We are What we Project: An Experience of Confidence, Illness, and Finding Your Voice

I’d been sick for a month and a half and was finally mostly functioning again, but I kept having a sore throat. I’d spend the day not talking to my significant other, trying to save my voice, so I could squeak out some recording time with my singing voice. I tried a vocal steamer and I think it helped, but not all the time.

It wasn’t until I was at band practice for MORNOIZ and we were 6 songs into our set list and I started missing lines because I physically couldn’t get my voice out anymore. Our band was in a transformation stage where their goals of live performance and my goals of online streaming were coming to a head. You see, in the past, I’ve stage fright. I like to say in the past so I detach from it, but the fact is the last time I performed, there was a lot of fright. I’m trying to re-frame my identity, but I’m still working on it. So, it was looking like I probably needed to quit the band, I was sad as we were running the tracks. These were my songs. But I couldn’t perform them without the band. These were our songs. We we finished, with our newest song Use. I felt the punk rock transformation coming out of me. What starts as a mellow, laid back track, has me yell at the drummer to “give me something I can use!” and then goes full on punk metal and it’s awesome. I was charged up, we even did a little moshing in the garage to celebrate that big finale. And I felt different, passionate, charged, engaged, ready for more. It also helped a lot that our bassist…