These Words Are My Diary Screaming Out Loud

Sitting home on Saturday playing my guitar, I thought, “It’s probably about time I put some sort of recording of myself singing out there.” I’ve been in LA for four years, half of that time doing Musical Theatre, and I have no recordings of myself singing (which is just ridiculous). Consequently, most people I know in LA, who are not part of my Musical Theatre world, did not even know that I sing till this last year or so. I wanted to play my guitar and sing so I picked the song that I am the most familiar with, making it the easiest. I chose “The Thief” by Brooke Fraser. It is the first song I learned to play when I started seriously studying the guitar just over a year ago.

I could have recorded myself playing that song over and over till it was flawless, and in the future I probably will, but this time I needed to put it up the way it came out the first time. It was hard for me to post the recording I took because I have always been a perfectionist when it comes to my voice, and now to my guitar playing. That’s probably part of the reason I’ve never recorded anything. If I can’t do it perfectly I don’t want to do it. I’m aware that that is a terrible attitude to have and I’m working on it, which is why I decided to post the video I did, mistakes and all. And believe me, there were mistakes. But it was important for me to put it up anyway. Why? Because I was scared to. Almost nothing scares me, so I have a need to make myself do the random things I find that do scare me. I refuse to be scared.

For a person who needs to be perfect in my artistic pursuits I sure chose a couple revealing avenues of life; music and writing. They are both absurdly revealing occupations to have. Whenever I write a song or a poem I always think about the lyrics in Anna Nalick’s song that was everywhere for a while, “Breath”. You remember it, right? In the last verse of the song she says, “And I feel like I’m naked in front of a crowd, cause these words are my diary screaming out loud, and I know that you’ll use them however you want to.” That’s exactly how it is. You can’t hide when you sing, when you play music, when you write. If you try to hide in those things you will be unsuccessful and boring. I want to be neither. However, I’m aware that to be neither I’m going to have to start out being at least a little bit of both. And, honestly, I’m ok with that.