Breathing Lessons
When life throws a curve ball what do you do? Breathe.
Hello everyone!
Well, last week was interesting wasn’t it? .
When I considered about what to write about this week, this particular essay came to mind. I wrote this about two years ago now, back when this newsletter was new and I didn’t know what direction it would take.
I wrote this essay in the form of Summer Brennan’s 5 things, a structure that I have used before and I really do enjoy.
What I enjoy about this essay is that it’s about what happens when the unexpected happens. How do you get your footing back? I wrote this after a break up (indeed, this is how this newsletter began) and how the breath and singing cracks you open to healing.
So, I hope this essay is a balm. Or whatever it needs to be. I’ve also recorded an audio of me reading it if you’d like to listen.
1.
My voice teacher talks about breath as if it is the only thing that matters in singing.
She’s not wrong, as I came to learn. There is an art to singing, of course, it’s a bunch of simple things and a hard thing put together to create magic. The simple thing — opening the mouth. The hard thing—learning to control the breath.
In this healing journey, or whatever this is, it’s the breath or the idea of breath that I come back to the most often. Waking up with anxiety means that I instantly need to be present in my breath, use the box breath technique to calm down — breathe in for four, hold for four, empty for four.
Again. And again. Until it’s okay again.
The learning happens in the breath, the repetition, the way it becomes who you are.
2.
When Nate Shelley and Coach Beard hugged it out, I cried. It was the catharsis I needed narratively in Ted Lasso.
When I watch tv shows or movies, I always think of them narratively, try to find the beats, and wonder if the pay off really happened. This is called catharsis. I know it’s a catharsis because I breathe. I remember to breathe, to suck in air and then expel it, sometimes in a rush or sometimes in a continuous whistle. But the breath is there to cleanse what was taken in.
I breathe out when Nate and Coach touch foreheads and I know everything is going to be alright. It’s okay to be sorry. It’s okay to be forgiven, even after you were an asshole. It’s okay when redemption comes with recognizing that life, like people, constantly changes, moving, like breathing.
And yes, I’ve seen the final episode. And I took that breath again, and it changed me.
3.
If you listen to any Andra Day song, she breathes deeply a whole verse before opening her voice for the high note. This is something my voice teacher and I have noticed about her voice. It’s really something we are calling the open-up-and-sing mode. Everything, all the crazy high notes and runs don’t come from the throat but from the breath, deep in the gut that moves the breath through the note, much like an arrow and a target.
Much like trying to hit the target, you prep for it. The deep breath happens early. And the breath moves through vowels and rhythms and is replenished with a short methodical break.
But when it comes to the big moment, the breath empties and the vocal is supported by the reserve of breath. Breathing this way is not infinite and purposeful.
More directly, breathe on purpose. Breathe with a purpose.
4.
Nature, she breathes too. My favorite smell on this here green and blue marble is petrichor, that earthy green smell when it rains. There is comfort in knowing that renewal has a specific smell, a timbre that hits the nose the right way, connects to the brain, and registers that this is the aroma of starting over.
This is a gift. An exhale. A type of relief.
5.
I am writing this in a Starbucks after another one of those amazing voice lessons and filled with gratitude. I am grateful to have returned to singing after a break up. I have cried in front of this woman, my voice teacher. I sank to the floor and cried like a child. I have sung during days when I have planned my death. I have sung during days I wanted to lock myself away. I have sung when my voice made the ugliest sounds and the prettiest sounds. I have sung through pain and glory.
But the thing is, I sung. I converted the breath into song, the pain into art. The pain into art. The pain. The art.
The breath. The art.