Anybody else have a hard time with breathing? Ok so specifically… whenever I have found myself in a yoga class, or any sort of stretching situation, or lifting weights, or sometimes the dentist—where they tell you to breathe in and out and think about it, I start to get all paranoid, cause then I can’t stop thinking about my breath, and sometimes they forget to tell you to exhale, or they get real excited telling you all the things to do on your inhale. 

“Inhale, and hold it, feel it in your fingers, expand your chest, imagine a balloon, read a book, and - oh yeah, exhale” 

At this point, I am drowning and not remotely relaxing. I’m just focusing on how if I exhale now, I’m going to miss the next inhale, and I’m just trying to follow directions. Then we get to the next exercise and they’re like “Laser you aren’t breathing” and ma’am you didn’t tell me to breathe, I turned off autopilot for this and you didn’t tell me to turn it back on. 

I don’t take a lot of exercise classes anymore and I tend not to get into situations where people try to get me to “draw attention to my breath,” thank god. But I have started taking voice lessons… which are also a lot about breathing.

I didn’t take many voice lessons pre-transition at all. My sister took them in high school and it was really annoying to hear her practice, so I got a bad vibe. Whenever I had to record vocals for a Doubleclicks album I got extremely in my head about “what I was supposed to sound like.” My dad tried to get me to recreate my vocal style from our first album when he helped us produce “Lasers & Feelings,” and I simply couldn’t do it.

There is an (apocryphal?) story in my family about my [suspiciously unmarried with a male “roommate”] great-uncle Lloyd who was a beautiful pianist until he took his first lesson, which completely threw him off his game. It sort of sounds impossible, but I did take my first songwriting class in the pandemic and it truly made my head hot and ruined me for a good few years. Too much thinking. Too may rules. Things all invented to re-create the natural course of inspiration. 

So… is it worth it to think about breathing? Well, coming back to singing after starting hormone replacement therapy has been extremely emotional. I have basically lost my previous vocal range completely. Since it’s already gone… might as well take voice lessons, there’s nothing to lose.

And now that we’re here, I’m realizing: singing is the one time that I do see the value in thinking about my breath. Does it make me think too hard? Yes. But my wonderful friend Tony and my previous voice teacher Heather have shown me all kinds of cool things you can do with your voice if you know what’s going on. “Masculinization” — making your voice sound more masculine — by changing where your resonance is, is honestly pretty cool. (Also, if you just frown instead of smile, you look and sound more like a “man”... for better or worse on that). 

Here’s a song that I think sums that all up… sung by me in the past, and me today at my desk before work! 

Gosh, my voice is cool. I’ll be honest, this is what I’ve always sounded like to me, and that’s why I’m hoping to re-record our music with my new voice this winter, if we can make it happen. I would just love that. Any suggestions, songs, thoughts?

xoxo

Laser

PS — We’ve started trying to gauge interest in a Kickstarter to fund an album of re-recorded music. If you’re interested, go follow the campaign here by clicking “Notify me on Launch”, and tell your friends, too. I think we’ll need like 700 people to feel safe launching.