November 16, 2021
What Colors Your Glasses?
“Thinking outside of the box” is a common phrase where the box itself is a metaphor for a paradigm, any paradigm, any structural framework for how you show up in the world, some idea that you have about life, your notion of the way the world is.
An easy example to point to would be the “Pollyannas” of the world who see the world through a lens of naive optimism. And then there are those who often deride the Pollyannas of the world for being overly idealistic and “wearing rose colored glasses,” another cliché. More often than not, they don’t realize that they, too, are wearing glasses. Perhaps their lens are yellow, jaundiced with cynicism and despair. Perhaps green and full of avarice. Perhaps multicolored. The point is, they don’t see how their own thoughts and perceptions are colored by their glasses.
Even the most enlightened among us have a filter through which we see the world. All our ideas about the way the world is happen to fit within our respective boxes, and some boxes are more expansive, adaptive, and responsive than others, based on the ratios of love and fear, power and privation, possibility and limitation, and other dualities and spectra that shape our boxes. Some spiritual schools of thought suggest that it’s possible to have moments in your life where your entire box – memories, perceptions, judgments, personality markers – can disappear and you experience the oneness of all that is. Other schools of thought assert that you can never fully “escape” your box, you can only embrace and deepen your awareness of what’s in your box (thought patterns, intuitive hunches, creative impulses, etc), what no longer serves you in that box (maladaptive coping mechanisms), and what you’d like to add to your box (joy, connection, freedom, love).
And beyond these boxes, we’re all these multi-dimensional humans that exist all across the ideological spectrum in ways that don’t fit neatly into any boxes. So there’s the theory and then there’s reality, which is much more idiosyncratic, and messy, and dynamic, much like vocal improvisation.
I have found that play is a great way to discover your own glasses anew, to explore the boxes that have shaped your life experience, to delight in both your uniqueness and universality.
Let’s embrace our boxes and also think outside of them by playing together with our voices! Creative fellowship is the most potent way to open up our hearts and minds. I’ll be bringing the experience of Vocal Play to a town near you in 2022. Stay tuned!
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Onome is a vocalist, creativity catalyst, facilitator and interdisciplinary artist of Urhobo heritage in the Niger Delta. She incorporates improvisation into her practice as a tool to expand consciousness, creativity, and personal development. Through her audience-interactive performances, workshops and sound installations, Onome embodies joy, enchantment, and infinite possibility. She is a partner artist at Carnegie Hall as a core member of the vocal improvisation ensemble, Moving Star.
She has performed at hundreds of venues nationally, recorded soundscapes for podcasts, and created vocal film scores. She received her MFA in Performance Studies at Pratt Institute. She is the artistic director for Lush Tongue, a vocal improvisation project where sound, creativity, self-discovery, connection, and joy converge through singing—via sound healing sessions, workshops, vocal coaching, retreats, and concerts. She leads Soul Incites, a women’s self-development community. She got her start in spoken word poetry and opera via Nuyorican Poets Cafe and New York University, and now facilitates community vocal immersions at concert halls, conferences, galleries, museums, schools, cultural centers, shelters, prisons, parks, churches, online, wherever voices gather.