Susan Elizabeth Hale

Amazing Grace Moments

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 17:12:00 +0000

“I once was lost but now I’m found.”

John Newton, Amazing Grace

I sing wherever Igo. It’s something I do. And at the beginning of a year-long trip in 1997 I needed song more than ever. I had just sold my car. All of my things were in storage.

I sat in a plane,flying over Sandia Mountain, my home of twenty-three years. Looking down at the shrinking familiar curve of the Rio Grande River, I realized that Seat C11 onFlight 75 was my home. “This is my destination,” I wrote in my journal.

When I arrived at the Atlanta airport I had a sinking feeling I was waiting at the wrong exit for a new friend to pick me up. A man in a business suit came out and waited at the same curb. I asked if I could use his cell phone. When I reached my friend I found I had been waiting in the wrong place. But she knew just where I was and would be there in20 minutes.

After making my call, I thanked the man and handed his phone back to him. He nodded. We stood there waiting, not looking at each other. And then I felt it, the need to sing.I asked him if I could sing to him as a thank you.

He looked at methe way most people look when I ask them if I can sing to them. It is a look somewhere between a deer caught in the headlights and a gizelle about leap.

“Sing to my wifewhen she comes to pick me up. I want to get some points.”

He asked where I lived.

“I live right here,” I told him, the words escaping my mouth before I had a chance to think about them.

“What part of Atlanta?”

“I’ve never been here before.” I told him this was the first day of a year-long journey.

“What gives you that kind of courage?” heasked.

“My great-great Grandmother walked alongside a wagon train from Illinois to Arizona.”

“We need peoplelike you,” he smiled. Just then his wife pulled up in a Lexus mini-van. He walked to the driver’s window and said, “Honey, this is Ms. Hale. She’s goingto sing you a song.”

I poked my head inside the van and asked her what her favorite song was. She looked at her husband. Iwasn’t so sure that he was getting the points he wanted.

Shyly she answered, “Amazing Grace.” This is what most people ask for. What is it about this song? Is it because it was a slave melody put to words by a slave trader when he had a reckoning at sea? Or is it the comfort we feel when our own ship is about to sink on a storm-tossed oceanand the sea settles into calm? Amazing Grace touches a place of sweetness in us. Like honey in the heart, it fills some deep need to be found. The melody searches for all the blind parts of us that need to see and be seen.

Her eyes teared up as I sang. When I finished there was a moment of silence. Her husband then said,“Honey, get out of the car. We’re going to wait with Ms. Hale until her rideshows up.”

We stood there together on the airport curb, three people found in the grace of the moment.They waved me off like family when my ride showed up. I knew that grace would lead me home.

How to Tone

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 15:16:00 +0000

I work with vocal toning in both group and private sessions. Though it is a simple techniqie, it is often hard for people to begin on their own. Here are a few general guidelines.

Find a place where you willbe undisturbed. Unplug your phone. Breathe in through your nose andout through your mouth three times at your own pace. On the out-breath allow some sighs and yawns to emerge...breathe into whatever you are feeling and allow these sounds to ride on your out-breath…Continue these sighs and sounds …When you’reready extend these sounds into prolonged tones and explore vowel sounds...Make the sounds that feel good to make. Lead with your body, not with your mind. There is no right or wrong way to tone, simply listen and allow sound to follow your breath.

It's okay if you feel self-consicous at first. The longer you tone, the more your mind will relax and the more your body will become both relaxed and energized.Sometimes it helps to tone in the shower. The bathroom is the most resonant room of the house and the continuous sound of the water reinforces your own sound stream.

Come to a natural stopping place.

Take a moment to be with the silence…Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth three more times at your own pace, claiming whatever sounds you made…Now bring yourawareness to your hands and slowly move your hands…Bring your awareness to yourfeet by slowing moving your feet…Bring your awareness to your head and neck byslowing turning your head from side to side…Now give yourself a stretch and a yawnand open your eyes with a soft focus back into the room.

You might want to end with a chant. My CD Circle the Earth with Song, offers simple, easy chants that you can sing along with.

Ancient Voices

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 14:12:00 +0000

“Humming and singing, she shaped them. Humming and singing,

Placed them where they belonged. This was how the directions

came to be. How the seasons came to be.”

