Flying Free

I've just had somewhat of a revelation. This year, my freshman year of high school, has been particularly tough. No, that's not the epiphany. I've realized that for quite a while now. What I've realized is that I've been a slave to things that I didn't even know had me in bondage. But they have. And for months, it's made me miserable. It's like I've been hungry, craving something...I didn't know what. A solution, a way out, something to fix the problems. 

So I've made the decision to switch schools. I want to try to graduate early, complete high school in three years instead of four. I've separated myself from people that I felt were dragging me down. Yet, at the end of the day, I still felt restless, and I couldn't figure out why. I prayed to God to just take away those feelings because I couldn't figure out why they kept coming back. I was happy one day a week--on Sunday. At church, I felt a warmth, and a fellowship, and the people around me were willing to put up with me and I just loved being there. Of course I still do.

I found my solace in music. The one thing that I can turn to when I need to get the emotion out. And I'm becoming more and more devoted for it. With all the singing I do, including practicing, I sing approximately twenty hours a week. I'm a more dedicated musician because I've found that it isn't just tedious practice. It means so much more than that. And this year, I've begin to live through my music. It's how I work, it's how I play, how I laugh, cry, and worship. Everything I do I've found I love doing it that much more when I do it through music. And it's sort of turned my world upside down.

But still, music is an art, and artists get frustrated. It isn't a science, and you're so emotionally connected...and you get fed up and ready to throw in the towel, despite how much you love it. And I've been there quite a few times this year because I have thrown myself so wholeheartedly into it. I've been pushing myself farther, seeing what I can do, how far I can go.

So when it came time to choose a solo for the Chorus Dinner Theatre, I made what I think some viewed as an unexpected move. I knew I wanted to do something from Wicked. I love the show, the music, the scenery, the themes, all of it. It's just so full of magic and there are so many messages you can get out of watching and listening to it.

I'd been over one of the more well-known songs from the show, Popular, with my voice teacher a few months previously. It's a cute song, very girly and flouncy, and a lot of fun...just to be silly. But I know that would've been taking the easy road for me. Another girl has now chosen that song, and it suits her perfectly in a way I never could've performed it.

There were only a few other solo numbers from the show that really fit the requirements I had. My range, the overall sound, and what I could manage to pull off in the time I had.

....But I went with the toughest choice from the show.

The song is called Defying Gravity. For those who don't know, Wicked is a musical based off of a book which tells the story of the Wicked Witch of the West and how she's not really wicked at all. And this song...Defying Gravity. It is her anthem. It's the big, show-stopping finale the the first act. This is when Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) is at the climax of her story. She has made it to see the Wizard of Oz. It wasn't what she thought it would be, and she's decided that she can't pretend to be something she's not. She can't look the other way when she sees something that is wrong in her eyes. And this, this is when, she proclaims that she is done with letting other people dictate how she lives. And it's the end and the beginning. It's the end of her willingness to just do what someone says. It's the beginning of Elphaba as who she truly is....who the rest of Oz sees as being wicked.

It's a big song.

Obviously.

I chose it because of course I love the song. The first time I heard it, I got shivers...absolute goosebumps, and seeing it live was an unbelievable experience.

And I had something to prove. There are people who underrate me. I've been in the same place with the same people that I've been reduced to a cookie cutter shape. I'm just who other people see me as, the role I've always played. They see me as the smart one, the walking reference book. Or the classical singer who does opera, and it's kind of scary to everyone else because...that's just not "normal" music and winning American Idol has never been my goal. 

And I wanted to prove my point. I wanted to show everyone that I'm not just what they think I am. And I am capable of more than what people see on the surface. And if you know me, you know that when I'm determined to do something, dagnabit, it gets done. And so this was my goal. I wanted to sing Defying Gravity. And I wanted to knock the socks off of people.

It's not an easy song. At all. The range is absolutely huge, the rhythm gets tricky, and it has to be high energy. But not any sort of easy to fake, peppy, happy energy. It has to come off with intensity or the song doesn't mean what it's supposed to.

I have worked on this song for a long time. Over three months. For the past three weeks, I have been eating, breathing, sleeping this song. It's stuck in my head constantly, and I go around singing it under my breath from class to class.

And then last week, I was told that the chorus director wants me to sing it during a set of student performances  at assembly next week. That's when I started freaking out a little bit. Sure, it's what I wanted, right? The chance to prove everyone wrong, to show them what I could be. 

Every spare minute of the past week has been spent looking over this music. The tempo, the vowels, the resonance needed, the dynamics...all of it, just trying to piece it all together. 

But while doing this, I've done what I always do.

I lose myself to the technical aspects of singing and I'm forgetting why I sing at all.

And I've been so nervous about singing this. And my goal was to set out to prove everyone wrong about who I was, and I was so scared that by doing this, if I messed up, all I would do was prove them right.

But then I was talking to Mel while I was having one of these meltdowns, not that long ago. And she said something that kind of knocked me out of whatever silly daydream I was in. I told her why I was scared. And she said that I'd never know until I tried.

And this really struck me. In sort of a strange place.

Do you want to know why? 

Because these are the lyrics to the second verse

I'm through accepting limits 

'cause someone says they're so 

Some things I cannot change 

But till I try, I'll never know! 

Sort of odd, don't you think?

And I had a total wake up call. And I told Mel all of this, as I started to ramble somewhat incoherently. I was singing the song, and I wasn't letting it touch my heart at all. I wasn't singing what I felt, which is wrong in so many ways. I'm singing these words, and even though my goal all this time has been to bare what I feel to people, I haven't meant every ounce of every dyanmic, pitch, lyric. Not the way I'm supposed to.

And the whole point of this song is about letting go and being yourself and feeling free and not letting other people tell you what to do, what to say, how to act, how to live your life. But by getting so worked up about how it's going to sound, what kind if impression it's going to make, the way it's going to "make or break" me as a singer, I'm contradicting myself in so many ways. This performance...this isn't an opportunity to gain validity as a singer. This is an opportunity to other people know what I've been thinking, feeling, going through for months on end now and showing people what is rooted deep within me. And not what I'm capable of as a musician, a singer, but as a person, but as someone who strives to be a better person everyday. 

This isn't my chance to step it up as a voice student, a member of the chorus, or even a student of this private prep school. This is my chance to step up as a young girl, young woman, wherever you want to put me and to be truthful with myself and others. I should've known from the start that this is all about instinct and emotion.

It's time to trust my instincts

Close my eyes

And leap

So I feel like with what I've realized because of this song, I found the answer. Just like the theme at church a couple of weeks ago, "Slave Free Sunday", where the youth promoted their desire to free enslaved children, as Harry Reese spoke (R.I.P---we miss you <3),>

I was a slave to a reputation. I was a slave to determination. But I'm so ready to be free of it, to disregard what other people say about me. I just want to be me, to live without worrying and watching my every move. I want to live and love and feel and work and play freely. I want to defy gravity, I want to forget about outshining, outdoing what others expect out of me, I want to work to outshine myself, to always be better, everyday to be more true to myself, to do what I believe in, to be who I am with no restraint.

It's my own end and new beginning. It's time to try defying gravity.

Something has changed within me

Something is not the same

I'm through with playing by the 

Rules of someone else's game.

Defying Gravity