Podcast: Play in new window | Download
The poet, David Whyte, has a beautiful poem entitled, The Bell and the Blackbird. The verse speaks of the pull to deep inner work and the contrasting pull to take our wares to the outside world.
This contrast is a constant pull for the artist – how much more do I need to practice? Am I ready to perform for others?
In this episode, John discusses the importance of finding this balance to grow as an artist and singer.
Episode 156 – Within and Without
Hey there. This is John Henny. Welcome back to another episode of The Intelligent Vocalist. I do so appreciate you spending your precious listening time with me. All right, I’m a bit pumped up today. I held a webinar a little earlier today for members of my email list and my wife Tracee joined me. My wife Tracee Theisen-Henny runs my Music Academy, and she actually left a huge corporate job working with clients like the L.A. Dodgers, Anheuser-Busch– I mean, she had huge, huge clients. And she came to help run my Music Academy and really turned it around and made it a great success. And she joined me for an “ask me anything” and people asked questions about business and starting their own studios. They asked me about teaching and singing, what it’s like to work as a married couple, and we answered anything and everything. It was a lot of fun. But that was only for members of my email list.
It was free, but it was only– the invitation was given out to members of the email list. So if you are not on my email list, why not go to johnhenny.com and just scroll down the page and you can sign up for my email list and you won’t miss out on things like that. So, enough of the commercials there.
Today, I want to talk about a really interesting poem, and this came about– I was speaking with one of my distance students, a student that studies with me over Skype, Joseph Moore. And Joseph is just a really intelligent singer. Well, he listened to The Intelligent Vocalist. That’s how we got in touch. I always enjoy working with people who listen to this podcast. It’s a good fit. But we were talking about this meditation app we both use called Waking Up, and there was an interview on the app with the poet David Whyte. And David just has this wonderful way of looking at creative spirits and being an artist in the world. And he has a poem called “The Bell and The Blackbird.” And the poem basically speaks of– I believe the story that he got it from was of the Irish monk back in the old Irish tradition and he’s within the monastery walls and he hears the bell that’s calling him to prayer. It’s calling him into introspection and to go deeper inside himself.
And he thought, that’s the most beautiful sound in the world. And as he went to go to prayer, he heard just outside the monastery walls the call of a blackbird, beckoning him to the unknown world outside. And he said to himself, and that is also the most beautiful sound in the world. And it really describes what we go through as creatives, what we go through as artists, musicians, singers. And the bell that calls us inward is where we hone our craft and we get our mindset right and we go to lessons and we practice and we write, and it takes a lot of dedication. And it’s a wonderful place to be. But there is a beautiful safety there in that we are within the walls of the monastery. We are protected from the unknown.
And there is a beauty in watching our strengths grow; this is absolutely necessary work. People who don’t do that work often pay the price for it. You’ve often seen it in the poor American Idol auditions, people who’ve decided that they can go to town now but they haven’t done the necessary work. And a lot of this podcast I talked about the importance of the work. I discussed how to do the work, how to think about the work, structure your practice times, eliminating distraction. This inner work is very important, and the sound of the bell is indeed beautiful. And I would hope that you keep your ears and your spirit tuned to hearing this bell, and that this bell rings often for you, that you are called to improve yourself. But if that’s all you do, you’re missing the call of the blackbird. Now the call of the blackbird is beautiful, but the blackbird sits on the other side of the monastery wall, and beyond that wall are many things, many unknown things.
There are dangers, but there are also great rewards. And if we don’t heed that call, we are truly missing out on the huge blessing of taking what we have worked on to share with the world. And David Whyte speaks about meeting the world where you are, and I think that’s a wonderful and beautiful way to think of it because, just as I said a minute ago, that you don’t want to go to town too soon when you haven’t developed your skills, you also don’t want to wait too long.