Paula Gunn Allen 1

TheKeres people believe the world began with Spider Woman singing. Humming and singing she shaped the world. Everything that is came from SpiderWoman’s song.

According to the Athabascan people of Western Canada,the world began when Asintmah wove songs into the Great Blanket of Earth.Everything that is began when thisf irst woman sang.

Ancient Egyptian culture believed that the world began when the singing sun sang its cry of light. Everything that is was brought forth from the singing sun.

Forthe Aborigines of Australia life began in the Dreamtime when the world was sung into existence. Everything that iscame from the song of the Dreamtime.

In the Bible the world was created when the Spirit of God moved across the face ofthe waters and said, “Let there be Light!” And there was light and the world was created. Everything that is was brought forth from the sound of God.

Everything begins with song. Earth, ocean, mountain, river, forest, whale, mackerel,buffalo, woman, man, rabbit, hawk, chickadee, rose, grasshopper, spider, corn,beans, peach, plankton, cell, atom. Everything is created from the singing breath of the mythic beings, the gods and goddesses in all cultures of the world. What song does the sperm sing when it enters the egg?

Singing is thought to be the oldest art. Before we could speak, we sang, perhaps not inthe same way we think of singing today, but a communication through sound and tones. The evidence is literally in our bones. “There is anthropological evidence that music came before speech. Ligaments that attach muscles to bones leave traces on the skeletal frame which tell us much about how those muscles were used and make possible reconstructions of the prehistoric creatures from scanty evidence. Our vocal mechanism is complex –for chanting, the lungs and vocal cords are enough; when we speak, the mouth and tongue are drawn into play. Early human skeletal remains reveal signs that the use of the voice to produce speech goes back some eighty thousand years while also suggesting that chanting began perhaps half a million years earlier.”2

All around the world people sing. The Tohono O’odham people of southern Arizona sing to bring rain to the dry desert. They sing to the feathery red spider, to the sky, to the corn. They pull down the clouds with their song.

People sing. The Eskimo people of eastern Greenland resolve their disputes by singing. They enter the tribal circle armed only witha drum and vent their anger at their opponent through song.

All around the world people sing. Kaluli women of New Guiena weep songs when they suffer the loss of a loved one. Grief and remembrance are contained in song.

Apache people sing songs for a young girl’s initiation into womanhood. The songs are sung through the life cycles of being a woman from maidenhood to motherhood.They lead a girl through a beautiful life with their songs.

The people of Classical Greece sang and chanted in the healing temples as they attended the sick. Song was administered along with medicine.

All around the world people sing. Hopis sing up the sun at dawn; Oglala Sioux create prayers in the sweat lodge; Hawaiians record oral history through chants; every morning Islamic muezzin cry prayers to Allah from atop mosque minarets; in the Philippines farmers work and sing as they harvest rice; African fishermen sing while pulling in theirnets; merchants in India sing their wares; Buddhist monks recite sutras; we can follow singing everywhere from household to street to continent.

In another time singing was not separate from life, when voices were raised in song over harvested grain…a time when infants were presented to the sun with song…a time when keeners cried at funerals to open the doorways of grief and everyone would wail and sing at the passing of a loved one…a time when song was used to heal…a time when the earth was blessed with song--- on the land, in the lane, in the village, in theplaza, in the home… a time when all the earth sang.

How did we become singers? How was the first song created? For what purpose was it created? What did the first songs sound like? We don’t know. Our jaw bones are the only artifacts left. We can only wonder, and realize this ancient tradition.

Excerpt from Song and Silence:Voicing the Soul, La Alameda Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1995. Copyright Susan Elizabeth Hale 1995

Footnotes

1 Paula Gunn Allen, Grandmothers of the Light: A MedicineWoman’s Sourcebook, Beacon Press, Boston,1991, p. 35.

2 Yehudi Menuhin andCurtis W. N. Davis, The Music of Man, Simon and Schuster, New York,1979, p. 7.

Singing in Dreams

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 20:19:00 +0000

Recently, sorting through some old papers, I came across dreams I had about singing. Reading them speaks to me of the time we are in now and of the healing power of song. I believe these dreams are not for me alone.

