Singing

I used to sing and perform music for friends and relatives from the time I was about 8 years old and started taking piano lessons. I took piano lessons until I was 16 years old and played in recitals until I was 12 and told my parents and piano teacher I wouldn't play in recitals anymore. However, I did play the Steinway Concert Grand at Church and the baldwin Organ there too especially for youth Group Saturday night and sometimes Wednesday night and for musicals sometimes too and at the church School I went to my last year of High school in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I suppose I could have been a professional musician but I didn't like the idea of playing in smoke filled rooms with drunk people listening. And I didn't see myself making a living playing music and singing in churches the rest of my life either so music stayed mostly a hobby after I stopped playing in church at about 21 when I parted ways with my childhood church.

But, singing and playing the piano always was a part of my life and writing songs and lyrics began during my teens too. I mostly wrote more spiritual songs and deep philosophical songs as that was the direction that made the most sense to me. I had almost died of whooping cough at 2 and of blunt trauma caused childhood epilepsy that I outgrew at 15 so I tended to be more serious than the average young person because of this. But, my suffering also made me very kind too because my suffering made me not want anyone else to experience the pain and suffering of whooping cough and blunt trauma childhood epilepsy so it could be said I knew death quite intimately from age 2 onwards.

So, I was always trying to convince myself that I was still alive by taking physical risks which allowed me to sort of believe I was still alive after dying at age 2 and between ages 10 and 15 with blunt trauma childhood epilepsy where the seizures were just like being murdered each time they happened and took several hours to recover from them. I suppose by 35 or 40 these types of seizures likely would result in death from stroke or heart attack.

So, Singing with friends or with my mother while playing piano or later organ or guitar was something I found very soothing and healing in my life. When I met girlfriends I would often sing for them on piano or guitar throughout my later teens from age 15 to 25 years old when I met my first wife and had a son.

My mother was a coloratura Soprano so she would also sing with me and people in the same family like brothers or sisters or mothers and sons or fathers and daughters often sound really good together by the way.

So, my mother and I were very musical in this way. However, when my father passed away in 1985 I stopped playing and singing very much except maybe at Christmas because I couldn't deal with my emotions that came up when I played music. When my father died a part of me died too and I didn't get over this from age 37 when he died until I almost died at age 50 for 8 months time. Because of what happened to me as a child I have always felt I was both dead and alive at the same time which is the description of what a shaman is according to my College Course I took in Cultural Anthropology which said something like: "A Shaman is a person who has psychologically died but somehow their body still lives" which is my experience from having whooping cough at 2 and then having Blunt trauma childhood epilepsy from ages 10 to 15.

Because though you live you sort of feel dead too. For this reason death doesn't scare me at all because you already live in the world of the dead and the living all the time. So, to me, there is not much difference between being dead and alive. They are both two aspects of exactly the same thing in the end.

But, I'm trying to get to a point where I can more easily sing and play musical instruments more often too because I think it would be therapeutic for me because I'm 71 now and will be 72 soon.

By God's Grace