What singing together can teach us about relating to others

In my singing workshops where we sing in harmony, I notice how the sound goes through different stages as the group finds its synergy.  

The process goes something like this:

After I have taught the different harmonies and put people into groups to sing the harmonies together, the first thing that often happens is that the song falls apart: it is a shock to the brain to have so many different things going on at once: the different groups get distracted by the parts that the other groups are singing. 

And so, the second thing that often happens is a reaction to that. The groups band together more tightly. I notice it physically, as people from the same group huddle together, look at each other more. I can feel a wordless commitment of the group members to each other: they decide to support each other by listening to each other, and by closing their group so that the part they can hear is, predominantly, the part that they are meant to be singing. 

This works pretty well. We get the harmonies to come out as the different groups manage to stick to their part. At this stage, we are now singing the song. 

But it’s not the final stage. As the different groups get more comfortable with their parts, I encourage them to listen to each other. To listen not just to the people who are singing their part but to those who are singing the other parts, too. 

This usually creates what seems like a minor setback: we wobble a bit with the different parts as the singers dare to truly hear each other, and sometimes get pulled off course slightly by the other parts. 

But after this is when we really hit the sweet spot. It’s when the harmonies truly click together. I swear, the sound changes. 

We are singing in harmony not only in the technical sense – we are doing so from the heart. 

It feels different for the singers, too – when my awareness is able to expand and take account not only of the sound that I am producing but also of my part in the greater “whole”, the sum of all the parts. Really witnessing my place in the harmony requires a kind of dual focus both on the whole and on me as a a part of it. In doing this I notice that I am not all that that there is, but I am a fundamental part of creating this greater whole, and that this greater whole is beautiful, magic. 

I think that the form of awareness that we practice when we sing in this way is a wonderful practice for the form of awareness required for relating with others on the most authentic level. 

In an interaction with another person, it wouldn’t work if I only focused on the other person- how they felt, their needs, what they want. I would forget myself, my own needs, my own inner world. I would cease to play an equal part in the interaction, I would stop singing my song. 

Many of us do this: we can focus too much on whether the other person in an interaction likes us, is impressed by us, attracted to us, etc. etc., rather than focusing on the questions: “what do I want right now? How do I feel? Do I like this person, am I attracted to them”, etc. etc. 

I have lost myself so many times in the unmet needs of others. Too often have I forgotten my own part in the harmony because I listened too much to somebody else’s song. This doesn’t work and it’s not sustainable. We owe it both to ourselves and to the world to shine our own light, to sing our own song, to play our own part in the game. 

Equally, it doesn’t work to focus too much on our own song. We can try to relate to others while remaining tightly locked inside our own inner world but it doesn’t work. To truly connect, we must be able to open up to and listen to the other, make commitments, hold space, give as well as receive. After all, we cannot hear the beauty of a harmony if we only listen to our own part. 

Singing in true harmony feels like a kind of flickering of the attention between my part and your part, with a kind of overall, expanded awareness of the “whole”, the harmony that is being sung. It feels similar when relating authentically to another. My attention flickers between my wants and yours, my feelings and yours, on how you might feel and how I do. It is a kind of attentive listening into me and into you that finds the same sweet spot that is felt during singing when the harmony truly clicks: it is the place that is found right at the center of the meeting point between my wishes and yours, my ideas and yours, my feelings and yours, my sense of humour and yours, my interests and yours, etc., etc. 

This, in the end, is all there is. If we break down the rules placed on us by society and we connect and relate to each other on the most real level we possibly can, then what becomes important is not the conventions created by others but the honest and simple meeting between two people expressing freely and truthfully how they feel, what they want, what they find interesting. It is the thin, wiggly and ever-changing line between what each person brings that creates the borders around the arena for interaction. And it is in this arena that we find the form of relating that is most true, and most free. 

For that to happen, each person involved in the interaction needs to really sing their song and encourage the other to do the same. They need to listen to the other while at the same time not wavering in the notes of their own tune, listen to the harmony created and know they each hold an equal part in its creation. 

For me, this goes just as much for singing together as it does to all the ways we interact.