Blog: Why Not?

I think for a lot of us we really get in our own way. We over think the way that we believe others feel about us, whether true or false, but typically in the negative. Seldom do we think about a relationship of ours & think “wow, so & so probably enjoys my company,” “x,y,z, must get value in our companionship if they keep inviting me around” & of course we don’t because even just reading those, it sounds psychotic! That’s not how our brains work, that’s not how we’re all wired & I get it! I understand why. As a member of the kingdom ‘Animalia’ we are hard wired to be looking for the things that are '“wrong” in any given situation. We are programed to be constantly reevaluating the patterns of life around us in search of a change that would indicate danger. (Especially if you’re nuerospicy.) It’s a survival tactic. Even amongst our peers & our loved ones there is a part of us that must always keep up our defenses in the off chance that we have to engage in fight or flight or that our behavior finds us ostracized from our social groups.

I feel like most animals are pretty adepts at reading the body language of their fellow like species. Dogs & cats pick up on aggression cues from one another down to the smallest twitch of the ears or the positioning of the body & we humans are no different. A large number of us are so adept at picking up the interpersonal cues we share that we almost become fortunetellers, putting the pattern recognized cart before the proverbial horse. Sometimes, especially when growing up, certain situations can devolve human behavior & pattern recognition into trauma responses, often from dealing with a neglectful, narcissistic, aloof, abusive, insert your desired adjective here*, care giver. Sometimes those trauma responses come from being outcast by our peers in school or amongst age similar social groups & when left untreated all of these sheltering attributes follow us into adulthood.

Now, I’m not here to give you a sociology lesson or a psychological one. All of this pretense is simply in the way to set up something that I myself have been working through. Maybe it’s the fully developed frontal lobe that finally decided it wants to show up to work or maybe it’s personal growth. Whatever it is, I’ve found myself lately saying “why not” more & more.

If that felt like a hard left turn to a few of you reading this, I promise, the thread will come back around & we’ll tie all of this in a nice little ribbon. I am someone who has always been fairly self conscious. For a lot of you that may come off as surprising given my profession & that I get on here most weeks & spew my thoughts to the world wide web so that they may be read the world wide. But it’s true. I am fairly self conscious. I was never a classic cool kid, until high school I really only had a hand full of friends & I always felt like the black sheep of the suburban lower Midwestern world that I grew up in where people, especially in school, were never slow to voice their opinions of you. I was always taller than everyone in my class, always the weird one, all ways the one who got called ‘gay’ or ‘strange’ & those are badges of honor that take a long time to own, if you ever do. But more & more I’ve abandoned the preconceived societal norms & simply embraced life for what it is.

I think the most recent example of this came from my show the other night. It was the first time in a long time that I had done a full band set & following le pandemmy, I actually redeveloped a bit of stage fright that typically takes me the first song or two to work through. So as the act before me was finishing up, I was off to the side having a bit of a panic at which point I stopped & said to myself “why not just have fun? This is what you love doing, performing, singing, making music, entertaining people, why not just do it for the joy of doing it? If you mess up, you mess up as is human to do & you carry on. No one is here to watch you fail, everyone would rather see the best show you’re filling to give than watch you stumble timidly through a set.” & so that is what I did. I got on stage & I had fun.

Not only did I have fun, but in actually I had a blast & it may have been one of the favorite sets that I’ve done in recent memory. Me having fun allowed the band to have fun which allowed the audience to have fun & following the set I had more people percentage wise come up to me to say how much they loved my music & my energy than I have ever had before.

Another example. I’m someone who has always found themselves reserved with my emotions or the way that I feel, especially when it comes to those I am partnered with. I find myself holding back often & lately I’ve been answering that restraint with “why not?” Why not let your feelings be apparent? Who does it benefit if you hold them back? If anything all it does is create this ere of distance because there is actually self inserted space between you.

I put on music the other night, I thought why not dance? So that’s what I did. Unreserved, unrestricted, I danced freely & had a ball doing so! Why not be honest about what you want to eat when people ask where you want to get dinner? The worst they can do is disagree & then at least you’ve made the attempt & won’t spend the rest of the evening wishing you’d said something, wondering if the evening could have ended up where you wanted to go instead. I’m not saying to be uncompromising here, just telling you to be honest.