And at a certain point, you just have to give yourself over to what that experience is going to be. And you have to give yourself over to the world with its dangers, with its heartache, with its rejections because all of this will make you better. The negative ultimately isn’t negative. It’s all part of the journey. If you take any artist you really like, chances are their first album is not as good as their third. But I’m talking about artists that have had a long career. And especially if you go back to earlier music in the mid ’60s through the ’70s and ’80s, artists were really allowed to develop, and they were– Now, often, there’s more tinkering that’s done before they make their debut, especially in pop music. You don’t really have the luxury of finding your footing, but even then, those artists had to step out and show themselves to the world where they were at so they could be further developed. But you look at artists whose albums didn’t sell well, the first album– Elton John’s first album didn’t really sell well at all. It was not released initially in the United States.
His first album is called Empty Sky, and unless you are a hardcore Elton John fan, you probably cannot name a song off of it. Queen’s album–There was some anticipation about Queen. They’d made a bit of a name for themselves, but certainly did not sound like the Queen that created Bohemian Rhapsody. Billy Joel’s album didn’t sell that well at first. There’s so many artists that had to come where they were at, and to get on stage. You’re not going to get better at performance until you get on stage. You’re not going to get better at recording until you get into a recording studio. And that if you haven’t done before, that often is an experience that really throws singers in, and it can discourage some really talented people, because you’re going to be under a microscope like you’ve never been before. And things are just going to be picked apart and picked apart, and you have to put yourself through that experience and be able to be okay with that experience. You have to be able to go on stage and have things go wrong. You can’t hear yourself in the monitors. The sound goes out in the middle of the gig.
You have an audience that’s completely unreceptive because they want to see the act after you. And if you talk to any experienced performer, they have been through everything. We often see them at their best, but they all have horror stories. And all those horror stories live on the other side of the wall. They all await you. But every one of those experiences will make you better. And when you step outside of the monastery, you’re going to meet people, you’re going to make connections you otherwise wouldn’t have, and you never know where these connections are going to lead you. So it’s great. Even to be a hobbyist– if that’s all you want to be, is a hobby singer– I really respect people who do this as a hobby. I think it’s a wonderful hobby. And if you have no plans of turning professional, there’s nothing wrong with that. But even as a hobbyist, get out there, experience that, see what’s on the other side of that wall. Look at your fear and step through your fear.
Stage fright is really just being inside your own head and focusing on yourself. And it’s only through repeated performance that you’re able to turn your attention and your focus without rather than being within. And that’s what often happens when we spend too much time in the practice room. We’re just always within, within, within, criticizing ourselves, fixing things and improving. And all that’s important, but when you step outside the wall, it’s without.
Outside of the wall, your attention now needs to go towards giving your creations to others and seeing what happens, stepping on stage and putting your energy to the audience and giving the audience permission to not like you. You have to give people permission to not like you. It’s their right anyway. They’re going to decide if they like you or they don’t like you. You don’t control that, and there’s nothing but pain in trying to force people to like you or hope that they like you or somehow feeling disappointed or crushed if they don’t like you. And you will get used to this.
I’ve said it before at a previous podcast called The Trolls Are Coming for You. And this really sprung from my recent foray into YouTube. And I’ve talked about this before, and I expected to get some trolling, but man, it actually spun my head for a second and I was a little stunned, and a couple of the comments actually kind of cut me to the core. Like, wow, how could somebody say that about something that I did just to help people to explain how the voice works, etc? And I just had to stop and go, it’s all right. Not everyone’s going to like me. Not everyone is going to like you. And I hesitated going on YouTube for a while, and I actually have to get back on there. Quick side note, there are certain– I have found out, perhaps I’ve mentioned on the podcast, but I have come to find out there are certain companies that if you do any type of analysis of a video of the performance that they own, they give a copyright strike. So I managed to quickly get two copyright strikes.
One is expiring soon, and the other I actually protested on YouTube is siding with me for the moment. So now I just have to wait and see what the other side does. But that will– if they don’t do anything, that will expire soon, which I’m anticipating because they were just ridiculous. I mean, the videos are fair use. But I really, really hesitated and because I was worried about going into the ferocious world of YouTube comments, and now that I’ve been in there, it’s okay. And I actually let– unless they’re like really horribly offensive, and I mean offensive for people reading them, not just offensive for me, I leave everything. I don’t delete them at this point, and some of the negative ones I’ve learned from. But it was that fear on the other side of the wall that stopped me for a while. And the videos are actually helping grow my audience and helping more people discover me, and the podcast is getting a lot more downloads recently and I think YouTube is driving some of that. And if you found me from YouTube, welcome. I appreciate you coming here.
