As you might guess from the title of this post and the photo of my ceramic toadstools I am about to take you down the rabbit hole! As a singer it is important to be aware of altered states of consciousness because in order to give a truly great performance we have to enter a different state of consciousness and by doing so we open up a portal for our audience to enter a different dimension too. This is the magic of great singers. Why were so many people transfixed by the likes of Maria Callas or in the pop world by Michael Jackson? They literally mesmerized their audiences. Great performers transport us to another world beyond space and time and we come away uplifted and energized because they literally charge up our batteries.
So what are these different dimensions? Tom Kenyon, an extraordinary American psychotherapist, sound healer, shaman and author gives what I think is one of the clearest (and funniest) explanations of altered states of consciousness in a talk which you can find on his website in the “Sound Gifts” section.
As he explains, we human beings are rooted in our physical bodies which is the world of three dimensions, the fourth dimension is Time and if we can move into the fifth dimension we can access a world that is beyond Time and Space. So how do we do that? We cannot do it with our physical bodies but our mind can slip through and this is the world of imagination and creativity. I am sure that all of us have an innate sense of this 5th dimension and long to be there. Given half a chance we would all like to be in a permanent state of ecstasy but unfortunately many of us try to access it in an unhealthy way through the use of mind-altering substances – alcohol and drugs. Many of us try to lose ourselves in other ways such as watching TV or playing computer games. Great artists – dancers, singers, painters and writers seek to enter this dimension and also sportsmen who talk about being “in the zone.”
Tom Kenyon goes on in his talk to act out a very amusing dialogue between the left hemisphere of his brain which is where logic, languages and a sense of self resides and the right hemisphere which he calls “Woo Woo Land” which is the world of intuition, imagination and one-ness. This is where my post “Voice-Building, Singing – And Cars!” dovetails very nicely with this one – of course as singers we have to practise and think about how our voices work just like tinkering with the car in the garage (left brain ) but the moment we step into a performing situation we have to go up a notch – into “Woo Woo Land” (right brain) to create the magic and then there is some other ingredient that comes into the singing which is beyond technique – it is just as if one pressed some weird imaginary button. So what we singers really want to do is to find that button so we can leave the practice room behind and launch ourselves into the cosmos! Here’s to “Woo Woo Land”! It’s all in your imagination.
Vocal Odyssey 