Too much of what could be life’s shimmering moments go by behind lock & key. Too many of them pass with fear & hesitation instead of with vigor & joy. If people judge you for doing the things you want, for being the person you want to be, that’s their burden to bare, not yours. Your open expression of joy is often met with the limitations of someone else’s self sabotaging prohibition. Your life is yours to live & feel & embrace, not theirs.

I hope you all have a fabulous ‘whatever point in time you end up reading this’ & will lean into those ‘why nots’ a little more. Have fun, be a shining example of freedom & joy & unapologetic expression because that’s what you deserve. Start small, work your way up! You’ve got this!

As always, much much much love to you all!!!

-C

Blog: Stop Pressing Mute

Do you ever find yourself minimizing yourself, omitting parts of your personality or who you really are as a person just to make the other people around you feel more comfortable? Do you often do so even when you have no idea how that other person will reach? It’s sometimes like you have this whole preconceived narrative in your head about how they won’t want to be around you any longer or you feel like they won’t love you anymore because it doesn’t fit into their ideal of who you are as a person. You’re not alone if you do, I think to some extend we all do this, we all mute parts of ourselves, situationally, in an attempt to fit in.

I mean, why shouldn’t we? We evolved from hunter/gatherers, a society where being outcast could mean life or death. We depended upon the tribe or the collective for shelter, food, water, & other resources, so of course that mentality has been drilled into our brains. From there we cultivated farmland, becoming agriculturally bound & even then if you didn’t present properly to the ruling faction or the person in charge of getting your food, granted you weren’t farming it yourself, you would starve. These social constructs continued on & on & on perpetuated by class, religion, tradition, & other miscellaneous societal contracts that we’re all expected to adhere to, even if some of those contracts have long since expired.

We are now living in the 21st century, never have we ever been, as a global community, more connected. I know a lot of you would argue a dissonance because of technology & while I definitely think it’s a double edged sword, it has never been easier for us as human beings to find communities where we belong. There are people out there who believe the same things, feel the same way, geek out over the same material or hobbies as us & yet still we mute ourselves.

I am beyond guilty of this, it’s something I still fight to break on the daily because there is an expectation when you grow up a middle-class midwest American white boy in a baptist church with an often old school family. That’s nothing against them or my upbringing, it’s just a lot of the time for so many of us, the expectation & the reality collide & usually the expectation seems to win.

Think in terms of tectonic plates. One plate represents who you are as a person, the other being who you’re expected to be. As you grow up those plates fight for dominance & eventually one wins. I have always been envious of those who let themselves win over the localized social constructs. To many of us, they bear the name of “black sheep.” I always thought myself a black sheep because the person living inside didn’t match the mask I was presenting, but I let the weight of expectation submerge me.

There are so many things, even to this day at the age of 29 that I wish I could be, so many regrets for times I wished I were bolder or more “me” so that I didn’t have to actively & delicately tear down the person that so many thought I was in order to reestablish the truth. That, however, is a waste of time. Living in regret is giving energy to a past that is already written, not a future that is yours to make. There are so many things I wish I could be outwardly without the fear of losing those I love or feeling their affections diminish. There are so many songs, speeches, blogs that I’ve written, that no matter how much I want to share will probably never see the light of day & that sucks. They are the parts of myself that I continue to lock away out of someone else’s comfort because at the end of the day I am still choosing comfort over the truth.

I hope you’ll do better that me. I hope you will choose yourself. It’s a hard thing, believe me, I know, I just want you all to know that you’re worthy of love as you are, as who you are, unapologetically. You are worthy of love. This is as much a reminder to me as it is to you all but I hope you take it to heart. As I said before, there is a community out there that would love nothing more than to embrace you, as you are, complete & whole with no alterations & no subjugations & I ache for you to find them if you haven’t already. It’s time to pull back the curtain & show the world the beautiful being that you are. It’s time to stop pressing mute on who you are.

Blog: Persevere

Hi lovelies, how has your day been?!

