Nadz, alto 2, shares with us their feelings after two days recording our songs in a studio.
I wake up in the morning with voices in my head. Not the usual ones listing things to do, stirring worries. This morning I hear singing voices. They carry a tune and with the tune they carry me. They are still there after the weekend of recording with the choir in a studio.
I remember this moment at the end of the first day when after seven hours of singing we were doing yet another take. I took a breath in and started my part. I felt my voice leaving my body but I couldn’t hear it. I felt disoriented, in a dream like state when you cry with no sound. I was trying to distinguish my voice amongst the others, to locate it so I could know I sing my part right.
Reaching beyond this panic of losing myself I found an expanse where there was no me and no others. I was Erell and Julie, my fellow altos to my left, and Melanie and Manon, sopranos to my right, I was Brian and Joan with their soft tenor voices, and Robbie with a low bass tune, and all the way across the room I was Laure and Katharina and Sarah. The choir was this body with a thousand voices as one, and there was no need or way to exist separately. It was the briefest of moments, like the one you experience before losing conscience. And maybe I lost it, this conscience of having individuality and clinging to words and identities, and holding to the habits of standing alone and standing out.
I bounced back to myself as we all do. And this morning I have things to do, hopes to fulfil, worries to attend to. But a thousand voices sing through my body today and my body sings through these voices. Oh stay with me for longer, stay in me forever so I can learn the humility of taking this multitude in and surrender to and know the strength of being one of many, being many.
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