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I don't have to sing if I don't want to.
Mar. 11th, 2018 01:20 pmA discussion about singing...mainly to demonstrate how we do not listen to each other online, but instead listen to our own internal monologues:
I don't think people listen to each other. Instead, they think of how to press their own point of view. I found myself doing it here as well. I wanted to share a specific perspective that varied from the group's and got attacked and told I was wrong. Yet, if they read what I was saying, they'd see...that in telling me I was wrong, they were going against their own values. In a sense, they were pushing someone to do what they don't want to do and making "singing" a chore, not an enjoyable act. Something painful and not joyful. They were ignoring the realities of the world around them in the process.
I think by forcing someone to do something or shaming them into it or kicking them, you lose the person, alienate them. These posters turned singing into something I don't want to do. As opposed to something I would love to do.
I'm learning that telling people what to do, giving unsolicited advice, always has a detrimental effect. It's better to let people find their own way...they aren't robots that can be programmed or picked up and pushed to go in a certain direction. Although to be honest? My robot vacuum goes wherever it pleases most of the time.
Poster1: sing no matter how nice you sound. Sing in the car, sing in the shower, sing in the garden, sing while you are cleaning the house, get together with friends to sing no matter how you sound. You will be happier!
ME: I don't know, I can't sing. Tone death. It sounds beautiful in my head, but I've been told it sounds like machinery grinding together by others. Remember doing a college musical once, and I was constantly being told that I was throwing everyone off, that I sounded horrible, so I started to lip-sync and they told me that I sounded wonderful. And various men I've dated pretty much told me not to sing -- ever. One made fun of me. Remember in church once, singing too loudly and everyone staring -- so I stopped. I was oblivious to how loud or what it sounded like to them. Part of the problem -- is I can't remember lyrics or the tune of the song, I have to hear someone else singing it and follow their voice. It's like my mind remembers it, but someone I can't process it out the other side. Has nothing to do with breathing but auditory memory. It's hard to explain to others who don't have this experience. Have similar issues with other sounds -- my brain processes sounds and numbers and equations differently. It's why I have almost no facility for languages. I'm more visual than auditory. I can draw, I can make pictures from words, I can paint, but I am not musically inclined. Can't dance that well either. No coordination. But I love watching people dance, and I often dance on my own. And I love listening to music. But no, I can't sing well and seriously? I'd rather just not sing.
Poster2: What about in the shower, or when no one else is listening? I think it's the joy of expression rather than the 'product' that is valuable.
ME: Weirdly never understood the whole singing in the shower thing. Don't feel the desire to do that. Don't you get water in your mouth? Also don't understand reading in the bath tub. Of course -- I only take fifteen minute showers. I do express myself by drawing and painting things, and writing stories.
ME: Actually no one in my immediate family sings in the shower -- we can't remember the tune or the lyrics well enough to do it. I know it's hard to understand -- but people process things differently. I remember images not sounds.
Poster2: Your spelling error says it all: tone death. Even if you are 'tone deaf', you can still sing for the pure joy of it, for letting that feeling out and expressing yourself. You do not have to perform for others to do this. To shut yourself off from the joy of singing can indeed be a kind of death.
ME: I don't enjoy it though. Do you draw? Do you write stories? Do you enjoy writing? The assumption that everyone should enjoy the same things and there's something wrong with them if they don't ? I'll sing along with a song. But I can't sing a song without music or without someone else singing the lyrics -- because I don't remember the lyrics or the tune. It's not how I think. When I hear music -- I see a story play out in my head. What do you see?
Poster: So make up your own lyrics & melody. Use some melody you *can* remember - like Happy Birthday or Twinkle, Twinkle - and sing your to-do list to it.
Me: Did that. Good thing we don't have to sing, if we don't wish to. I sing, just when I wish, and only songs that move me. And never well.
Me: I think my difficulty with this is the assumption that there is only one way to feel joy or express oneself, or if you don't sing you shut yourself from joy. But that's not true. I know a lot of people who don't sing -- they love listening to others sing, but do not enjoy doing it themselves. My father loves to watercolor, to paint, to take long walks, to listen to opera, but he doesn't enjoy singing. My brother loves to plant flowers, design a piece of furniture, build his daughter a treehouse...there are so many ways to express ourselves. It is not death not to sing. It is death to be forced to only express oneself in a way others think you should.
I don't think people listen to each other. Instead, they think of how to press their own point of view. I found myself doing it here as well. I wanted to share a specific perspective that varied from the group's and got attacked and told I was wrong. Yet, if they read what I was saying, they'd see...that in telling me I was wrong, they were going against their own values. In a sense, they were pushing someone to do what they don't want to do and making "singing" a chore, not an enjoyable act. Something painful and not joyful. They were ignoring the realities of the world around them in the process.
I think by forcing someone to do something or shaming them into it or kicking them, you lose the person, alienate them. These posters turned singing into something I don't want to do. As opposed to something I would love to do.
I'm learning that telling people what to do, giving unsolicited advice, always has a detrimental effect. It's better to let people find their own way...they aren't robots that can be programmed or picked up and pushed to go in a certain direction. Although to be honest? My robot vacuum goes wherever it pleases most of the time.