"By the 6th Grade I stopped doing ordinary things in front of people. It had been ordinary to sing, kids are singing all the time when they are little, but then something happens.
It's not that we stop singing. I still sang. I just made sure I was alone when I did it, and I made sure I never did it accidentally. that thing we call bursting into song.
I believe this happens to most of us. We are still singing, but secretly and all alone." - Lynda Barry, What It Is
Sometimes, I don't feel like sharing. Oh, I am still writing--or "singing"--yet, secretly and alone.
There's nothing wrong with that (per se). But many people don't sing secretly or alone at all. They cease the ordinary, everyday little joys somewhere along the way to maturity as if maturity means stifling our self. Go indulge yourself in something extraordinarily ordinary and natural and child-like--today.
p.s. Lynda Barry's work is a great example of daily journaling too--a collage of handwritten pages on legal paper + doodles + sketches + cut out words and images from magazines and whatnot lying around, etc. Enjoy.
Bonus: Almine shares a story of the restoration of a student's lost singing voice--for both "healer" and "healed" (they're the same difference in Wholeness).
ART CREDITS: a page from Lynda Barry's book, "What it Is", a collaged mixed-media memoir. More excerpts here at NYMag.com.
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