Autoethnography
[The terror within me]
I can feel my anxiety creeping up the staircase within me. Preparing to make a grand entrance on the main stage of my brain. As she gets to the top of the stairs and enters the dressing room, I can feel my knees begin to give out and the sweat glands within my palms are at the ready to release the flood gates. As Anxiety buckles on her thigh-high boots and fluffs her hair to the high heavens, my body’s internal temperature starts to rise due to every cell in my body running rampant in all directions screaming “What are we going to do!?” or “We aren’t prepared for this!!” Finally, the grand curtains on the stage start to roll away. The only sound that can be heard is clicking boots, which keeps getting louder with every step. All the frantic cells are now at a standstill starring at the stage as the inevitable is walking ever so exigently past the curtains. She gets to the front and in a smooth one-two motion, she looks down towards the ground with her hands at her hip and then swiftly looks towards the calvaria, throwing her hands up and then the sparklers begin to fire off. Anxiety has arrived! And she is ready to begin her reigning performance!
[7-6-2021]
It was the middle of the night and I was having a full-fledged existential crisis over deciding on what song I should pick to sing for this project. On top of that, my panic really set in when I read that I would have to sing it eventually in front of people. Before this class began, I had a feeling that of course this would be the sort of thing I would be expected to do; however, part of me was hoping that it wouldn’t actually happen.
As I quickly went through the different songs on my Spotify playlists, I realized that the majority of the songs that I listen to regularly have really long instrumental rifts which I felt wasn’t helpful especially when we were expected to sing. In my head, I kept thinking “how could someone sing an electric guitar or clarinet?”
Honestly, the first song that came to mind was I Belong to You by Muse, however, I had to refrain from picking that song since it has so much meaning for me and I could not think of any way to incorporate the instrumental part of the song into singing. I imagine it would just be me looking at the camera awkwardly during the rift, so I should try to minimize that as much as possible.
As the night progressed, I nearly gave up on trying to find a song and just ended up singing songs that were playing on my “Oldies Goldies” playlist and having a good time, but I knew that I had to present a song that I was thinking about performing for the class. At that point I settled on the song True by Spandau Ballet because It was a song I knew well; however, I fear that I may get sick of the song because of how much I will end up listening to it in the following days as I attempt to practice singing the song well enough to want to at least record myself “preforming”.
[7-9-2021]
I am having some serious stage fright. For the life of me I cannot sing at all when my younger sister is home. Even when we do vocal exercises for class, I have a hard time doing them 100% when my sister is home. Every ounce of me wishes that she would just so happen to go to work in the mornings just so I can avoid her critical gaze. But when she isn’t home I am able to put on whatever song I want to dance and sing to my heart’s content, so much so that the neighbors are probably annoyed with hearing certain songs on repeat.
Whenever I have these “mini song concerts” I always think back to when I and my mom would sing the various songs that would come on the radio. She always had the radio station on KYXY 96.5, which would typically play soft rock music. True by Spandau Ballet would be one of the songs that would repeatedly come on the radio and every time me and my mom would sing it together. However, what I really remember is when I was in middle school, and every morning while I was getting ready for school me and my mom would regularly sing Queen songs. I never knew too much about that band prior to my mom. I don’t quite remember how this little morning routine started but I remember how we would sing the lyrics to each other and “echo” the verses back and forth to one another. We did this without the radio playing because we didn’t want to wake up my sisters, but that didn’t matter because my mom and I would get so into what we were doing that we would get loud enough for my sisters to wake up and complain to us. I would sing “easy come, easy go, will you let me go?” and my mom would sing back to me “bismillah, no we will not let you go!” [From the song Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen] or how we would both sing the words “Don’t stop me, don’t stop me, have a good time, good time” [From the song Don’t Stop me Now] facing each other while dancing. This memory kinda made me want to change my song to one by Queen.
I have to plan a day to record myself singing when my sister isn’t home so that I can give it my best try.
[7-10-2021]
I keep running the thought of me performing in front of my computer camera, at this point it lives in my head rent-free. Oddly enough however, I have “performed” in front of my camera before. My best friend and I would occasionally video chat one another and on days where we have had a rough day, we would do little “dance parties” through video chat. This involved us picking songs usually from Lady Gaga or Ariana Grande and just singing the song together while on zoom. We would get dramatic with it too, where we would act out the beginning of the song Alejandro by Lady Gaga. This was a regular occurrence to where my best friend bought us matching pink mics so we could “put on a show” together. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to do this with him for a bit due to our schedules, and this project is making me miss this activity we use to do.
[7-12-2021]
I just finished working and no one is home but me, I feel like it is my time to actually perform!! Work was great today which has me feeling amped and confident! With that being said, I am going to go ahead and change my song to I Want to Break Free by Queen. I am confident that I know the song well enough without having to practice it over and over again like I did with True to the point where I am just tired of hearing the song now. I have to make sure I record my performance before my sister arrives!
[After Recording]
So I initially was only checking the sound of my computer to make sure that the sound of the karaoke version of the song would be heard from my phone to the computer. However, the soundcheck resulted in me singing and dancing to the song, so I went ahead and tried to get somewhat get dressed from my performance of the song cause the moment just felt right. I wore a checkered green and black cardigan for my first two recordings of my performance, but it didn’t feel right? I felt restricted and it seemed staged. When I would watch the videos I just recorded it didn’t feel genuine and I think because I was concerned about how I looked?
I ended up removing my cardigan and recording for a third time. I felt a lot better with the third recording because I felt like I could move and kinda have fun. I just felt more comfortable and it seems kinda evident in the video recording of the performance. I love the results and I am glad with my decision!
[7-13-2021]
It is a day after I recorded my performance, and I am actually feeling pretty proud of myself. I have watched my recorded performance a few times now and each time I find myself singing along to myself!
I started off feeling very anxious about recording myself singing at the start of this project but all I can say is that I am proud of myself.
I thought I would have the feeling of “WOW I really did that”
