Category: set yourself free and let yourself do (Page 1 of 6)

I was thinking about rainbows this morning.

Jude drew a terrific one on construction paper last week, and I gotta say I was impressed he had is ROY G BIV down.

I don’t think I remembered the visible spectrum acronym until about 5th grade.

For some reason, I’ve also been singing the Reading Rainbow theme to myself over and over this week.

Butterfly in the skyyyyyy — I can fly twice as hiiiiigh

And I’ve been working with a student on “Finishing the Hat” from Sunday in the Park with George this semester, so there’ve been plenty of discussions about Georges Seurat’s obsession with visible light and a scientific method for painting — juxtaposing colors on the canvas and letting the human eye combine them into something new. Like the Eiffel Tower here —

And did you know that scientists at the University of Birmingham have created the first visualization of a photon by calculating its wave function? Lookit!

The behavior of light has informed my understanding of singing for nearly twenty years.

Here’s why.

That was when I learned about the Double Slit Experiment.

Scientists found that photons could behave as particles or as waves, and their behavior could be influenced just by them being observed.

They were confused as to why the photons made wave patterns when directed through two slits in metal sheeting, so they slapped a camera next to the metal. When they did, the light stopped waving and began particle-ing.

Matter was influenced by observation.

I bet you’ve experienced this in your own life.

Have you ever observed someone you formed a first impression about only to meet them later — and after you got to know them, realized many of your judgments were projection from your own brain stories?

Just me?

Or how about a close relationship of any kind.

One day you’re thinking, “You’re so funny when you do that thing,” and on a different day when you’re hangry, tired, or irritated, that endearing quality reads a lot differently.

I see this play out with teachers and kids a lot, too.

When Jude was 2 or 3, he was just beginning to learn how to be around other kids since it was 2021.

He had a learning curve on how to use gentle hands, and he hit a couple kids in the YMCA play zone.

Ok, we’re working on this, of course you can’t let him hit other kids, but the director of family services decided she didn’t like Jude and even suggested (after a whopping 3 visits to the play room) that she could refer us to behavioral services.

Thank you for your kind expertise. I’ll leave off the emoji.

(Strongly worded emails were written.)

My point is that the way the big person observed Jude affected how he felt in that space. When he was there on weekends with different folks who enjoyed him, there were no incidents.

I can’t prove correlation or causation, but I know from teaching thousands of voice lessons, the way I see a singer makes a huge difference in how they feel working on something as vulnerable as their voice and expression.

Somehow, Jude worked out how to be gentle and cooperative with other kids, and we stopped fighting Framingham traffic to go to the Y.

So, rainbows — butterflies in the sky — color and light! — and a (maybe) surface understanding of quantum mechanics —

What does it mean?

Your voice is a vibration, and it travels in waves — much like the photons when not being scrutinized by cameras.

I’ve often wondered how deeply our minds would be blown if we could see beyond our teeny visible light spectrum and witness the communicative waves emanating from a singer to the listener.

You can feel when you hear a singer — are they thinking about mechanics? Or have they opened up the door to their heart and invited you in?

Yesterday, my Conservatory studio shared their fall recital, and number one, I’m ridiculously proud of them, but number two, I was so grateful for how they opened their heart and welcomed the folks in the hall in. That’s invaluable, what a gift.

One student sang “On My Own” from Les Misérables, and I was in the back with my mouth open and my eyes watering all like, “I love him, too!”

And why? Other than my secret desire to play Éponine one day, it was because this singer opened up the most vulnerable places in her heart and welcomed us in.

I remember seeing Audra McDonald hold her baby and sing “Your Daddy’s Son” in the original production of Ragtime, and I couldn’t believe a singer could live through something like that in front of a theatre full of folks. The energetic sharing is something I’ll never forget. (My friend Lizzie’s IG story just told me that the revival of Gypsy Audra McDonald’s starring in is epic, so if you’re in NYC, get over to the Majestic Theatre. Lizzie knows.)

We forget that singing is collaborating with a great mystery. Our bodies have a deep knowing that this is a healing, sharing, connecting act.

When we sing, we interact with the very material of our soul; we take in a free breath and give it back as vibrated communication in beautiful mathematical proportion to other frequencies that make a song.

That’s nuts.

I want to invite you to recall how your heart first loved singing. What were the rainbow colors that told you there was gold at the foot of the arc? What told you there was something about singing that helped you fly like that Reading Rainbow butterfly? What lit up your mind about what yellow and blue right next to each other might do in the listener’s ear? And where has your life shown you what happens when you change the way you see things?

A song gives you the chance to try on a different pair of glasses, and when you see how much believing the story of the song can change you and the listener, you can carry that truth into your walking-around life.