But even myself, I remember the first time– my first instrument was drums and I just practiced drums like a madman when I was a kid. I mean, just– I’d run home from school and just play those drums. And I remember I tried playing football when I was 14. I’m quite tall. I’m six foot seven. So there was pressure. When I was a freshman in high school, the coaches kept coming up going, Do you want to play football? Do you want to play football? And I was no jock. But I thought I’ll try this to fit in, and went through hell week during the summer, which was absolutely miserable. And the first day of contact, I had somebody just plow into my leg and I went down, and I went, something’s wrong. And then they had us run around the field and the pain was just searing. And it turned out I had fractured the growth bone in my left leg and I ended up in a body cast for six weeks. I mean, both legs, all the way up to my chest. Because when they set it, you couldn’t move or it could reinjure. It wouldn’t heal properly. So there I laid, and I figured out– I would lay stomach down on a gurney, right, and I’d roll myself up to my drums and just play them with my hands.
I mean, I couldn’t stay away from this instrument, just adored the drums. But when it came time to perform, I joined the jazz band in high school, and my first performance was at a jazz festival and they gave me a drum solo. I was a pretty talented kid. Looking back, I was rough and raw. But there was talent there, and I ended up playing professionally for a while. But when that drum solo came, I just remember the absolute fear and as I finished the solo, I remember hearing applause and I turned my head because I really thought I was going to vomit everywhere. I mean, my stomach was just doing tosses and turns and flips. I was absolutely miserable because all I had done was work myself on the drums. I hadn’t properly performed, and those first performances were terrifying. The first time I performed vocally, I’ve told this story here before, but I was– professional gig playing the drums, and I’d worked up a song. It was a ballad. There were no drums on it. And I asked to sing it up front. And as soon as I started singing, I did not recognize my voice. It was horrible. It was quavering from the nerves. It was pitchy, even though it was great in practice. And out of the corner of my eye, I saw the bass player and guitars look at each other and just cringe and start laughing. They turned their backs to the audience because they were laughing so hard. And I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me because I thought, I’ve got another three and a half minutes of this. This is horrifying.
Now, fast forward. In a few years, I moved from the drums to lead singer in the band and played all types of gigs. But those initial performances were awful. And there was no way for them to not be less than good. I really did prepare for them. I really did practice. But the other side of the wall was a new world, and it was a world I wasn’t prepared for. And though I was heeding the call, I really felt the draw to the blackbird’s call to get over that wall and to experience the outside world . It was very strange and foreign at first but it was something I needed to go through. So the moral of this ramble, which David Whyte is able to succinctly compress into very few words is, they’re both the most beautiful sounds in the world. It is vital you heed the call of the bell and you reflect and practice and work and study. But do not ignore the blackbird. Go over the wall. Start to let the world see where you are at. Come to the world, and the world will meet you where you are at. And you will start to find your audience.
You will begin to give people beautiful experiences through your music and your singing, and in turn, they will give you beautiful experiences. It’s not just about you giving out and singing, but there’s– We are communicating through music on such a high level, and the energy of the audience feeding back to you is so profound and so beautiful, and then you just reflect it right back. There’s nothing like it. There is nothing like live performance. There’s so much reward in recording and really picking apart what it is that you’re doing and your voice and making it better and better and that whole creative crucible is so wonderful. You really do need to experience it. Get over the wall and show the world what you got.
Hey, if you want to know more about me, please visit my website johnhenny.com. And if you’re interested in becoming a voice teacher, I have a very popular teacher training, Contemporary Voice Teacher Academy. Just go to my website and up on the top menu, you will see the tab teacher training. Click on that and you can get all the info. And until next time, to better singing. Thank you so much. Bye bye.