dailyprompt-1967 – Mallaband-Brown

What are you passionate about?

I like truth, I always have, I heard a story when I was little, about a boy that chopped down a tree but owned up to it when asked as he couldn’t tell a lie… I think that was a boy who became an American president.

How ironic that a recent president posts on a website called Truth, but that isn’t necessarily being honest (is this where I say allegedly?).

Why am I passionate about it? It actually makes me feel ill not to be honest. I was bought up as a Christian and although I’m now agnostic, I still feel deeply that truth is important. I feel that people should know the truth about things. The problem with that though is that different people have different truths! I was recently listening to 1984 by George Orwell and it did strike a chord about how the masses can be controlled. Life is difficult and truth is important to me.

What are you passionate about?

When I was a child I would make up songs to send myself to sleep. I can remember lying under the covers and singing lullabies. I must have sung quietly as I shared bedroom with my sister!

As I got older I sang with the school choir, but my voice was untrained and would flip between higher and lower registers. I think they liked me in the school choir for the volume I could create.

As I got older I would go to parties and burst into song, usually something like “Swing Low” which has a lower tune that I could hit (I found out I’m a contralto I think). Finally I decided to try and control my voice because I went to a Christmas Carol concert and my voice was up high and down low, hitting notes an octave apart.

I started singing lessons and did the basic grade exam, I was learning once a fortnight because I couldn’t afford more frequent lessons. It was expensive and then my teacher decided to move away. Thankfully my best friend at the time had persuaded me to join a choir on the weeks I wasn’t at singing lessons. Now 20 years later I’m singing in that choir and another one, I’m confident enough to perform in public and I’ve realised how it helps my mental health. Singing relieves anxiety, it’s like art, it takes your mind off things for that brief time when you are creating musical sounds. It is a true passion of mine.