Dream One: I'm driving through the country. There's a flash of yellow light in the sky. I realize it is a nuclear explosion. I'm scared but I hear a voice say, "Don't worry, You're safe. It's not what you think." I talk with a singer.We tone and sing together. We are supposed to take the energy from the nuclear explosion and let it out through our voices."

Dream Two: I'm outside in Indonesia with my parents and a tall man. We're trying to decide where to go. I hear women chanting. The tall man looks and me and says, "Susan, do you want to go there?" I say "yes." I am in the place where the chanting emanates from. It is full of temples and interesting trees and I am in awe.

Dream Three: I'm outside underneath a wooden stairway tyring to find my way. There are cobwebs on the wood frame. I crawl on my belly underneath a board and emerge in a backyard full of people. Facing us, sitting on the sidewalk, is a group of antagonistic people challenging us. We sit on the grass facing then. I sing "We Are the World," People from both sides sing with me until we mingle and become one group.

Dream Four is similar: I'm at a large outdoor gathering. Someone asks me to go on stage. I don't have anything prepared. I don't think I can do this. I go on. As I look at the audience I talk about song and peace. People are interested and follow me out to the land. I talk about two extremes. One person wants to live her life as a prayer. The other is despondant. I talk about the importance of bringing them together and sing a song from Paul Winter's Missa Gaia:
If the people lived their lives

As if it were a song

For singing out of night

Provides the music for the stars

To be dancing circles in the night

What do your dreams say about singing? Do you hear music in your dreams?

What Do I Want for My 60th Birthday?

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:41:00 +0000

60 pebbles from the shores of 60 seas

60 symphonies under the stars

60 colors I've never seen

Or maybe something extravagant

60 flavors of ice cream, all of them chocolate

60 men feeding me 60 peeled grapes,

what happens next are 60 secrets

60 dresses in 60 shades of red

Carmine

Scarlet

Infra-red

Alizarian Crimson

Whisper it with me

Ali-zari-ian Crim-son

Or something sacred

60 golden nights with Osiris in the Temple of Isis

60 hugs from Amma

60 nights in a sweatlodge lined with cedar

Am I enlightened yet?

Or what about

60 poems from 60 dreams

60 songs received from the wind

Or 60 therapy sessions with Carl Jung

He probably doesn't charge that much from the other side

Do I have to choose?

But now that I'm 60 should I ask for something for all of us?

60 animals saved from extinction

60 countries with no starvation

60 rainforests all regenerating

Does a birthday wish have that much power?

Maybe I should focus on what I really need

60 dollars every 60 seconds

60 weeks away from a computer

60 days in a Meditterean health spa

Or just this

My breath

My life

One pure moment

Starting now

Earth Day-Sing for the Trees

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:43:00 +0000

April 22 marks the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. I attended the first one in the California Redwoods and have created a global event called Earth Day-Sing for the Trees, a perpetual choir at noon wherever you are. I posted this on Facebook and other sites and now over 1,200 people from all over the world will be singing to their favorite trees. Here are a few:

In the U.S. a group of children will sing around a Native American Prayer Tree in Georgia, Australians will gather in a rainforest near Byron Bay, a group of elders will sing to a pine forest in North Carolina, young Londoners will sing to trees in Hampstead Heath, a Seattle woman will go alone to an old growth forest nearby, in Sedona people will gather around a Sycamore tree, in England around a cherry tree. People from India, Japan, Italy, England, Germany, Holland, Denmark, the Czech Republic, France and Sweden are participating.

I invite you to join the chorus and would love to know where you will be. You can post me here, send an email or join through Facebook.

Let's circle the earth with song!

Spider Woman

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:02:00 +0000

Spider Woman tells me to sing...She tells me to go deep within my song to reweave myself… not just to sing while I cook or hum in the grocery line, not just join a choir…Spider Woman tells me to sing …She tells me to go deeper than I have before…Deeper than the words I’m writing, deeper than a cave within the earth…

Spider Woman tells me to sing…She tells me to listen to the tune of her web, to the music inside each note…She asks me to sing the scroll written in a leaf, the musical score of the mountains, the sound inside a seashell…Spider Woman tells me to sing, to let go of anything I’ve ever heard about the voice and to sing the song of the honeycomb…

Spider Woman asks me to sing the song written in my bones, the signature of my fingerprint, to sing in the key of Susan…Spider Woman asks me to sing the sonata of a rose, the lullaby of the grapevine…Spider Woman tells me to sing… to go deep within my song…deeper than I’ve gone before, a voyage on the Songship Enterprise…she tells me to follow the cochlea’s spiral all the way to the Milky Way…

Spider Woman tells me to sing in concert with the marsh hawks, in harmony with spring frogs…Spider Woman tells me that my breath is a strand of her web, that sacred geometry is being created by my voice joining with her voice, joining with Voice, otter and buckwheat, prairie wolf and tangerine, orca and magnolia… the diadem of her shining web.

