Of course, it actually started in about 2010 when, for the first time in about 25 years, I began to pursue opportunities to sing English church music. I still haven't sung enough choral evensongs in six years to fill a cathedral chorister's month, but still, it was an important step. And then late in 2015 I started this blog after a lifetime of fearfully scribbling in a private journal but otherwise mainly keeping silent. I don't have a huge readership -- heck, recently it seems to have dropped, if anything! -- but I cannot wait to write every day or two and it has been a thrill to lose that vise around my throat. I literally feel unfettered.
Recently there have been some other new developments. Near my birthday, I spent a little gift money to go for a reading by a local "psychic." She is highly recommended, and I just wanted to see what she would say. She had never met me, and after I introduced myself, the first major thing she told me was that my throat was extremely important to me right now. She could tell that I am a singer, and that I had been one in many previous lifetimes. She said that if I am assuming my singing days are winding down with age, this is not the case, that singing and speaking aloud are about to become even more important in my life. Whether she picked up on this simply from the timbre of my voice, or due to auras or other signals, I don't really care. I liked hearing it.
At my part-time job, I must make frequent pages over a loud speaker system. I find that people come up to me and tell me how much they love to hear my voice. For those of you who have never heard me speak, I have a rather deep speaking (alto/countertenor singing) voice with no real discernable regional American accent. I remember when cassette tape recorders first came out, and a group of my friends and I sat around recording ourselves talking, I hated hearing my voice because I thought I sounded like a boy, in those days, not something we teenage girls wanted! In recent years, however, I find that when I speak even in innocuous situations, like thanking a clerk at a cash register, people around me seem to stop and look at me. On occasion when I attend a meeting, once I speak, people pivot around and start to address me rather than the real person in charge. If I am truthful with myself, for years I have had an image of being kind of a guru who speaks to large groups of people. If I were utterly clear about what it is I am supposed to say, I am sure I would have started on the lecture circuit by now. As it is, I trust my journey, even when it continues to be frustratingly slow at getting off the ground. I am beginning to respect my voice's timbre and its unusual, commanding quality. I am beginning to enjoy the fact that there are people who like to hear me speak. And I am trying to listen more carefully to my unique voice for hints as to where to go from here.
