© 2012 by Mads Elung-Jensen, Guest Writer
All
Rights Reserved
Note from The Radical Virgo:
So many readers are approaching their Chiron Returns during the current
transit of Chiron in Pisces. Mads gives a bigger-than-life example of how the
Pisces modalities of music, dance, and the arts in general are healing power
tools for those with this placement. His experiences illustrate not only how
music heals but the powerful healing capacity of Chiron in the 6th
house. With Chiron in Pisces in the sky until 2019, all of us, regardless of
our Chiron sign, can take a note from Mads’ song and ”Pisces up” our tool bag for the current
times. Not exactly a tough prescription and pill to swallow—go out and dance,
sing, make love, and make beautiful art!
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| See Photo Note 1 |
The number of skeletal muscles in the human body varies from about 656
to 850, depending on which expert you consult. But only one set of muscles in
the human body, the vocal folds, commonly known as the vocal chords, is not
controlled by the conscious brain. Phonation is controlled by the vagus nerve. Besides
outputs to the various organs in the body, the vagus nerve conveys sensory
information about the state of the body's organs to the central nervous system.
It also acts to lower the heart rate.
So, when you
speak and when you sing, you do it always by activating unconscious reflexes
and impulses. But while speaking involves involuntary diaphragm usage
primarily, singing involves voluntary diaphragm usage.
When singing, the
relaxed breath flow starts in the diaphragm. The baby’s eternal screaming without ever getting hoarse, is the best
picture of how the still unconditioned human being instinctively knows how to
use the right set of muscles. In most cases, the process of learning to talk
leads to a letting go of at least parts of this instinctive knowledge of
voluntary diaphragm usage. In extreme situations, experiencing joys, laughter,
crying, surprises, shocks or other acute traumas, we can immediately, again,
gain access to this knowledge. Also, stutterers who have trained as performing
vocal artists, and thus have strengthened their diaphragm, tend to stutter when
speaking but not when singing.
This connection
of the nervous system, the heart rate and the vocal chords contains the physiological
secret of why singing, can have such an impact on us all. Our primal feelings
and anxieties, our sorrows, joys, angers and lusts are all stored in the
diaphragm. Through the vocal folds’ unconscious connection of heart rhythm and diaphragmatic breath, you easily get in touch with this treasury of feelings that you
have collected and stored.
Laughter and
crying both immediately release blocks in the diaphragm. But the magical key to
a profound healing and transcendence of these feelings through singing is that you
connect with the steady breath flow and, of course, through music.
Singing,
together with dancing and sex, are generally considered the three primal ways
of expression, producing endorphins, the happiness hormones. If you’re
desperate, sport apparently also works.
Of these three,
which I all love, singing is my professional field, my vocal organ is the only
one that I take money for using, but I have personally often experienced a
direct connection between the sensations of sex and singing.
So many people
are intimidated by singing in public. Countless times, people have told me that
they can’t sing, that nobody should ever wish to listen to them singing. The
very idea sometimes seems worse than walking naked through a busy town. Even
most of my well-educated and acclaimed singing colleagues' will rarely be heard
singing outside the secure context of a concert hall, a practice or a private
nursery room. With my unaspected chart ruler, my 1st house Venus in
Libra conjunct my Libra Ascendant (and/or my Leo Moon and Mercury), I have,
till now, never been able to restrain myself to that, and I think this has been
my salvation in facing my life’s various challenges.
On YouTube, there
is a wonderful interview with the reclusive Swiss operatic diva, Lisa Della Casa, celebrating her 90th birthday in
2009. She sits in her castle at the Bodensee with her husband, happily smoking cigarettes. When
asked whether smoking is not dangerous, she matter of factly states, ‘There is
nothing more dangerous than singing!’
This statement rang a bell deep inside me. With a Scorpio Mars, and,
especially, having my generation’s Pluto/Uranus conjunction opposing
Saturn/Chiron, in my case rather unaspected in a 12th house/6th
house axis, their only gateway to the personal planets is through their
connection to my Neptune/Mercury square. At times, I seem to be attracted to
danger like moths to the light, and I cannot think of a better way of living it
out than through singing.
And to me, the quest of finding my true pure voice, trying to find a way
of letting go of all mannerisms and defense mechanisms, has also been the most
dangerous path I have ever had to walk—yet also the most rewarding.
