BREAKING FREE

I don’t have much writing from the year I was in Spain because, after the first month or two, I got too busy to keep a diary. I didn’t take the time to write rough drafts of my letters or copy them, either—so I don’t have much to jog my memory except for a few letters to Jane, which I seem to have taken some pains with. I know I wrote Britte assiduously for many months and depended on her two or three letters a week as a kind of lifeline.

In my “diary” I wrote:

“Last night Wendy told me I had a beautiful, beautiful voice—that I didn’t know how much it meant to other people to hear me sing, that it made her happy. I’ve been feeling, more than ever, that I was born to sing—that I have the voice and the determination, just no training or composure. I think to myself—when I get back to the States, I’ll find the best voice teacher I can and use my $500 scholarship for lessons. I’ll sing everywhere—on campus benches, street corners, at gatherings of friends—make it part of my everyday life. And when I open my mouth, all my feelings will flow out effortlessly. Now, with too little knowledge and confidence, my voice is mostly too cumbersome for me to express myself very well. But on days it’s freer, it means so much to me to be able to sing. It gives me a kind of control over my emotions—I can draw them out of some deep place inside and through the music give them shape. Sometimes I even get goose bumps or get shaky from the intensity of the experience.

“This morning I was thinking: we all die, the end of act three—so the only way to live is to the fullest, which means slashing all the ropes with which society ensnares you. Break free, think new, do what you really WANT and need to do—to hell with college if you are unhappy studying. You can sing, you can draw—these are what you live for—so why aren’t you throwing all your energy and soul into them. Why?”