How I stopped singing (then started singing again (but only once))

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Guess how my thigh got so red.

If you guessed it’s floor burn from bodily launching myself into the below mountain of bubble wrap, congratulations, you are correct.

Tonight, a friend was putting on a show that involved this giant heap of bubble wrap and, once the audience had left, we took the opportunity to get in about it.

However, as soon as I set foot in the theatre, I experienced a visceral flashback to my last time in the building. It was 2019. It was round about this time of year. I was an actor at the time performing in a show there.

The show began with me walking onstage singing into a microphone. In the context of the show, I was to think I was performing this song phenomenally well. In the context of reality, I was performing it shockingly badly. The song was Whitney Houston’s One Moment in Time. Before typing that last sentence, I had to sit in silence for probably about three minutes trying to remember what song it was—that’s how successfully I blocked out this memory.

Not to blow my own trumpet too enthusiastically, but I’m not the worst singer in the world. I’m also not the best singer in the world, but I can sing well enough to get jobs on the basis of that ability. Over the course of my (admittedly short) public performance era, I only encountered two songs that I just could not make sound anything close to acceptable.¹ One was The Bangles’ Eternal Flame, and the other was One Moment in Time. The best I can explain it is that there is just something about the tone of my voice that doesn’t suit the sort-of-gentle-but-not-quite verses of these particular songs, and instead sounds just, like, so bad.

What I would do with OMIT was muddle through the verses putting on half an American accent (hoping that was an improvement) and try to make the audience forget the verses entirely by going increasingly all in on each chorus. So for the last minute or so of the song, I would just be belting my absolute pan in.

I’ve just looked it up and OMIT is almost five minutes long. It was a solo. Honestly, to muscle through that level of cringe every day for a whole rehearsal period and then a whole show run—that was quite a feat, good for me.

I also happen to suffer from a peculiar physical phenomenon: every time I cringe, I cry. By this I mean that the mere existence of cringe (I don’t even have to be embarrassed) makes me cry uncontrollably, every time. Witnessing someone do/say something embarrassing—cry; comedy with no one laughing—cry; children’s nativity plays—cry (sorry. I know. I wish this wasn’t the case.); the film Elf—cry; at mass on Christmas Eve when the priest would make the congregation sing happy birthday to Jesus²—cry.

This is a genuine impediment to my life. I work in theatre!!! I have worked in panto!!!³ (best job ever btw) Everything about panto is the very definition of cringe. I ask you now to imagine how embarrassing it is to be sitting in the audience of your own pantomime with tears streaming down your face. I would just hope people thought I was crying with laughter at my own jokes (extremely possible and not at all unprecedented) instead of thinking I was crying at the emotion brought on by Snow White defeating the Evil Queen after beating her in a game of ‘apple roulette’ (like Russian roulette but with apples instead of bullets—that’s panto!).

I would leave the stage after singing OMIT awfully (and quite weirdly), in tears, and have to sort myself out emotionally and physically before getting back onstage to continue acting as if I hadn’t just performed embarrassingly badly then cried about it. Every day.

This was such an off-putting experience, coupled with the fact that I have some issues from childhood around singing in front of people (lol. but also i’m being completely serious), that once the run was over I thought I need to get back on the horse immediately or I will never open my mouth in public again. So, not long after, I auditioned for a musical that was, for ease of explanation, the Bay City Rollers version of Mamma Mia (lol. but also i’m being completely serious). Instead of a wedding in Greece, it was about growing up in Scotland in the 1970s. (When I was cast in that, I was told two things. One: I sound like what everyone imagines a Scottish person sounds like. I think that is probably true. Two: I sound like I come from the past. I still wish I’d asked her to explain that one.)