Remedies for Sorrow or Pain
- Delight
- Weeping or
groaning
- The
sympathy or company of friends
- Contemplation
of truth
- Sleeping and
taking baths
~ St. Thomas
Aquinas ‘Summa Theologica’ 1274
Music was my
first love and singing my first language. My parents met in a choral society
and would always sing to me. In my father’s family there are many singers,
actors and musicians, and my mother’s parents and grandparents all loved to
sing.
According to my
mother, I was singing long before I started talking. I would pick up songs from
my parents, from the radio, from the gramophone, no matter what source or what
song, as long as it could be sung. Strange as it is,
neither my older sister nor my younger brother can hit a note straight. It
doesn’t keep them from enjoying singing, but the musical inheritance was
exclusively given to me.
We grew up in an
old orchard in the countryside in Denmark. There was no kindergarten. Our neighbour
would come and mind the house and us, while our parents worked as teachers in
the city.
When I was four
years old, Uranus left my 12th house and transited my Ascendant. It
was discovered that I had some very unusual learning abilities. When I was six
years old, Pluto also exited my 12th house and transited my Ascendant,
and nothing was ever the same again. My parents divorced, and for some reason
they never told anyone, including us children, that they had done so. Both
stayed in the house with new partners. It became my father’s wife Hedvig’s
ungrateful task to inform a very naïve, frightened and terribly enraged child
about life’s facts.
But thankfully,
she survived my attempt to kill the messenger. For the last 40 years, she has
been a loving, inspiring and steady factor in our volatile lives, and through
her, over time, I gained three more brothers.
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| Mads jumps stones as child. See Photo Note 2. |
Around the same
time I started school, and it was decided that I could skip first grade. School
was easy, but connecting to my classmates was impossible. To them, I seemed to
come from a different planet, which I might as well have. Instead, I would
retreat into my own world, reading books and singing songs from the radio, song
books, anything as long as it could be sung.
One rainy summer,
when I was about 10, and Pluto passed my natal Libra Venus, my father and
Hedvig borrowed some records of old Danish cabaret music from the public
library--elegant, witty and cheeky stuff--and I was delighted and saved.
I learnt all the
songs instantly, performed them whenever there was a possibility and also at
many impossible occasions. Nothing would keep me from singing my songs. Many of
the sexual implications of the songs might have escaped me, but I could always
recognize a good rhyme.
Things lightened
up even more, when at 15, I changed schools, entered high school, and Saturn,
having passed Pluto and Uranus, crossed my Ascendant for the first time. I started making
friends, some of whom I still have. Turned out I was no alien after all (or
maybe just a friendly alien). It was not a big problem being brilliant in
school anymore, and then I saw an ad that a church choir was looking for tenors
and basses. They amazingly paid for the people singing! I immediately
auditioned, and even though my voice hadn’t finished breaking, I was accepted
as youngest tenor.
Singing hymns,
the thrill of the dancing rhythms of baroque music, learning to blend your
individual voice with colleagues, learning to be on time, practicing and
practicing, striving for perfection, almost attaining it at your level, and
then performing in wonderful church rooms with fantastic acoustics, what a
wonderful world!
I sang and sang,
and then I heard a program on the radio with an opera singer with a resonant
bass voice telling about opera and his life. And I was thrilled again. Singing
and even acting, what could be better?
How do I get to
be an opera singer? I asked myself. I was 18, walking around in the
countryside, my voice was developing but I had no idea, if it was good enough
for a professional career. I auditioned for a voice teacher at the local
academy of music, who was cautiously encouraging.
That was enough.
It was really a thing I couldn’t leave alone. Neptune passed my IC, and I left the countryside with
a table lamp in my hand as my only luggage apart from my clothes, moved to Copenhagen and signed up for musicology at the
university.
I also at the
time realized that I was homosexual, and thus the big city held more than a few
attractions and infinite exciting possibilities for me. Pluto conjuncted my
Scorpio Mars, when I was 20. I sang and sang, in choruses, in churches, and I took
solo lessons. In my free time I did astrological readings for friends and gay
radio programs about rent boys and Nazi experiments with homosexuals in the Second
World War. Sans comparison, I did my own experiments, and unbeknownst to me at
the time, I also contracted a little virus. At 21, I auditioned for the Royal Danish Academy of Music and was accepted.
I also went to Switzerland, to take master classes with an old Swiss
tenor, Ernst Haefliger. In his time, in the 50’s and 60’s in Europe, he was the
preferred tenor for Bach’s passions, for Mozart’s operas and for all kinds of
works that required musicality, style, beautiful sound, an open heart and a
highly developed intuitive brain. This was perhaps the most decisive encounter
for me, and I went to Switzerland for six summers to learn and learn.