And pretty soon, you’re constructing melodies and harmonies and making vibrational order in your immediate sphere.

Other folks may notice and remark, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

You’re a multifaceted diamond, and light shines through you in only the way your soul’s inimitable angles can refract them. You shine the radiance of the mysterious photons that grow plants and sparkle on water. It’s just a matter of letting it on through, no great effort required. That’s why it’s hard to experience. We want to work hard.

Nestle into your body, look out from your loving heart, and say to everyone you meet what I remind myself to tell the boys when we’re all wiggle-waggle: “You’re a good kid having a hard time.”

If you’re having a hard time right now, hear it from me. You’re a good kid having a hard time. And you’ll ride the rainbow on through this, I know.

I’m convinced light and sound are entwined.

Our synesthete friends tell us as much. So, enjoy and appreciate those free breaths, and give them back with the song only you can sing — someone would love to hear it.

Love much,

Dan

PS I love my walk to work from the train station and getting to work in Boston — some beautiful moments I want to share with you:

My favorite tree along the way, this gorgeous London Plane

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Some days I ride all the way in to South Station and walk the couple miles back to campus through the Common. Just gorgeous.

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And these Cosmos in the Victory Gardens always say hello and fill me with so much gratitude for beauty.

And a recent trip to the Museum of Fine Arts with the grad students — a gorgeous Georgia O’Keefe Iris, and these amazing model ships from the 18th Century.

PPS Speaking of rainbows and such, my friend Sara shared this video of Stephen Schwartz talking about some of the music from WICKED. I haven’t seen it yet, but looking forward to it.

Thanks to my smart Elon students back in the day, Andrew, Emma, and Jasmine, I already knew about the “Over the Rainbow” Easter egg. Most smarty things I know I learn from my students.

If you could distill it down to one thing, what do you think is the single barrier that keeps singing actors stuck, frustrated, and low-grade hopeless?

What’s one unpopular truth that — if you lived it — would change your skill trajectory, bolster your artistic confidence, and make your work wholehearted, satisfying, and successful?

I made a commitment to make regular videos and write weekly emails because every time I do, someone replies or comments, “Thank you — this helped me so much.”

And if I know the thing I’m doing 

#1 resonates with what I’m on the planet to do and

#2 will help one other person,

then I’m going to do it.

But I’ll sit down to shoot the video or write the email or reach out to folks about the community I’m building, and I’ll freeze like a ‘possum in high beams on a North Carolina back road at midnight.

There’s an animal instinct that grips me to my chair and tries to keep me from moving forward into satisfaction, purpose, and joy.

I’ve been looking at what all this is about — and I’ve found some important things about how to activate ourselves so that we don’t roll over in front of that oncoming chevy truck like the above North Carolinian marsupial.

But first, it’s important to ask what you probably already asked yourself when you read the subject of this email — what exactly to you mean by “succeed”?

Success! Making it! Booked and blessed. Working actor. BROADWAY!

Ok, for real, now.

A grad student asked me in class this year what my definition of success was.

And for that answer I zoomed ahead (hopefully) a good 40+ years and asked near-the-end-of-life me.

Near-nonagenarian Dan reported back that a successful life would be one in which

I loved people well,

loved my wife,

loved my boys,

and brought joy where I went.

He also said that if I could leave behind a legacy of healing and fun from the things I got to teach, then A+.

And if I were able to leave some plays and songs that would continue to move people, then icing.

I got emotional talking about it in class (I can’t believe it either) because that moment focused what was most important — how could I use my life as a magnifying glass for love? How could I boost the photon beams that make the world better?

If I work in light of that goal, my work changes.

I have an intention that lifts me up, gives me an elevated view, and most importantly, reminds me that what I do can affect you.

If my actions can make your life better, I mean, what a reward.

And ask yourself the same — who’s made a difference in your life? And what if they’d chosen not to contribute in that way for whatever reason?

You know I’m a big Tabitha Brown fan.

I’ll listen to interviews with her just for an inspiration refresher — and the thing I admire most about her is her commitment to live in harmony with her spirit’s purpose.

Her clarity is so refreshing when you’re surrounded by so much noise telling you the 7 Keys to beating 99% of your TikTok enemies.

But what if Tabitha Brown had decided not to listen when God told her to just start making videos?

All the advice around her told her no one would take her seriously as an actor if she did that. But, she listened and stepped ahead. And then she was consistent when no one was watching. What if she’d never started? Or stopped when the outcome wasn’t what she expected?

You’re someone else’s Tabitha Brown.

The things you’ve overcome, the ways you’ve figured out how to navigate through — those are going to make a huge difference to someone else.

I see a T-shirt idea: “I’m someone’s Tabitha Brown.”

But get clear on what success means to you. And when it is, write it down every morning.

