Singing and safety?

I picked up the lantern made form the glass panels today and am really pleased with it.  Perhaps it could be a symbol of safety, at least for this post which is about singing and safety.

I had been looking for a very simple singing group for a long time. I missed singing with dad. Music is a big part of my life and song, was one of the things I found myself reaching for, like fire, drumming, ritual etc a year ago. I thought it would be another way to practice relational safety - to show my system I can be around other people and nothing bad happens.

A singing group, but not a choir, nothing performative, nor for entertainment and not traditional in the sense of what traditional choirs mean in Britain, but probably something more like world music. It might be along the lines of the commmunity singing, or the healing or philosophical kind of singing about yourself, your emotions and experiences that I'd heard in the coplas, bagualas and vidalas of Argentina.

Recently, someone told me about a possible group, so I went, last week.

Because it took place in my town, even though it was in the morning, during office working hours, the anxiety kicked in: who would be there? This is always my worry now, here: who is going to be there? Will social services be there, pretending to be human? Or people who act like that. That is always the thought. And that adjunct at the end, unhelpfully means "could be anyone", at least to a system that no longer differentiates very well what threat is.

The event was in her house with normal signals of family life - pictures children had made a friendly dog. That was all reassuring, The hostess was lovely. There was another woman present, but it was all a bit too much to absorb. Female/ dress registered.  Anxiety can do that to your system: tunnel vision to a greater or lesser degree. The sunglasses stayed resolutely on, which was weird, but that’s just how it is sometimes now.

Another two people arrived: immediately and definitively they were in the threat category. Suddenly, in comparison the first participant, who by now I had realised was the oldest of the group, shrank into a "probably harmless" category.

So it was going to be difficult. But I kept reminding myself, that nothing bad was happening or was likely to happen. You can tell yourself that, but the much more primal part of you that is scanning for threat and feeling threat I don't think gives two hoots about the rational voice - the whole point is to override it: DANGER! RUN!

I didn't run but throughout the session, felt a constant, almost overwhelming sense of threat from these two people. Thank god, for the sunglasses.  Perhaps that is what they are for in this context - to keep threat at bay in some strange, nervous system way I don’t really understand.  

I told myself the threat-women were probably too old to fit into the main threat category which directly maps on to "women in social services" and yet nevertheless they did fit into it. Part of me was perhaps rationalising "yes, but they could be retired". But all of that is again just noise, all that rationalising part.

What characteristics did they have to fit the threat category put them in it? It was something to do with accent, personality, attitude, physical presence.

Until there was more evidence to the contrary, they were going to stay in that category.  I’m not even sure it works on evidence, because again that’s a cognitive thing.  All this works seems to work on subconscious pattern matching. 

The likelihood was they did not nor had not worked for social services More plausibly in this small town they might have connections to that heinous organisation and they might not be like those fiends, even though my sense was overwhelmingly that they were. I told myself that they were people with their own battles but knew that none of that would have any affect on the sense of threat.

All of that - likelihood, plausibility, reasoning, it's all irrelevant when someone is in that state. It is simply cognitive habit I suppose that keeps us trying to tell ourselves a story even while a much older and instinctual part is going by input > pattern match to threat or safety > response. It would make more sense to shut down those thoughts by listening to the body, grounding it with safety cues like longer breathing, orientating to the room, to sounds etc.

But fear precisely does blindside you to the sensible response. I would have been better off walking in, as I often do, to stressful situation, holding my stones for a grounding effect which would have triggered a reminder to breathe more consciously, to listen for sounds, widen my gaze around the room, deliberately taking things in.

Since I hadn't done those things the effect was that my whole being wanted to swerve away from them, something they must have picked up on, because the most that any of the participants  - one of the threat women - asked was my name at the end of the session. Just as in the lantern session, people get the vibe. I followed the host to the kitchen area in the break, practically tied myself to her apron strings to avoid the others. Yes, I would definitely like another cup of tea, chat chat chat.

