The Storefront & The Maze

Storefront: a facade that is presentable to the public that covers what is inside.

Maze: a confusing intricate network of passages.
b: something confusingly elaborate or complicated.

I have a student who’s voice swallows her whole. She gets lost inside of the maze of sound. Her maze is her big voice and she’s lost inside of it wandering around trying to find herself.

Her voice is amazing and impressive but how I know she's lost is because the words she is singing are just a side bar, they are lost in the maze with her too, in the confusion. She is using her voice to protect herself like a shield. Smart.

People love it, they love her voice. This big voice that attracts people. Only she’s inside of a maze. Lost.  She uses her big voice to get the space she needs by pushing people away with the sound of her voice.  

She tells me how when she sings that she can think of lots of things, like instructions about where to move, where to look, how to be and when and who to react to.  

I tell her she is protecting herself this way and she understands what I mean, but its big, big news that someone else knows her secret.  

Someone can see my storefront, the thing that's in front of me. But isn’t that right? she asks. I say well let’s look around in here and just be curious about it and what is all means. She understands. We go inside.

She says having a really big voice is what they want.  She has one, and everyone wants it, wants to applaud it and to be around the power of it. It makes them feel important.

Her intricate maze is also important. I don’t want to take away her maze but I want her to find her way through the maze so she understands all of the twists and turns of the place.

But mostly I want her to find her way out of it. Out of the confusing intricate network of passages that keep her hidden.

She said she thought it was normal. I said it might be normal but it’s not natural. Now she says she understands what I mean. And then she says, they want me to feel more emotion when I sing.

I say, can you? She says, I’m trying to, but I don’t know how to.  

I say it's a lot to manage them and to feel at the same time. She says yes, all I want to do is to sing and have my voice for myself.

This is very, very good news.

We go past the storefront into the maze together to learn about a few more twists and turns. We learn that the job of the maze is to keep the feelings away, to hide them inside of the maze so she doesn't know where they are or how to find them. Maybe ever. 

I know. I had a maze once. Have you ever tried to feel inside of a very loud room?

Every time she sings and they applaud her, her maze and her storefront grow bigger and she grows smaller.

Their needs grow and hers get lost. She says can you help me to feel?  I say yes of course but who are you feeling for?

She wants out of the maze and to bring down her storefront but both the Maze and Storefront is keeping her safe. I ask her to sing quietly and bring the volume down. She’s confused. She does it and sings quietly and now I can feel who she is without her voice swallowing her and suffocating her essence.

She can't feel anything but she can see where she is now. Her eyes look around finding their edges and recognizing something. Choice threatens the whole catastrophe.

 I tell her its beautiful, that her voice is beautiful.  I ask her does she want to experience this beauty for herself?

She doesn’t understand and doesn’t know which way to go or to turn, because, now she’s trying to give me what I want. Choice steps back, and into the maze we go.

For now, they want her to be big and not beautiful.  

Beautiful would make them all feel too much.  And she wants them to be happy and not uncomfortable.

That’s more important. For now.