My music Prof. friend made a FB post asking for the ten musical experiences that shaped you.
I started remembering belt-notch moments: my first musical, that time I performed for 30,000 people *cough*... But honestly, the moments that "shaped" me are small, and not all good.
My list is in the comments.
What's yours?
1)tagging along to Dad's church choir rehearsal as a preschooler
2)recording the Tony's on VHS
3)making up songs in my Jr. High friend's basement that we'd never write down
4)going to music camp and feeling, for perhaps the first time, that I belonged.
5)that magic feeling in choir or band when everyone breathes in unison
9)the Sunday years after feeling broken and battered by music when I asked my pastor if could maybe help with worship sometime and he said, "Everyone bailed on me today. Here's a mic."
10)two weeks ago when my friends made the last-minute decision to do a coffee shop open mic. I wasn't perfect, it's nothing to brag about, but I was more myself than any performance before
Sexual Harassment
6)my sense of trust and safety crumbling to dust when a music teacher made a pass at me and said I "owed" him for all the great roles and solos
7)the open mic in college when jazz instrumentalists *asked* me to sing with them
8)the day I truly understood that I was seriously ill because I missed an audition for my dream role.