But during the singing, the music was like a thread pulling me through.

They were short simple, reassuring songs: a warm up song about the breath and being in the moment, then I am a Tower of Strength (within and without) which was cheesy but that seemed rather beside the point.  

We did Koleoko (Cock-a-doodle-do, Wake up mama) a song from Liberia and Oh River.  The more the songs were repeated, the easier I found it. The songs became easier to sing as they became more familiar but it was simply that the momentum of the song and particularly the repetition pulled me through what, for me, was a difficult environment. It was a bit like those Russian dolls - the house/host felt like a safe container, but there was threat inside the house and deeper still the songs were another container but a safe one. How much they cancelled out I'm not sure.

I was reminded of a conversation with a Colombian musician about percussion. The first salsa track he gave me to listen to was Eddie Palmieri's Azúcar. The length of the track was groundbreaking at the time. I was strict instructions to do nothing but listen to that track - no cooking, he said, no other jobs. So I lay down and listened and felt the world tip and slide, as I started to enter another dimension through sound. Percussion in indigenous music and even in salsa music can be used to induce a almost or partly altered state of consciousness, as I started to experience that day and have since for a few seconds at a time. He said western patterns of thought are not so open to or familiar with that concept of percussion. But something like that was what was happening when I navigated threat through song. I seemed to be able to transcend the danger through the vocalisation and the little movements that accompanied the songs.

It fell apart rather when we were asked to do a round. There were still only four of us, plus the host so it was two and two which was perhaps ambitious for a very small, brand new group.

I don't have much or recent group singing experience, besides this, from June. It was a wonderful, spontaneous song in a forest circle at the end of a drumming event that came about in a few minutes after I chatted with the drum leader who happened to be a sound and singing professional.

So, these simple songs are manageable. And yet, when put with one of the women in the threat category, it was immensely difficult. Because, as a beginner, you rely on the other person and tune into them, to sing with them. They are your ally, your partner.  But how can you do that with someone you can't help but perceive as a threat, even if they didn't know it? Yet for a few seconds at a time, the music took over and seemed to dominate more than the sense of threat.

Should I have shared this problem with the leader? I wondered, later. But it was only her second time leading - this was a practice session, part of her training. Still, she probably would have found it useful. Wouldn't you, if you had been in her position? In the break she had shared that she had had had her own struggles, which surprised me in such an upbeat and energetic person. Experience of neurodivergence featured in her conversation too.  Still, I decided against it. I wanted to go back and didn't want to risk being seen as a problem (cue: conditioned response) so I hid the reason my feelings (another pattern) and only the outward behaviour showed - the sunglasses kept resolutely on my face, the way the fingers of one hand pressed the ends of the fingers on the other hand, the gaze averted from the other participants, concentrating on the ethnic shoe of the least threatening participant.  It was necessarily shut down, avoidant behaviour. That would have told its own story.

Later, I read that the leader of the sister group  had had different mental health struggles. 

But it is one thing for people to clock a struggle and another to know what to do about it - for that you may need more information. Had I shared and she understood what, specifically, this particular participant found difficult, she might have adjusted who she paired me with. But it is that next play, when the ball is in the court of the organiser who has spotted a problem, but doesn't know what it is, that is the skilful move. More of that another time.

People who run groups like this do get training which presumably covers inclusivity and different participant needs. It is something people are so much more aware of nowadays. Certainly, during teacher training we were trained to make those sorts of adjustments for differentiated and inclusive education.  

But the skill is not so much in the training, nor even necessarily in the experience, so much as in the personality, the character.  I can tell that simply from the many red flags around the trained and experienced therapist I started to see last week compared to say, the sensitive young man who works in the local cafe.  

Our singing leader was sending plenty of "safe" signals but safety takes time and sharing your difficulty to remove obstacles in your path forward, that is to say, making yourself more vulnerable when you’re already in an especially hypervigilant state, probably isn’t wise or realistic.