Seriously write it down because we forget.

Make a little box in your journal or on your calendar where you remind yourself.

It seems silly because you’re like, how can I forget my dreams and what success means?

One stray post on Instagram that pisses you off, and you can get derailed faster than you can say “Get ready with me.”

Now that you’ve reminded yourself what success and satisfaction look like for you — what’s this unpopular truth that holds you and me back? Why’s it unpopular? And why do you even need to know it in the first place?

Well lemme tell you a story about it.

You know how I told you about my ‘possum pose?

I’ll sit down and be fixing to get a video in the can, and then — utter freeze.

It’s like the neuron trees I mapped when I was getting ruthlessly bullied in 7th grade go into hyperdrive and say — STAY HIDDEN! Don’t expose yourself.

I’m sitting there a 46-year-old man, and all of a sudden I’m afraid the country club rednecks in the center of the school yard are going to hurl slurs at me and challenge me to fight them behind the tire recapping shop. That’s where all the junior high fights went down.

I mean, 7th grade was one particularly focused swath of intensified bullying; other incidents of epithets, taunts, and various levels of physical threat popped up throughout my growing up, but my brain REMEMBERS it — and it wants no part of it again.

Just stay hidden — don’t put yourself forward in the school assembly or be the only boy in the 7th grade PE gymnastics demonstration. Keep your head down, lay low, and you won’t get hurt.

In my adult life, this fear got re-zapped by nasty online comments or reviews, snide remarks in BroadwayWorld chat rooms I overheard cast mates scuttlebutting about, and the odd ruthless student assessment.

I still get an elevated heart rate when my student assessments pop up in the inbox. :/

Why would I subject myself to this?

Well, on a recent video I posted, I opened with a story after dinner time. I happened to be seated at the table, and Melissa happened to be loading the dishwasher.

I mentioned that my dishwasher loading style is suspect, and that I usually take the lead on putting the dishes away in the morning — an activity my wifey finds very hawt.

The first comment I received on this particular video was from a very angry viewer who said OMG I can’t even watch past :32 — and proceeded to tell me I was a glaring example of male privilege, my content was worthless, that I should get off YouTube and work on my life and marriage.

After 32 seconds. I wonder how long it took them to craft the comment.

Pretty stunning to have your entire character assessed in the space of one snapshot from your life. It made me reflect on the times when I might do the same.

It hurt my feelings. It made my heart rate jump. It spiked my cortisol. I thought about it more than I wanted to. And I cooked up many snarky replies, comebacks, and takedowns, though I did manage not to reply.

But the thing it showed me was — I was afraid of what comments or nastiness might come flying at me from the far reaches of the interwebs. And nastiness, indeed, flew my way. Along with a video thumbs down.

And then I realized, well that sucked.

And I made it. I made it through that bit of unpleasantness. That morsel of discomfort.

And then I noticed there were a few likes on the video, so someone got some value out of it. Mission accomplished. I did the thing.

So, that’s the first thing you need to know — you CANNOT predict the shenanigans that are gonna fly your way. It’ll always be a surprise.

And you need to know — you can take the hit. Chumbawamba was right — You can get knocked down, and you can get back up again. And on you go.

You may be angry, hurt, sad, sore, and bruised for a while, but you’re going to keep walking.

And maybe you’ll even let that hurting soul’s vitriol throw some dry rotten wood on your fire. Stoke it, and double down on what you know you’re meant to share. DO IT!

But there’s a reason a truth as painfully obvious as this is super unpopular. It is to me, at least.

I started this project — to write a WHID page — WHID stands for “What Have I Done?” in order to illuminate what exactly I’m spending my time on.

Mind you, I’ve only made it to about 9:47 AM before I’ve totally abandoned the tracking of my time. But the tiny swath of morning I documented was ample evidence of how good I am at putting off the work that’s meaningful to me.

It might me writing this email to you — but if I check my journal, I’ll see that before I really got to work on writing, I read about an online course that would UNLOCK the blueprint I need to avoid all possible failure in my business future, checked email, checked another email account, went to Facebook to find a message only to be sucked into an involuntary scroll, checked on another online course I’d bought to see if it was still something I wanted to do, drank more coffee, read a news article, emptied the dishwasher, and watched two YouTube videos. Then I wrote one paragraph, and it was time to get dressed and to the train station.

I will do anything to delay the risk of failure.

Even though I enjoy writing and trust I’ll find my way. Even though I have tons of experience writing doodoo first drafts and then going back to revise. It’s still painful and scary to think I may run face-first into a lack of skill, and I won’t be able to figure it out.

I’ll sit down to write a scene for the play I’m working on, and I won’t know how to connect A to B. I won’t be able to put something on paper that matches the vision of a transcendent experience in an intimate theatre I’ve fantasized about. It’s easier just to see vague impressions of the dream and say, “Someday that’ll happen.”