I hope you’re having yourself a wonderful August in spite of the garbage can fire that seems to be the world at the moment. There’s a lot of pain & heavy feelings going around & I know that so many of you are feeling them so deeply with every fiber of who you are. In all honesty I started this blog with a completely different intent in mind, I was going to write about something that has nothing to do with any of this but as I’m sat down to write, this is what has come to the surface.

I don’t want to get into the specifics of what is happening locally, nationally, globally, etc., not because I’m afraid to steer into the politics on it (you should know me better than that by now) but because I feel this blog needs more general appeal. It needs to be able to be stumbled upon years from now & spark something in the reader outside of the timeframe of its current intent. I’m not ascribing to this some grand purpose or importance because I know it won’t be that, this is just the thoughts of a late twenty-something with a heavy heart trying to inject the smallest amount of light back into the darkness in the hopes that it ignites something brighter in you that you can pass along.

The world is a dark place but there’s so much beauty to be had in it. I know at times that can be hard to see, we’re blinded by the headlines & the disasters we’re faced with, but I’ve found that humanity thrives best not in the moments of grand retribution & triumph but in the small moments that remind us what it is to be alive. It’s in the moments of soft realization where you are reminded of the things you love & why you love them. It’s in the daily mountains we climb, each looking far different from those of our peers but still often requiring immense effort to best. Humanity is found in the perseverance of life because how else do we define life if not the will to keep going even when everything is screaming at you to give up?

I know I don’t have all the answers, I don’t claim to & there is immeasurable beauty in that, in the mystery. We are amazing, luminous beings who often do such dark things to one another with little to no regard. We pick fights, we subjugate those we deem less than, we rage war, & rip apart our planet but I believe, in the end, the light will prevail. I know it’s hard. I know it is. I know there are days when it feels hopeless, where you feel lost in all the noise, or shoved aside, placed in the background. I know that feeling sucks. I’m not here to say the night is always darkest before the dawn, I’m here to urge you to look for those incredible moments of beauty. I’m also fully aware that this may come across as “fluff” or the drippings of my bleeding heart. I mean it, I do & I believe it myself.

I know things look bleak. I know that brighter tomorrow looks a million miles away & feels like it may never come at all, persevere. Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither will the world or your world change over night, but brighter tomorrows are worth fighting for.

I’d be lying if I said that all of this had a clear end in mind. I just wrote what came up as it happened. These may end up just being the ramblings of the heavy hearted but I hope it ends up being more than that. I hope you get some substance out of it even if it’s the smallest of amounts. I don’t really know what to say to you other than I understand the pain that you feel, I understand the hopelessness, I understand the hurt & the abandonment you feel, I do but these are not the end all, be all. Keep pushing on & finding those moments of life that get peppered into the every day. Treat people with kindness & love unconditionally.

I love you immensely.

Happy Friday.

-C

Blog: Reclaiming My Creativity & Reclaiming My Voice

I know, I know. I’m a day late on this one.

Apologies.

I, of late, have found myself bumping into limitation. Whether it’s limitation around the current state of the industry/the world, limitation around the things I think I are feasible, or limitation around when I feel talented or have a free flow of creativity; I keep finding myself hitting walls.

Now I’m quite certain a lot of these are limitations self imposed by my own mind, by my own subconscious because I had the man in the mirror telling me I wasn't enough. He would say that I wasn't rich enough, wasn’t connected enough, wasn’t related to the right people or that I couldn’t write good enough songs, couldn’t sing well enough, didn’t have the right charisma to find success in the music industry. And quite frankly that’s all a load of horse shit.

I began going into writes & going into studio sessions putting immense pressure on myself to “perform.” I thought I had to come up with the most cleaver lyrics, the greatest hooks, but every time I went to write I felt like the song I wanted to write was locked away from me on the other side of an invisible barrier. I felt I couldn’t access the parts of my brain I wanted & it became so insanely frustrating.

I will admit that part of my issue, specifically when it came to the pressure I was putting on myself around vocal performance came from being on the flip side of several months therapy for vocal cord dysfunction. I felt like I’d lost my voice, like every noise that came out of my throat was pure, stinking garbage because once again, comparison was the thief of my joy…a common theme in my life. So, much like Irma S. Rombauer had to do for cooking, I had to rediscover the joy of singing.

