fear as a barrier to authentic creativity.
I can vividly remember the last time that I felt pure, unbending happiness. It was 5am in the morning, CS Time, January 2020. I had awoken very early, thanks to jet lag from a long haul flight to New Orleans, Louisiana. My roommate and fellow singer-songwriter, from LA was still sleeping soundly, (like a normal person) but I was restless and couldn’t get back to sleep. I was 29 years old at the time and it was, as far as memory serves, the only time I have actually ever had jet lag. I don’t know why but I’ve always thought it sounded very exotic to have jet lag. Like something that only adventurous, globe trotting people get. I had, ahead of me, a day completely jam packed with meetings, performances, recordings, interviews, panel discussions and events. I was feeling very grown up, yet very naive, very alive and most prominently; very awake. So, I decided to take the opportunity to enjoy a morning walk around the city, at sunrise.
What struck me first, was how different to the U.K. everything seemed, a maze of palm tree lined wide roads, hugged by little culture pockets of small street areas, which ranged from bawdy and bohemian, to quaint and traditional. A red tram chugged along Canal Street, under the orange tinted sky. I followed my map to the Mississippi riverside walk.
A stunning sunrise scene greeted me by the water and I took a few pictures of a ginormous paddle boat, which wouldn’t have looked out of place in the musical ‘Showboat’. I took a deep breath, looked out at the water and felt genuine butterflies of freedom and adventure in my gut. I felt like anything was possible.The riverside was completely empty, there wasn’t another person in sight. Rather than feeling lonely, it felt a real blessing to have an opportunity to see this beautiful city wake up, before the chaos and hustle and bustle of the day ensued.
In fact, as I strode quickly around the colourful streets of the French quarter, unbothered by how ridiculously bouncy and erratic my walk would have looked to any passers by, (think Phoebe jogging in Friends), I almost forgot my underlying introverted, self conscious nature. It felt like I was the only person alive and awake to see all of this wonder. I was an independent explorer, nobody was watching and I didn’t know where the morning might lead me.
After the walk, I popped into Cafe Du Monde, as they opened their doors that morning, for a coffee with chicory (delicious, I promise) and some beignets. Then, I headed back to the real reason I was in New Orleans; to sing.
I had been lucky enough to receive a PRSF scholarship to officially showcase at Folk Alliance International for the U.K. It was an incredible, yet, overwhelming, opportunity of a lifetime and I met a lot of wonderful people that week, from all around the world. I really enjoyed listening to a wide range of music and being a part of something so global. My official showcase and other gigs went really well and I learned a lot at the panel talks and discussions about the music industry. I was lucky enough to meet some amazing festival promoters, agents, press and even secured my first North American touring agent. It was more than I could have hoped for and I really felt extreme gratitude to PRSF, British Underground and Folk Alliance, the organisations that had made it all possible. I was making plans to visit Nashville to play there in the future, to tour in the states. It felt like I was on the precipice of something career wise, like something was about to take off.
However, beneath the surface, something was holding me back and that something was myself. Doubts were beginning to brew in my mind. Somehow, as my music career had progressed in my twenties, I had gone from being a confident, carefree, self - assured performer, to a very nervous person, absolutely consumed internally by what can only be described as mind numbing stage fright. It was being kept under control and quashed, I think, quite successfully but it was there and it was, at times, isolating and frightening. I’d already had two panic attacks in recent years that I’d tried not to think too much about and every time I waited backstage to go on, I wondered if this would be the third time I would fall apart in front of a large audience and not even be able to articulate why.
When I was a teenager, I used to sing in my bedroom to an imaginary stadium of thousands of people. Slow ballads with dramatic hand gestures, self penned intimate songs and even some (very badly) choreographed dance routines. I imagined fame, success and everyone looking at me, enjoying the music, cheering, singing along. Then suddenly, as I started to get older, I began to fear being looked at and scrutinised. I wanted to write meaningful music, I wanted to have fun in the studio, I wanted to collaborate with other creatives but for some unknown reason, I no longer enjoyed doing all of this in front of an audience and I certainly didn’t want to have to explain the reasoning behind my songs to people, because they were mostly based on a lot of personal experiences. However, I had fans, I had supporters, I had an inherent loyalty to them and an extreme gratitude, so I had to keep pushing on, for their sake and as the song goes: ‘the show must go on’. A Spring tour was booked and I set myself up for another year, busy with gigs and touring. Maybe the feelings of doubt would pass.
They didn’t pass. At the end of January of this year, 2022, it will be two years since I had the happiest of mornings in Louisiana. The beautiful city of New Orleans would wake up that morning, only for a short time, before shutting down in March, for a very long sleep, along with the rest of the world. I think that, two years on, that I too, am only just beginning to wake up from the same deep sleep.
The first lockdown is a bit of a blur of panic, my meticulously planned Spring tour was cancelled due to lockdown restrictions. I found myself completely and utterly alone in a flat in London. At one point, I didn’t see another human being in real life for months. Circumstances meant that I had to stay in London. Every facetime or Zoom meeting I had, just made me feel even more isolated and alone. I couldn’t bear everyone feeling sorry for me, I knew other people were suffering a lot more and had far more serious issues to contend with. It was a real luxury to have all this free time, I thought. I just wanted to shut myself away and force myself to use the time wisely and creatively. There were little bursts of times where I did so but really, these were fleeting and short lived.