We don’t want to know we can take the hit because we are so busy trying to figure out how to avoid all hits.

You can’t avoid them. They’re coming.

Last weekend, I turned around in the empty parking lot of the New Haven Ikea — we had Mother’s Day breakfast there. I recommend it!

We even grabbed a lovely Mother’s Day photo op in one of the living rooms — nice right?

But as I banged a louie through the parking lot, a man on a bicycle 50 feet away decided I was coming for him in my VW Tiguan.

Verbal abuse issued forth from his bike seat, and I was annoyed.

I said, “Relax, I’m not going to hit you.”

He no likey.

He FOLLOWED me through the parking lot, yelling more abuse in my direction. My boys were asking, “What’s that man saying?”

I parked, and he stopped his bike right behind my bumper.

I was like — are you waiting for a behind-the-tire-shop situation right now? Do I need to go into the Ikea and get my 6’4” brother who practices jiu jitsu? What’s up?

Well, the bike man pedaled away, and I was like, dang, that could have been a lot worse.

I felt an instinct to move the car, but waved it away — nah. It’s over.

Only to return to the car later greeted by a 7-foot key gash all down the driver side.



I have to say — insurance AND the New Haven Police Department were prompt and helpful 🙏— AND what the actual?

People are doing bonkers, hurtful things all over the place, and sometimes you find yourself synchronistically situated in the middle of dookie town.

But here again — you CANNOT predict what is gonna come flying at you.

So stop trying to find the 7-step plan to guarantee ice cream sundaes and blue ribbons. Somebody on a bike is gonna scream and swear at you, and when you pay them the human respect of being annoyed with their shenanigans, they’re gonna gouge your paint.

And you’re going to call insurance, call the police, and then go inside and get an Ikea hot dog and ice cream cone. You can do it!

But why is it crucial that you know this? Well, you tell me.

Where is this one truth — there will be doodoo, and you can take it, you can get through it — going to serve you in your life?

I’ll tell you a story about Melissa that will light up the answer.

Last January, my wife received a breast cancer diagnosis.

They caught it early, and her prognosis was good. AND she had to go through some very rough diagnostic procedures, 2 lumpectomy surgeries, and a course of radiation.

And there wasn’t a paid leave plan for moms that we discovered.

She managed her care, made sure there were folks to take care of our boys when she had to drive to Newton Wellesley Hospital every weekday, and somehow managed to keep our household running while I did my best to support her, us, and finished out the spring semester.

We did not see this coming. And I have to tell you, I watched her navigate this with faith and joy. Her head was high, and she kept it real. She was wiped out, overwhelmed, and completely dedicated to getting better and being here for her family.

I wish you could see the look in her eyes when she’d say, “I’m not going anywhere — I have too much to live for.” She walked through her treatment with faith, trusting that God was taking care of her and holding her through it all.

And we also discovered that we had a community around us.

Folks brought food, watched the boys, prayed for us.

My colleagues at the Conservatory gave us a Doordash gift card, cash, and beautiful flowers. The music division sent chicken soup and cookies. In new England it’s clear — folks are like, “Shut up, I’m bringing three meals over on Tuesday.”

But Melissa had evidence. She’d been through so many blindsides, heartbreaks, griefs, and general bullshit, that she knew this was going to suck, and she was going to walk through it.

And she did. With grace, joy, peace, and general badassery. I’m truly the most blessed. Like, jackpot.

But what kind of adversity have you slogged your way through?

I’ll bet you it was a lot harder than getting your mix-belt coordinated or sending a postcard every 6 weeks to the casting director you want to call you in. I guarantee it’s harder than writing your one-person show or crying because you didn’t book the job you wanted so much and had multiple callbacks for.

Being a storyteller is a challenge and a privilege. And you wouldn’t be reading this if that calling wasn’t burning in your belly.

So, what’s the thing you’ve been telling yourself you don’t want to face? What’s the hit you’re afraid you might take?

I’ll guarantee you, it’s not the one you think you’ll experience.

It’ll be some stupid surprise that’ll be hard and an objective ass-ache, but you’ll walk through.

And you’ll know you’re walking into the direction of the reason you’re here on the planet. Something that feels like goodness, satisfaction, and purpose.

Keep walking!

AND — if you’re like me, you’ve got a whole list of purposes and dreams, and sometimes you feel overwhelmed by all the things you want to do — so much so that you find yourself in paralysis staring at too many choices — I made a video for you — How to know what to do with your life in 24 Hours. It’s the one with the dishwasher story.

And remember — there is only one you, and somebody needs to hear the story only you can sing. You’re somebody’s Tabitha Brown!

Love much, Dan