I’m a resonant body

We moved, again. I bought into a co-op and we moved to the end of a subway line. It’s farther away from the city but there’s more room, there are more views. I can see water, the sunrise and the sunset. I’ve seen more of the moon in the past five months than the past five years.

My parents came to visit and brought my instruments. It’s the first time I’ve had room for my guitar and my violin since I left for school. I hadn’t touched either since early college. It was hard to find time to play between art school and swimming and whatever extracurricular I also managed to tack on to those, which makes sense, because growing up I barely practiced and got by on a decent ear and good muscle memory. As we get older we have to choose things and I didn’t choose music. I sometimes regret that, but only when I hear a really good violinist or cellist (an instrument that I never played, I just love its deep voice). It’s mostly just envy—someone being truly excellent at their craft—but also the specific vibrato that resonates through the wood.

I’ve picked up the guitar because it’s easier to cheat my way through some basic chords and there are remnants of muscle memory, buried deep in my fingers. I missed the calluses on the tips of my fingers and I forgot how my small hands had to stretch across the frets. Maybe it would have been easier to pick the violin up first but my sheet music is nowhere to be found and I stopped it earlier than the guitar. I picked it up once at my parents house, years after I had quit playing, and was alarmed by the unwieldiness of the bow, the weight of the frog sitting awkwardly below my fingers. I’m afraid to try again, but I think I miss the violin the most. Back in the Before Times, my godsister and I went to see David Keenan and for the first time it wasn’t just him and his guitar, but a whole band flown in from Dublin, and the fiddler’s harmonics made me cry.

Even my voice has changed since college, which I was told would happen. I’m relieved to have an upper register again even if part of me misses the true alto range I had in my late teens. I don’t sing as regularly as I used to but if I’m warmed up enough there’s a little more control and I finally understand what a “head voice” means. Regardless of whether I’m a little flat or not on any given day, my voice still carries. I’ve always been able to command attention with my voice, able to throw it across rooms and loud spaces in a way that people are surprised by, given my size. But now I’m also able to soften the edges around my voice, speak calmness into existence where there is none. I couldn’t do that before.

In my yoga practice, a few of my teachers always start class with chanting OM. It’s the universal sound, a sacred sound, and even if you don’t believe in a higher power, you can feel the vibrations humming in your ribcage and the exhale perpetuates a palpable peace. In a room full of bodies, after not being in rooms full of bodies for so long, the fullness of the communal resonance sends shivers down my spine. We tune into one another.

I mostly still practice at home, both for convenience and because now my teachers have all left New York, and I chant alone in my little yoga corner. In a classroom, you hear the collective. At home, I hear my own tones. On a whim, after teaching in the city, I got a tarot reading in the bookshop around the corner. The psychic said I had a strong throat chakra but that there was a block, a block that was mostly coming from myself. I couldn’t help but notice this show up physically, when I would chant and my vocal chords would skip and not quite meet. How I felt I needed to force OM through my diaphragm and out my mouth.

After a decade of practice, I have learned how to not force my body, but coax it. How to wheedle my way into turtles and fireflies, how to meet my body where it is by building up bolsters and blocks, painting the negative space so that my contours have a shape to fill instead of spilling outside of myself. I struggle to give that same grace to my voice, to my ideas, to my thoughts and feelings. How do I let myself sit with discomfort without intellectually grinding it into a pulp, allow for dissonance to freely move through me? How do I sing without choking?

I wish you warm fires and blankets and fresh air this holiday season. I wish you music that makes you feel things and clear resonance and easy silence. Take care of one another.

All my love,
Kara