Reflections on the Messiah

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:17:00 +0000

"Lift Up Thy Voice with Strength Be Not Afraid"

These words from the Bible have been reverberating within me these last several days after singing Handel's Messiah. I am keeping a family tradition. Every year my mother sang in the Messiah. When I was very young I remember being so bored I drew the faces of the choir members on the program of the First Presbyterian Church in Hanford, California. Then, as a teenager something shifted and the music took root.

Layers of memories flood me now as I sit in the alto section of the Presbyterian Church in Hendersonville, North Carolina. I remember my mother with her score in hand standing and singing. I remember the comforting voice of the alto who sang "He Shall Lead HisFlock Like a Shepherd" and the bass soloist whose face was always red. He wore a toupee that looked like it was lacqued to his head. These faces and voices are gone. They are replaced by the man in the green bow tie and red sweater and the old woman with the jingle bell earrings sitting next to me. We are all family now in the music.

I remember visiting my mother in a nursing home over Christmas many years ago. She could barely speak. My brother and I talked to her about our lives. She listened with a blank face. I held her hands and sang the "Hallelujah Chorus"and she looked up and sang a few notes with me. We danced there together with our eyes as she sat in her wheelchair. This was the most meaningful Christmas gift I received that year, a present moment shared in a timeless song.

Her voice echoes through me now as I sing the Messiah. I feel her presence.She is happy I am here. I have carried on a song tradition passed from mother to daughter

and pass this remembrance as a gift to you. Whatever you are met with now, during this season of gathering darknessand returning light, I wish you strength and fearlessness to lift upyour voices with courage and sing what is in your heart.

"Lift up thy voice with strength. Be not afraid.

Arise! Shine! For thy light is come!"

What is the Story of Your Voice?

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:22:00 +0000

Growing up we hear many messages about our voices. Many are told they are tone deaf and can'tsing. Others are told they are too intense and should tone down. Some are told to keep family secrets or told they are too sensitive. All ofthese can translate into vocal

blocks and inhibit us from expressing our natural heritage as singers.

One woman was told by her brother that she sounded like a crow in a tincan. This stopped her from her natural love of singing for years. This woman became my apprentice and I taught her the simple technique of toning, of following the breath and allowing inner sounds to ride on the breath stream. This woman now gives sound healing sessions with body work on the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations in southern Montana. She has been given the right to sing native Crow songs,healing songs that come through dreams. She has found her voice and is no longer subject to the inhibiting messages that she internalized.

What messages were you given about your voice? What images do you have of your voice that you can transform?

Venus Rises

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 03:00:00 +0000

Over the airwaves

Over the phone

Out of the foam

Venus rises

Poems travel at the speed of light

We cup our seashell ears to receive our birth moans

Midwife each other

Witness blazed trails

As spring flowers cut through the earth with their green blades

Resurrected Easter lilies open

The weaving of women in cyberspace

Star-linked

Tell stories of mother’s cherry pie in the freezer

Finally unthawed to be eaten

Éclairs dipped in chocolate

“Eat them now,” Mama advises,

“Before the sun gets too hot.”

Eat your own sweet heart

Pick your own ripe fruit

Knead the dough

Then turn up the heat

Set the table

Take your place at the feast of life

Set a place for your grandmothers

Hear their voices again

Ancestors, who even now as you sit waiting for the next call,

Alone in your little house,

Even now they weave a shawl for you

Embroidering your name in red silk thread as they hum

There is a cell phone that reaches that far

There is a line open always

In the dark

Between dreams

Between labor pains

Between your hearts crimson rhythm

This is where your phone rings

Use your free minutes

Answer the call