The March Lion

Bring in the lion, bring in the lamb... and welcome to my new twist to that wonderful saying of March coming in as a lion and coming out as a lamb, or coming in as a lamb and coming out as a lion. It seems as though the weather has been acting like a lion, then eventually calming down into a docile lamb's breath. However, I personally feel like the opposite. Coming into March I was feeling restless, solid in my content of being... whatever. But those feelings were moving, changing.


Like the trees outside, the brown-gray of my personality was becoming flushed with the blood that is running within me. A hue, almost indistinguishable, has been flooding my mind, my eyes, my mouth, my ears, and my touch. What once seemed like a sketch is now threatening to be painted into a more fuller work.


What do I mean by sketch? What does this have to do with my March Lion? I think it has everything to do with my March Lion. Before now, I was content to just sketch out a picture, a life to enjoy. I was a Lamb of discretion and structure. Just a few days before the Ides of March, I have realized that I cannot be that Lamb anymore. There's not much space for sketching anymore. What I need to do, is to color in that sketch of a life with the ferocity, power, and strength of the Lion.


I feel as though I have finally broken through the ground, to take advantage of the world around me. With the internet, friends, ect. It is not say that I have not tried it before, not at all... This is to say that I've finally managed to perfect the way that I have approached others. When you don't open up on a regular basis, it becomes easy to not do anything at all. It's like fighting with a muscle clam to make it open up while it's still alive. If you let go one millimeter, it's going to clam up even harder than before. My issue was just being in practice. When I talk, I try to be thoughtful in what I say. I don't talk for the noise, I talk to communicate. And learning communication is always going to be a challenge for everyone. It would be nice if people could read each other's minds (though disasterly at the same time) and just do things perfectly the first time someone explains it to them. But that's not going to happen. So we must learn to communicate our thoughts, our needs properly... and be able to explain what is on our minds.


These past years, I have been practicing the science of communication. How to talk, how to not look stupid, how to be effective in talking. However... I have realized that I've learned those lessons, and now have moved on to the art of communication.


As a singer and an actor, one might think that we would know how to communicate well. How else could we good at what we are doing?


I don't see it as our ability to communicate the song or the character... those are things that we have studied. That we broke down into pieces, memorized, chanted, ect. We are artists in the works that we interpreted. But being an artist doesn't mean that the person can speak well for themselves. I have art in communication on stage, but that doesn't mean I'm always going to find the right words to say when expressing my desires to my friends and family. I know what to do, how to breathe, to make it effective. But the words are the most difficult.


Yet I have been writing on a regular basis in poems and blogs. I have been reading forums and books. I have been reading plays and practicing lines. The more I surround myself with words, the easier it is for me to express what it is I am feeling and thinking.


There are still parts of me that I don't know how to express because they do arouse emotions that I find difficult to encompass in mere words. In writing I may have more control, but speaking... well, it takes time and it takes practice. And I now think it just takes time... like 22 years. With who knows how many more years, I feel more ready to express those thoughts and feelings that before I was fighting so hard to mouth around. These words rest at the tip of my tongue, back of my throat, in my cheeks, to be formed on the wind.


And when I gather up my breath, it's like gathering the wind through a narrow chamber, filling the cavity of my chest, of a cave; so that when I vocalize my words... I do not speak: I roar.


And so the Lamb turns into a Lion.