What had once been a liberating platform for which I could openly express emotion & passion had become the thing I dreaded most. I hated the sound of my voice on recording, I hate the way I thought I sounded in a mic, so I barely sang for about a year because doing so filled me with nothing but shame, defeat, & terror.

I honestly have two things to thank for my vocal recovery, outside of therapy. Greg Breal, a dear friend of mine who became my vocal coach & musical theater. It’s odd, rediscovering something, especially when that something has been such a pivotal point in your life but it’s really a lot like having coffee with an old friend; the foundation, love, & admiration are there but you’re seeing it all in a new light, through a different lens, & with new, completely separate life experiences under your belt.

I started singing because of music theater. I started my music career on a stage telling stories through music. That’s what led me to country music, a genre that, used to at least, be about telling stories through music. The reason music theater became my beacon once again was due to COVID. I found myself, as many of us did, trying to fill the time we had while trapped inside, so I began rewatching musicals. (You can probably thank Hamilton for that desire.) Rewatching naturally shifted to going back to soundtracks which led me naturally to Wicked.

…I actually think it was Tik Tok that led me back to Wicked thanks to illegal recordings of Jessica Vosk belting her face off during her tenure as Elphaba on Broadway. At any rate Defying Gravity, as it always does, got stuck in my head. The line I found myself repeating over & over & over was:

Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I'm through with playing by the rules
Of someone else's game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It's time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes and leap!

It's time to try defying gravity
I think I'll try defying gravity
And you can't pull me down!

I couldn’t escape it. I couldn’t get it out of my head for the life of me, I think there was a reason behind that. I took the song to Greg in the summer, where I’d been singing pop, country, & originals with him, I decided to try music theater one week. I decided to sing Defying Gravity. Greg loved it. He told me it was the freest, most passionate he’d heard me sing in a long time so I ran with it. I began playing piano singing it, singing it in the shower, while washing my hands, in the car, but I strangely never listened to it, I let it become my own living with the lyrics & feeling its energy.

From there it went from “On My Own” & “I Dreamed A Dream” from Les Mis (a show I actually loathe) to “Go The Distance” from Hercules to “Out There” from Hunchback of Notre Dame (a seriously underrated Disney movie.) Then Folklore came out.

I am unabashedly a Swiftie, I think Taylor is one of the greatest songwriters out there & I think she has navigated the music industry magnificently. Folklore was an album that at its core was minimalist. It was often piano, vocal, guitar, & drums with a tiny bit of production & that made it extremely accessibly to me, the quarantined singer-songwriter. I could probably sit at my piano & play you the entirety of Folklore in my own keys.

I was sitting there plunking on the keys one day when I realized something. I was humming. I was audibly making music with my voice subconsciously, something I hadn’t done in months. I had done it. I had reclaimed my voice, I had grown accustomed to its new way of opportunity, to its new life. I began recording again, I began releasing music again, I began posting videos again. The progress was slow & I am still learning & adapting but I’m finally back to loving my gifts & the music I can make with them.

I want to backtrack a wee bit to talk about writing. Yes, I am still writing & yes, a lot of the songs I’ve written recently are songs I’m very proud of because I’ve realized the only thing limiting me was myself. The only thing restricting the ideas I had & the words I wrote was myself. Much like my journey with my voice, I am reclaiming my creativity, becoming more comfortable in the unknown, & becoming reinvigorated knowing I can write kickass songs. I started journaling daily, creative writing, free writing, whatever. Just getting ideas out. I started to write out the restrictions in my life; what I was afraid of, who I was angry at, what I was holding onto that it was okay to acknowledge & let go of. I found peace & granted myself forgiveness & grace & almost immediately the ideas started pouring back into my brain.

I’m still grappling with my fears especially when it comes to solo writing but I’ve decided it’s time to move on. It’s time to be a confident human who deserves success, who deserves a flourishing career in this industry. I’ve decided I am an amazing vocalist, an incredible songwriter, & a worthy artist. I am worthy of my dreams, of my talents, now I just have to get out of my own way & let them shine. I am limitless, & strong, & more than capable. Yes, something has changed within me & something is truly not the same. I’m so over playing by the rules of what someone else or what I say should limit me.

It’s time I try defying gravity.