the performance when the time comes. Rhythmically, I had always been rather enamoured with dark little waltzes, and I knew I needed to diversify in that regard. I just played and played and played until one day it didn’t suck when I tried to do a country riff or something. I’ll just add here, that apart from a few chords from my dad when I was 13, and literally two lessons when I was about 25, I am self taught on guitar. This will explain why, in videos, I hold my guitar like a seal, according to proper guitarists. Such is life. Fuck it, I think it sounds okay. So what if it’s a bit wonky. Right?! I’ll talk about all these things later.
I think what Find Your Voice really does not mean, is to become a broken record of yourself. Don’t get stuck in a zone until you become a clichéd version of whoever you are at that time… I think to really find it, you need to be comfortable with yourself emotionally. That does not mean play everything safe. It doesn’t mean give up on life so you can write better music! Quite the opposite! Live more! Live fuller, harder, BE more. Just be. Do more “nothing much,” if that’s what you need. Don’t run away from pain, you asshole, it takes less energy just to grab the bull by the unmentionables and face it. Of course now I’m writing to my younger self. Not you. But seriously though. What are you afraid of? From me to you… Here’s some of my own brand of patronising advice. It’s really lame to be afraid of fear. Then it has won. And in the gospel according to Ryn: Fear, not hate, is the opposite of love.
Keep going until life gives you a clearer voice. That’s all they meant. You don’t have to try harder than you already do. It’s probably easier if you try a lot less actually. Then things tend to flow easier creatively once you’ve let yourself off the hook. Just do stuff for as long as you need to, until what emerges is entirely true to you. You will find out if it is not true to you in performing it to other people. Once you hear it through their ears, you will know if such-and-such line needs to be changed, or if you would like the melody there to be gentler or more thought provoking. I guess you find out who you are more in essence along the way, with the whole process. Refining and redefining who you are. Or, just as accurately, you will edit out who you are not.
Remember, you are love.
Ryn.
Ryn 