Bay City Rollers Mamma Mia was cancelled because of covid. And I stopped acting altogether during the pandemic. During this time, I accidentally became very singing-avoidant. I just didn’t do it at all for years. Even in private. And, in that time, I got completely in my own head and paranoid about it. And every time I remembered about the existence of the song One Moment in Time, I would consciously push that memory out of my mind until I stopped thinking about it entirely. And I had got the idea in my head that if I did sing at all, I was so out of practice that anything I sang would be so awful that anyone who heard me would think I was a terrible singer and that would completely scupper any future attempts to resume an acting career. (lol. but also i’m being completely serious).

Recently I had the opportunity to make a wee St Andrew’s Day show for a London venue. I was very much not the best person for this job (I’m not really whisky-and-tartan Scottish; I’m more buckfast-and-sectarianism Scottish), but very happy to be picked thank you, yes of course I will do it!!!

Due to my not being the best person for the job, I really didn’t know what to do. I ended up getting some other people involved and having basically a Scottish cabaret. Fun! (not sarcasm.) For my part, I was really struggling for ideas and the best thing I could come up with was singing the Robert Burns song A Man’s A Man For A’ That.⁴ Because I like that song. And, more importantly, I know that song.

Before the performance on Saturday night, I was so scared I thought— I was going to say I thought I was going to be sick, but actually I felt so sick I thought I was going to have to withdraw. We had had one rehearsal, without audience, and even doing that was utterly horrifying. And when you’re in a group of performers who love to perform, saying ‘I don’t do this anymore and I’m scared of singing’ doesn’t really feel like something that would garner much understanding.⁵

I thought all day about pulling out. Which would have been fine. It wouldn’t have been great but it would have been acceptable. But I kept putting it off because it was never the right time, the right people were never about, there was something else I had to attend to, I just chickened out, etc. Until I had put it off for so long the show was about to start. And then I was too scared to upset the running order that I couldn’t make myself say I didn’t want to do it.

Then suddenly I was standing at the side of the stage. Downing pints of water and shaking like fuck, but standing there nonetheless. And then it was time to walk onstage so I couldn’t pull out even if I wanted to. And then I was standing on the stage in front of an audience and I probably sounded a bit shaky and nervous to start, but then I didn’t. And it was fine. And people clapped. And I walked off the stage. And people said well done. And I had so much adrenaline going on I could probably have pulled the theatre out of its foundations and then fought every member of the cast, crew and audience. But instead I sat backstage and listened to the rest of the show. And everyone was great and we all celebrated.

So for me to return to the theatre of my terrible awful dreadful performance from five years ago only a couple of days after ‘conquering’⁶ the fear that it brought on felt quite serendipitous. Instead of my mental flashback to the last time I was there reigniting the shame that was horrible enough to induce a whole new phobia, I remembered the feeling and thought to myself god I was shite at that song, really shite, absolutely dire, honestly should probably have been sacked. And then I stopped thinking about it, enjoyed my friend’s show, and launched myself into a big pile of bubble wrap.

I know this whole thing is completely ridiculous btw. My other big fears are snakes and the opticians. We are not operating on a rational plane here. It is what it is.

A more exciting story from my acting days:

my brief and bloody foray into mormonism

1. I have never attempted opera or, like, screamo. And am extremely not saying I could do either. Because I couldn't.

2. I’m fairly sure he still does this, I just no longer subject myself to it. One year he made the children do it, then everyone do it, then everyone do it again because it wasn’t enthusiastic enough. The man made a packed church sing happy birthday to Jesus three times in a row. And it was Christmas Eve—not even his birthday.

3. ‘A theatrical entertainment, mainly for children, which involves music, topical jokes, and slapstick comedy and is based on a fairy tale or nursery story, usually produced around Christmas.’ - Oxford Languages

4. A song which has been performed more often at the Scottish Parliament than you would imagine. Including the one I linked which was at the opening of the Parliament in 1999. Midge Ure did it at one point. idk why.

5. I’m sure it would have. People are very nice. But that’s how it felt.

6. Will still be scared the next time, if there is a next time.