I dropped Dead Birds Fly this week, which entailed streaming the song and/or video on various public media outlets. Let the trolling begin. Some guy posted “Yoko Ono sounds better” on my facebook songwriter page.
I know he meant it as an insult, but being compared to Yoko, even unfavorably, is an honor to me. She has been pushing artistic boundaries for decades. Sometimes…no…often…I don’t understand her art on a logical level, but the beauty in the uniqueness affects me viscerally. Even when she emits sounds that border between barks and dolphin mating calls, the extremeness of it gives the the rest of us permission to do what it is we want to do. She sets the bar. Nothing is too strange. I love her.
Curious as to who this troll was, I stopped by his facebook page, which led me to his website. “Original Music” displayed in the header. Aha. A songwriter. I clicked “play” on one of the tracks. Impressive blues guitar. Definitely adept at using multiple fingers to pluck out the notes. Then his voice kicked in. Incredible. Smokey, bluesy, powerful yet soft, resonant yet rough. This guys voice, and I hate to say it, is as good as it gets.
So why does he feel a need to publicly shame my voice? I will never get it. But I do want to ruminate on the lack of empathy. Voice is genetic. I’m sorry, but no amount of training in the world will ever make me have one of those gifted Whitney Houston voices. I don’t care what all those people trying to sell voice lessons on youtube say. At a certain point it is what it is.
So with that logic, imagine if I was all “judgy” about other people’s DNA. I would make fun of other women for being flat chested. Or maybe make fun of people with big feet.
I listened to “troll” man’s other songs, and the header of the page struck me as wrong. “Original Music”. Clearly, he was proud of writing his own songs. It didn’t say, “Great Voice”. I probably wouldn’t have noticed, had he not commented on my page but…His songs weren’t all that original. He may have written them, but they were repetitive, formula driven, cliche and boring.
I would never ever troll anyone back, and maybe I should’ve just blocked him and called it a day, but I couldn’t help myself. I commented on his comment, the one he left on my page. “At least I can write”.
At some point the next day, I noticed he deleted his comment.
Don’t get me wrong, I love to sing. But I don’t sing because I want to be some famous rock star, lol, at least not at my age. Ultimately, I sing because I write. I don’t have a-list vocalists knocking down my door to take my songs and make them their own. Haha, I wish. I sing because I write. So leave me the F*& alone.