Things developed
quickly by then. I had a huge capacity to learn and understand music, well
developed organizational skills, and an enormous appetite, curiosity and
stamina. What I might still lack in technique was compensated by energy and
will power. I was offered many exciting jobs, just by being at the right place
at the right time. And I got into the world of creative artists, experiencing
composers’ work with musicians, and later on having them write music for my
voice was another incredible world.
While singing in
the Danish Radio Chorus, I was also discovered by a German Chorus Master, Uwe
Gronostay, who invited me to audition in Berlin and engaged me as a soloist in Mozart’s
Requiem, in the Berlin Philharmonic, of all sacred places. My first foreign
job, at 27, it was all very surreal.
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| See Photo Note 3 |
At the same time
I gave my debut as an opera singer, and I felt I could walk on water. I was
invited many times to Germany. I sang in Holland, in England, in France and at home in Denmark, of course, and I was still a student. My
technique was by now pretty steady and my sound clear.
I graduated
around my Saturn Return, and the reception was suddenly not so enthusiastic
anymore. Musical, yes, big understanding, yes, but the voice had weakened in
power and beauty of sound.The telephone didn’t ring as often and I got a part-time
job as manager for an ambitious contemporary music orchestra. That was
interesting too, but I had to work full-time, getting paid part-time wages, and
had no time for singing.
I started having
strange sicknesses, and over three months, I lost 25 pounds due to an intestinal
infection. The musicians were difficult to deal with, and I felt very wasted.
After a year I quit the job and tried to find my voice again, but something was
not working right.
I finally asked
for an HIV-test. I had had a negative one at 19, with a very scary two weeks’
wait before the result. After that first time, it had just been too frightening
to deal with the whole AIDS thing, that I hadn’t been around a doctor’s (for
that) since.
I didn’t dare to
call the doctor for the result. When a month passed by, I convinced myself that
no news is good news. But then she called, and it was positive. I was to go to
the University Clinic for more tests and consultations with an expert.
Since it was
1998, the combination treatment had existed for a couple of years, and the
prognosis was: I would probably not die from AIDS, but live a perfectly normal
life. But it was a close call. I had just 13 T-Cells left and a lot of virus.
Apart from my
first two years in Copenhagen, I had been so scared about the whole AIDS thing that I always had had
protected sex. But not back in 1985. That was when we Europeans thought, it’s
just an American thing, avoid Americans and you’ll be safe. We were wrong. Due
to whatever strengths lie in me, the virus had been dormant for so many years.
Somehow, life
went on, and I was in good spirits most of the time. I worked for awhile as a
tour guide in Spain, meeting new friends and earning enough work hours to make sure
that I wasn’t thrown out of the Danish unemployment benefit system.
The cure worked
little by little. Soon, the virus was untraceable. I lived, and good
friendships deepened much in quality. I was sometimes devastated about my
voice, it just wouldn’t find its old sound, and getting used to a lesser
quality of sound was not very satisfying.
The lowest point
was performing Iago in Rossini’s Otello (in this opera Iago is also a tenor). I
got a review, saying I sounded like a Hoover vacuum, blowing the air outward. I didn’t
perform as a soloist for a year after that. By that time I
had met a lovely man, a doctor, and we lived together and got married. (In
1989, Denmark was the first country in the world to introduce same sex
marriages with totally equal rights).
I went to Berlin to have voice lessons to try to improve my
sound. It got steadily better, but still not like before. But it was good
enough to sing rather well professionally. Better that, than not singing at
all. Once in Berlin, I then stumbled upon a German male group from the 20’s, The Comedian
Harmonists, who had toured the world with male harmony music.
That was love at
first hearing. I assembled a group of colleagues, we rehearsed for a long time
and had a short recital in the Danish Radio House to very enthusiastic
reception. In the following years I wrote three theatrical shows for the group,
I had always known I could write, there had just never been a reason to do so.
People wouldn’t stop laughing at my jokes.
I had an acute
eye for the potentials of my cabaret partners and drove them to very friendly places
of their capabilities, places they had never imagined that they would ever
visit. Work again thrived. Singing fun music released a lot of my vocal
tension. I got opera jobs in Germany and in Denmark again, I did recitals, and it was so indescribably
wonderful to be back singing again, successful and having fun at it. Good
family life, health, big dinners, surrounded by loving friends.
But after awhile
I got restless. My voice was still not totally the way I knew it could be
potentially, and I got a strong urge to carry on with my youthful sexual
experiments. This was fun and liberating, but also detrimental to our marriage,
which started slowly but steadily going to pieces.
