FINDING MY VOICE

I can still remember, like it was only yesterday, standing on one leg in the vestry of St.Leonard's parish church Leigh-On-Sea, going through the scales and arpeggios....

The organist and choirmaster was a patient and kind old man called Mr.Buckley. He seemed ANCIENT to me and his wizened old face reminded of nothing if not a monkey's. He was forever rubbing his bony hands together trying to get the circulation going. He was probably only in his early 70's but to my 8 year old mind this was pretty much like spending an hour with the living dead...

I thought perhaps he just climbed out of his coffin each week to teach me music.

Every week, I would go for these singing lessons with Mr.Buckley and every week he would patiently take me through the scales and arpeggios.

Old school.

I was more often than not balancing on one leg out of sheer boredom. But he was kind and never got angry with me. Just once more. And again. Listen to this note. Sing it again. Stay right on it. Now this note. Now this arpeggio. Over and over again...

Like he had some hidden knowledge or some deep faith in the simple power of THE SCALE...

This went on week after week. For over two years. Every Sunday I would sing in the church choir with my very talented brother, but none of it really made any sense to me. Don't get me wrong, I wanted to do it, I really did. There was something there...something about all this music, but I was just outside of it, not really part of it.

Occasionally I would skive off these singing lessons to play football in the park overlooking the harbour. Do my best to be Gordon Banks in goal for Stoke,  or be Jimmy Greaves for the all powerful Spurs.

And this beautiful, patient old man NEVER once told me off or complained. Just gently, gently nudged me back to those hallowed scales again and again and again, like he KNEW something...

And then one day halfway up a scale

it happened.

I got halfway up the scale and then my voice arrived. It was like this massive and powerful thing coming out of, not just my mouth, but MY WHOLE BODY. I could fly! The sound just kept growing and growing in power and it lifted me and my whole body.

When I got to the end of the scale I didn't want it to stop and I remember just keeping the note going on and on until there was no more breath in me to sustain this beautiful and awesome angel that had flown out of me and travelled around the vestry, knocking on the windows and passing out of the door into the church itself, seeking to explore and caress and then surpass every single human boundary it could find.

This piece of wood here above the door, this stone buttress here in the corner of the room letting me bounce further, this open space here, and up and up to the stained glass windows where they ring when I touch them....

As the sound died away and I stood there in shock with my mouth wide open, Mr Buckley quietly shut the piano keyboard cover and looked at me smiling.

"Now, we can begin!" he said.

And begin we did. The repertoire came tumbling in, song after song grappled with, each one starting off like an unscaleable mountain, but soon climbed and re-climbed and learned by heart to become an old and famiiar friend. I couldn't get enough songs inside me.

Arpeggios and scales were just the warm up before we really got going, now. I sang these songs everywhere I went. More, please. next one.

Again, can we do it again, again, again?

I was suddenly so hungry to get my voice around anything that moved! I was no longer the outsider. The music and I were one. The composer of every song, alive or dead, lived again through me. I communed with every composer whose music I sang, heart to heart...

Then came the competitions, and my very first time on stage in front of the judges (the nerves as I walked into the middle before singing!) but as soon as I started singing, the angel would arrive and take me and everyone around me, up and up and up...

To win the very first competition I entered. 

From that moment on, every singing competition was mine, all mine. It came to the stage that parents would ring up my mother to ask if she was entering me for this or that competition, and if I was, not entering their child.

The choir became something I looked forward to, to sing the solos and fill the whole church. The immense POWER and upliftingness of it all, with the whole choir holding me up I found that I could fly even higher...

I had found my voice.

Thanks entirely to the patience of a gentle wise old man who knew that inside every single one of us, lies an angel waiting to fly...

ABOUT GERRY:

Gerry has been a full time Massage therapist and teacher for over 25 years. He also qualified as a UKCP registered Psychotherapist (TA) in 1999.

He is the creator of The NO HANDS Massage Therapy System, which is now one of the most popular Massage approaches in the UK. He has also recently launched the PSYCHOLOGY OF CHANGE, a unique new approach to making lasting change within your life. To learn more about these courses go to www.nohandsmassage.com