Mannequin Monday – “A lot of pain in that invisibility”
“If you weren’t so quiet, you wouldn’t have searched so desperately for a way to speak.” Springsteen and Obama on the Renegade podcast.
A ten-year old girl in post Civil war Texas learns English to find her voice.
And a chapter from my book, A Twin Long Gone. Trying to re-create a voice.
What I’m Reading
I started this week listening to the first two episodes of the podcast Renegade on Spotify. Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama engage in a long conversation about music, America, their individual backgrounds.
Early in the first episode Obama mentions the shy quality he sees in Springsteen. That sparks a long comment from Springsteen about the shyness prevalent in so many entertainers and performers.
“If you weren’t so quiet,” Springsteen says, ” you wouldn’t have searched so desperately for a way to speak. The reason you desperately pursue your work and your language and your voice is because you haven’t had one. You realize that, and you feel the pain of being somewhat voiceless.”
Springsteen goes on: “The performance becomes the mechanism from which you express the entirety of your life. Previous to that I was pretty invisible. A lot of pain in that invisibility.”
It’s all about finding your voice, about desperately pursuing that voice. A matter of survival. Speak or die invisible.
Author and artist Austin Kleon says in his book Show Your Work the only way to find your voice is to use it. He goes so far as to say, if you’re not on the Internet, you don’t exist. Strong words, but they echo Springsteen. You express yourself because you feel the pain of being somewhat invisible.
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