Cult Following?
It has been hilariously suggested to me that I have a cult following and that Somatic Voicework™ is about me. “Gee whiz”, as I used to say as a kid, “give me a break!”
If you have 44+ years of experience teaching singing (and how many people do?) should you hide in your studio and keep what you have learned to yourself? If you have had decades to study, to explore, to investigate, to experiment, to try and to test, to validate, to question and to change, it would stand to reason that a lot of what eventually shows up after all that will be useful. If the information gleaned from such exploration turns out to be valid why not share it? If you are working with anyone else who has had either less experience or limited experience and who, perhaps, doesn’t sing a variety of styles, and who also, in that case, would be unable to conclude what is useful on their own without any guidance, wouldn’t it be unkind not to share information with that person?
The reason Somatic Voicework™ is successful is that it is useful in the voices and minds of others. I am not in the studio with 1200 people all over the world, people who remark that they are having great success with their students. I am not in their studio. No. The value of the work is that it is transferable! Who cares that it came out of my personal experience? Only those who see me as some kind of big deal guru with a cult following. Every time I write that I just want to laugh out loud.
There is actually an “anti-Lovetrian” movement in some places, not because those who teach using Somatic Voicework™ are doing anything negative. On the contrary, it is because they are very successful and their students are successful that they have attracted attention. In one college there are so many people who have gone through the training that the voice department chair doesn’t want anyone else to go through it. She hasn’t asked herself why so many of her faculty have sought it out or what it is about it that would make so many diverse individuals want to learn it, she just doesn’t want so many Somatic Voicework™ people there because……it won’t look good! For heaven’s sake, how stupid!
Trust Your Intelligence
We live in a time full of craziness. People don’t know whom to trust or where to go to get real information. They are suspicious. That’s fine. The world needs skeptics. The world also needs people to learn how to trust their own intelligence, common sense and their eyes and ears. Unlike investing in Ponzi schemes, the return using Somatic Voicework™ (or any other method to learn something besides singing), is in the doing. You can see, hear and feel when your voice works well.
People respect me for how I share what I have learned. I am not now nor have I ever been interested in having a cult of personality. To those who reject the work out of hand because they are afraid of being called a LoVetrian or a “follower” of JL, I say, think again. Those who are using Somatic Voicework™ successfully will tell you themselves, directly, that after they learn it well, the method works just as well in their teaching as it does in mine. That’s enough.