I had two hours left until my next class, Awareness Training. That day, it was my turn to sing in front of the whole class to receive feedback from my classmates and BL, the teacher. During those two hours, I had planned to exercise, eat, and warm up my voice, but I was unable to do any of that. Instead, I spent half an hour staring at the wall, and then I sat down to write a song for the first time in 2024. Written in red, it began like this:
On the day I lost my voice
I Heard you sing
And the colors of the rainbow
Died into a hue of blue
Does the birth of me always have to end?
I would have loved to finish it in time for class and play it fresh out of the oven, but I couldn’t do it. It was a painful subject: the despair of a singer who loses their voice time and time again. The last thing I wrote, five minutes before class started, was a possible chorus:
But the Spring returns
And I will sing
With that, I grabbed my guitar and headed to class. There was only one moment of nerves, like a flutter in my stomach that lasted a second. But nothing more. Having surrendered my voice to the Will of God, there was nothing to think about, nor anything to fear.
I arrived late to class, but just in time to listen to the guided meditation with which we always start our sessions. This time, it was the voice of a musician who had played and recorded with Louis Armstrong. He told the story of a recording session where they played two jazz standards. In the first one, nobody knew the lyrics except for the first two verses. Louis said, “No worries, I’ll improvise the rest,” and then he proceeded to sing the entire song in his own way. The weird thing was that he sang the whole thing while looking at the wall in front of him, interacting with it as if there were 10,000 people there. He waved, laughed, recognized faces among the audience. The narrator of the story mentioned that when he asked him what he saw on that wall, Louis replied that he always played for someone he loved: “I sing for God, who gave me the gift of making music, or for Lucille, because she’s my wife and I love her. When you play for someone you love, you tend to bring out the best in yourself.” In the second song, before starting, Louis spoke to God as if there was no one else in the room, saying, “This is for You, Lord.” He sang and played, and at the end, the narrator mentioned that he couldn’t help but cry, and looking around, the drummer was crying, and the bassist, and the saxophonist too, even Lucille was crying. The only one who didn’t cry was Louis himself, who broke the silence by saying, “Well, I guess we’ve earned some donuts!”
After that meditation, we started the class as usual: everyone proposed three words, we voted to choose one, and then we improvised with that word in mind. Having heard that beautiful story, the words that came up were LOVE, REVERENCE, and TRUST. We voted for the word Love, and we started to improvise, one by one. First was a guest dancer. Then, a violinist took over. Afterward, a singer, a trumpeter, a percussionist, and when it was my turn, not daring to fully improvise, I played something very similar to the song I had just started to compose. Other singers, percussionists, guitarists, and a pianist followed. There was a second round of individual improvisation, and this time I sang without a plan, letting my voice, which sounded a bit hoarse but awake, fly freely. I let the thought of someone I love guide the melody. Then, the improvisation happened in pairs, and a new wave of music swept through the room. When the trumpeter stopped playing, the percussionist to my right continued, and I started playing along with him. Here there is no room for plans because you have to play with whatever the person to your right brings. I started playing with him, but I struggled, realizing I wasn’t listening. I stopped, and the wave of music nearly died out. But then I started playing again, this time truly open to the silent music that’s always there. And my neighbor on the left started singing with me. We improvised something beautiful; it was undoubtedly sacred music. It felt like a good meditation. Finally, we all improvised together, but this time I stayed silent, listening and respecting my voice, which wasn’t quite ready to sing over a drumset.
[The photos are from the Zoom recording, sorry for the quality]
After finishing that improvisation exercise, it was time for me to perform in front of everyone. I sat in the middle of the class, with my classmates in a semicircle in front of me. The teacher asked me, “How are you, Antonio? Where have you been lately?”
I told them that I had just experienced an ego death related to my voice. My last concert had been in 2019, and since then, I hadn’t performed largely because my voice was never well. One bout of pharyngitis after another had been silencing me. A few weeks ago, a friend had suggested I perform at a very special venue. My voice still wasn’t ready for something like that, but I accepted because my heart told me to go for it. I then surrendered to God because it would have been highly improbable to arrive in good shape through my own means. I didn’t mention the energetic treatments with my qigong master, but I did mention that a week before the concert, another bout of pharyngitis seized my voice, silencing it once again. This time, however, I didn’t resist. I let all the emotions of that crisis – sorrow, anger, frustration, self-pity, fear, doubts about my future – pass through me. In my surrender, deeper than ever, those painful emotions and thoughts were just clouds, and I was the sky. They couldn’t grab me. I then saw how a significant part of what had been my personality flowed downstream, never to return. After the storm passed, I was left in a new state, a kind of neutrality. If I sang again, great, if not, also great. There wasn’t even hope of recovering my voice. Simply put, there was no “future” dimension to relate to. I was still sick, barely able to speak, but it didn’t affect me. Truly, when one is fully present, problems cannot exist. I canceled the concert, but not with sadness. Shortly after, I agreed to sing at the next Awareness Training class, knowing that I was once again putting my ego-consciousness up against the wall. I saw it as a new opportunity to confront any remaining fears related to my voice, to let them go. But this time, there was no more fear. So, I just waited peacefully for a few days, still sick, not knowing. And now I was sitting there, about to sing a song, calm, curious to see what would happen.
