Hi Everyone. I’ve just been chatting to my Irish friend who lives in NY. Good to chat to her. Asking how things are over there, as everyone is having a different lockdown jexperience. There seems to be a calm that has come after the initial panic and fear phase. I see it around me. Where I live seems pretty chilled out and I’m glad that there’s a really good sense of community around me. There are ‘Kindness’ big letters almost looking like the ‘Hollywood’ ones dotted around, and people are coming together to help each other.
I’ve been helping my neighbour all this time. She likes classical music and I was giving her my iPad and Bose speaker when she asked with a classical playlist, so I decided to buy her a digital radio as a gift and set it to a classical channel so she can listen when she wants now. I’m chatting more to neighbours and there’s free food being given out by the Tod Squad who get it from places to stop it going to landfill.
I’m doing gorgeous walks in nature (someone told me today what wild garlic looks like so I’ll be picking some as well as dandelions to do something with that), and I’m seeing geese and ducks with their babies. My lockdown experience has a lot of good coming out of it. I’ve had a chance to go within and think about things. I’ve been watching the world go mad for a while now, and if this makes people stop and go within and think about what really matters to them, then we can come out of it in a better place. I know for me I’m not going back into the stress and trying mode I was in. I’m done with it. I can’t live on that frequency anymore. My singing and life has to come from a different place, and I really feel like I can’t be back in the profession as it is. On a deeper level I’ve felt for a long time like I don’t fit into this world as it is, and am here to help create a new way of being.
I don’t conform and I don’t follow the flock and I have no intention of going back into the profession as it is, if there is a ‘profession’ to go back to at the end of this. Who knows? I’ll be forging ahead, creating my own way of doing things, coming from a place that is more heart based.
Yep, I took some time off. I wanted a break from the stress of all the trying. To just not have to try for a while. To just ‘be’ and not ‘do’. Sit on hills in the sun, ground myself and walk barefoot, and think about my life and how I have been living it. I know I’m not going back to ‘trying trying’. Done with it. Things have come really nicely these past few weeks and in a more natural way. I did my live events last week for ‘The Meandering Bear’ in Halifax (from my living room), which has had nearly 3500 views.
https://www.facebook.com/396390293897300/posts/1384576755078644/
Then on Sunday I went to surprise a lady on her driveway after hearing from her daughter who wanted me to send her a cd. I came up with the idea of delivering it in person as an added extra and it was lovely to do. They were genuinely shocked and all the neighbours came out and it was a lovely 20 minutes. I just thought I would rock up, sing a few songs just to this lady and her husband and then leave.
I never realise the impact I can have on people, stuck in my own stuff in my head, but the lady called me the day after and said it was one of the nicest things that had ever happened to her. In my mind I could never equate me singing on someone’s driveway as one of the nicest things that could ever happen to someone. I just want to give my gift to others and hope people want to listen, but we chatted for 35 minutes and bonded, and this is what I am about. Bonding with people. I sang in the market in Todmorden today and I was a bit scared to go. More because I didn’t want anyone telling me I shouldn’t be doing it, but it was the opposite. I got some cash too and went to the local butcher afterwards who gave me my shopping for free as a tip (I actually quite fancy him), but in my mind I just wanted to give out my gift to others and see if it could help anyone.
Tomorrow I’m singing outside a block of flats for the elderly. Just put my light wherever it can shine for others. I am in service and that’s how I want it to be from now on moving into the new energy that will come after this lockdown ends. If you know of anyone I can help at this time, then just get in touch. I’ll do a video for them, sing outside their house or call them and sing down the internet.
I listened to my New York friends opera podcast on ‘Le nozze di figaro’ by Mozart when I got home. Really interesting and I really liked the female singers he has chosen. It really brings me back to my love of opera that is deep at my core. I know I’m nowhere near as good as these people and I do feel like a fraud when I say I am an opera singer sometimes, because as time goes on I’m less of an opera singer and more of a ‘sing whatever classically if it makes someone feel better kind of singer’, which means I’ve moved away from what I used to stand for and I’m no longer trying to be good enough for that world.
I have become crossover. I sing for ‘the people’. My next idea is to do a ‘Popera’ online event in about three weeks. Singing some pop songs classically. I had the idea after I had an audition for ‘The Voice’ on Monday. Via Zoom in my lounge. They contacted me, and as I was chatting I just thought it would be cool to work with people from the pop side of things and see how it would go together. I did my best. I sang Ed Sheeran and ‘Nessun Dorma’. The outcome doesn’t matter. What matters is that I be true to who I am and have the courage to be that. That’s taken a lot of personal inner work to be my truth.
People have commented on my last few videos that I am looking really good and has something changed? Someone asked if I had met someone. No. I’m just choosing to shine. I’m also recording a video for people in NY. I contacted a guy I sang for a few times for seniors (he works with a lot of community places over there), and I am going to do a concert talking about my time in America and singing some songs for people which will get sent out to all the people who are alone and isolated and without a community centre to go to at the moment.
I should have been doing ‘A Spoonful of Julie’ all weekend. In Chepstow and Cheltenham. In a beautiful theatre at Cheltenham Ladies College. I have had my moments where I’ve been really frustrated. I go on walks and talk my shit out to the countryside. There are times I feel like I’m on a game of snakes and ladders and I’ve climbed a few ladders only to land on a snake and be right back where I started. I have nothing now. No work in the future, no idea of when I will sing in front of an audience again, no idea when I will do my show again. Back to first base. I have myself though. I have my gut instinct and I have my inner knowing. I came to this life with a purpose and mission to fulfill. I’ve made all the sacrifices. I’ve followed my heart and path at all costs. I know what’s ahead even if I don’t know how. Once this dies down I’ll start sending out my Julie Promo stuff and see where that goes, and keep singing for ‘the people’. That’s what my life is all about………
