Point of View – What’s Yours?
Everyone on earth has their own point of view about life. The primary point of view you live through affects everything you do.
Women often make relationships the window through which they see everything. The roles they have: wife, mother, sister, daughter, niece, aunt — often are key aspects of their self-identity. Men frequently view the world through the vista of work: job, career, pay, benefits, upward mobility — key aspects of their definition of “me”.
Each of us has a primary view and secondary views and they run our lives (even if we don’t know we have them or what they are). If we see the world through our religion — everything has to fit with our particular faith and what it says is OK or not OK — that colors all of what happens every day. If we view the world through our race, our sexual preferences or through our social standing, we will be effected by those things in all that we do. In fact, those things can really run us and become the primary driver of every aspect of our lives.
If we look at the world as artists – dancers, musicians, actors, singers, or painters, sculptors or creative people of any kind – that matters. Each of the arts has its own mindset. A jazz vocalist is looking for something very different from a classical vocalist, even though the larynx of one is the same as the larynx of another. How one views singing is important and the point of view you have about all of what singing is to you makes a big difference in how you approach it. The mindset of a singer is as important in how she sings and what she does or doesn’t do with training as the singing itself.
If you teach singing you have to determine the point of view the student has about their own singing, their voice and the kinds of music they sing. You have to understand what they want, what the music industry of their chosen style wants, and what you want in order to help them match up both of those things to their own vocal satisfaction. That takes time and you have to “hang out” with folks in each field to get the “inside picture” of what’s expected and what is perhaps frowned upon.
What You See Creates What You Do
If your point of view is that life is frightening and awful your experiences will be very different from someone who thinks life is an adventure with new and exciting events occurring all the time. If you believe that everyone can sing by simply opening their mouth and making sound, that is very different from if you think that singing is a skill that can be highly developed through study and practice.
Find out your own point of view about life and about certain aspects of your life and your self. Consider how that affects all your choices, moment by moment and day by day. Find out how your point of view works for you – or gets in your way. And, if you sing, determine your point of view about singing — what is it and how does it color all that you see?
Any window is just that — a window. “Open a new window, open a new door” (as they say in the song) and see what that can do for you.