With that introduction, I began to play “Nimbo.” I realized that my voice wasn’t in the best condition, but it didn’t affect me in the slightest, and I kept singing with complete confidence. There was no fear of hurting myself and no judgment regarding how it sounded. There was only a deep concentration on what I was playing. Ah, it’s hard to describe what I began to feel then. What I can say is that, by the time the second chorus came around, I felt as if a sun was appearing in my abdomen, starting to expand and ending up shining over my classmates. The energy was so great that my body straightened up, and I sang with a feeling of triumph and wonder. When the song ended, my classmates applauded, and I started to cry. One of my classmates said for everyone, “We love you.”
The teacher, a man of compassion and wisdom, said in an almost serious tone, full of respect, that we had just witnessed a rebirth. And indeed, that’s how it felt. It was like discovering that I could sing, but this time I didn’t see myself singing through the fearful eyes of the ego; I saw myself singing through the loving eyes of God, and His light shone through me, saturating the room with an energy that everyone felt.
Then came a round of comments from my classmates. One said she felt like a ball of light was emanating from me, like an aura. I told her the song was called “Nimbo,” which is “halo” in English. Another said he heard as if something else was playing with me. There was my guitar, my voice, and something else, which at certain moments resonated the most in the room. Another said that listening to me had given him the same feeling as spring, and I told him I had just written a chorus that said, “But the Spring returns, and I Will sing.” Others spoke of truth, vulnerability, love, and healing. One, whom I saw crying and trembling, said that something strange had just happened to him, as if he had had an out-of-body experience, from which he had just returned. Then, opening himself up completely, he shared that although he always played for a loved one (the video about Louis Armstrong was his recommendation), he didn’t really feel love for himself, and instead often felt self-hatred. What struck him about watching me play and speak was that he could feel that I did love myself. As he recounted this, with obvious pain, I once again felt those loving eyes of God looking through mine, and I saw my friend, and I could feel his mind somewhat clouded by that self-hatred, but I also saw beyond, fully aware of his innocence, the place where he himself is love.
It was a profound round of comments, undoubtedly, and I received all that love as best I could. But something bothered me slightly about everything they were saying, and it was that everything they said revolved around Antonio. But I knew it wasn’t Antonio who had made them feel that way. Just as no one cries because of the nice design of the TV, but because of the beauty of the movie and the music that accompanies it, I was just the instrument through which all that love had just passed. I could have said something like “What you love in me, all the good you see and feel, is solely God.” However, I believe that in the state I was in, everything I said was exactly what I had to say. To now doubt whether I should have said this or that is an ego thing, and it doesn’t make sense. Each person received and interpreted that experience in their own way, and that’s how it goes.
After my classmates finished speaking, my teacher approached and asked if he could use his hands on me. To put it in context, BL is a true master of the Alexander Technique, a subtle and powerful healing technique usually applied to actors, dancers, and musicians. But his skills don’t end there. He himself says he has a certain ability to calm the nervous system just by touching you. I’ve seen several people cry and let go of blockages while he simply put a hand on their back.
As he placed his hand on my back, at the heart level, my body straightened up, and I closed my eyes, bringing my inner vision to my heart. I then saw, in the center of my chest, the image of a tiny fetus, almost like a cashew, floating in the void, with purple mandalas opening radially. A light began to flood my body. First, it descended from my chest, down my arms to my hands. Then down my legs to my feet. Then my head and beyond me. I opened my eyes. BL said, “Something has been born within you, and perhaps it can play with you.”
I picked up the guitar and played “Nimbo” a second time.
When I finished, no one applauded. We all remained silent.
BL said, “Please, play for Antonio.”
One by one, they began to sing and play their instruments. I remained seated in the center, sitting up straight with my hands open upwards. Behind me, a drummer softly playing the cymbals, which sounded like bells on either side of my head. Next to him, a singer who felt the courage to try the piano. To my left, a cello and a violin playing long notes and creating harmonies reminiscent of the warmth of “Nimbo.” Sitting on the floor next to me, a percussionist playing the tabla drums. In front of me, the trumpeter who had just transcended the body didn’t pick up his instrument; instead, he sang with a very high and beautiful voice. To my right, more singers and percussionists. All improvising, reflecting the qualities of the music I had just played. I closed my eyes and felt a cascade of love pouring over me. I opened myself to it, and then I felt that it wasn’t my classmates playing, it was God. The Universe was playing for me, offering me that music as a gift of love. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I did both.
This morning, I was telling all this to JR, my qigong teacher, grateful for his help throughout this story. At first, he received my news with joy. But then I went on, telling him more things, trying to squeeze a bit more beauty out of the past, and Joe cut me off, saying, “Whatever, haha! Whatever happened in that class is gone. It doesn’t exist anymore. Everything is like a fart in the breeze.” We both laughed. Everything is like a fart in the breeze, indeed. How crude, and how true. For those seeking the truth, the past offers nothing. We stopped talking, closed our eyes, and slipped inward, into the now, where God always awaits with new gifts.
With all my love,
A.