I no longer even recognized that image of a happy person from the morning of January 2020. The innate power, joy, excitement, gratitude and peace that I felt that morning has all dissipated. I succumbed completely over the last two years, to new, more frightening feelings of fear, sadness, loss, anger, frustration and apathy. The pandemic, for me, was a ready excuse, a way out from my inexplicable fear of touring but actually, the real fear had almost nothing to do with the pandemic itself.
We’ve all had a lot of time on our hands these last two years and I personally have had a lot to think about. Questions kept racing in my mind. How can I make, play and perform music from a place that actually brings me joy instead of fear? Where does this fear and stage fright stem from? To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never actually in my entire life made any huge singing mistakes on stage, even in front of very large crowds. Equally, I’ve never said or done anything terribly wrong, that people hadn’t liked. So what exactly was I so afraid of? The answer to this question had been within me all along but I hadn’t realised it.
In my twenties, I trained as an actress and this for me, was another welcome opportunity to not have to answer that question. I loved playing characters, heroes, villains, comedians and more. On the stage in the role, everything was possible and I absolutely loved realising a writer’s vision on the stage, for what the character should be. I could plunge my own emotional memory into the story of the character and be a vessel. To overcome stage fright, we were taught to inhabit the world of the character so deeply, that the stage fright would disappear. Alongside performing, I teach, direct and support young performers to overcome their fears and build their confidence on stage. If you perfect the right physical techniques, you can appear confident on stage and put everyone in the audience at ease. What I hadn’t realised, years later, was that I had, in fact, created a character for the performer Emily Mae Winters that I was masquerading as, to the industry and to my fans and she, whoever she was, was not, my authentic and true self.
The true me was a lot more quiet. Just because I may have looked confident, it didn’t mean I ever truly felt it. Underneath the acted facade, I worried, almost constantly, about how I could come across at gigs. If I’m too tired from driving, would I be friendly enough to people? What happens if I cry on stage? Will people think I'm pathetic? If I’m too serious, and can’t think of any jokes that night, will people not enjoy the show? If I wear too much makeup or a dress and heels, will people think that I’m arrogant? What genre will people think this new music is? Will the supporters of my first album like my second one, as it’s so different? I would over analyse what every single audience member could possibly think about me, before I’d even written a set list or opened my mouth to sing. Supporters paid good money to come to my shows and I was (and am) extremely grateful to them. I’d always read that you should ‘fake it ‘til you make it’, if you aren’t feeling confident and that ‘if you seem like you’re enjoying the show, then the audience will too’. I was a trained actress, it was easy to pretend all of these things. But as a highly sensitive empath and an inherent introvert, whilst I loved making one to one personal, meaningful connections, I found large groups of people so scary and overwhelming and I came away feeling drained and burnt out, not really sure if anyone, including me, had a good time at the show. The overwhelmingly positive feedback, support and reviews for my shows suggested they did enjoy the shows. I’d somehow fooled everyone into thinking I was confident, happy and carefree but the trouble was, I was fooling myself. I couldn’t keep playing the part any longer.
Just like the fronts of businesses had to shut up shop by force, I fooled myself into thinking that I had to do the same and the curtains came down. In the last two years, I had so many generous offers of online gigs, financial support, festival appearances and more but more often than not, I made excuses. Aside from the fear I felt, I am, as I call it to my friends, ‘technologically challenged’ and the one online gig I did (in support of the Mental Health Foundation), went very well but I really struggled doing it, both practically and emotionally Performing to a screen of emojis, though I knew there was a band of loyal supporters behind them, was so strange and frightening, even more so, when you are alone in your flat. The irony of how I personally felt, whilst doing a charity gig as a good deed, in support of the Mental Health Foundation, was certainly not lost on me.
During this time, It was my (completely ignorant) view that no self-respecting, healthy person in a pandemic should air or express their woes, if they are fairly financially secure and they are privileged in as many ways as I was. People have it worse than you, get a grip, I thought. And the obvious truth is, they did. Thousands of people have had a worse two years than me. I won’t go into too much detail here but I did have some serious health concerns and some painful personal events occurred over the last two years but still, I knew that I was far better off than most. I was one of the lucky ones.
Yet, struggle is not a competition and the self diagnosed lack of severity of my difficulties, didn’t invalidate them. The truth is that I was afraid of communicating how bad I’ve been feeling with my fans because I felt I should really just focus on trying to feel pure gratitude for the amazing opportunities and support I had been given.
I always knew that we are supposed to lean into fear, take risks, do the things that scare you, be brave. I just always thought that meant trying hard at careers for which there are no guarantees or perhaps falling in love again and again, even if you’re afraid of being hurt. I never thought, until now, that it also means showing up authentically as being vulnerable and being honest about your feelings. I had been living as a pure embodiment of the lyrics ‘there’s no people like show people, they smile when they are low’. I’m learning now that vulnerability is much braver than not showing up at all, shutting people out of your life and not even really knowing why. I never wanted to appear to be weak but I was beginning to completely redefine what strength means.
Yes, it’s okay to not be okay. That, I knew. I also knew that a good thing to do would be to try to use the time to heal, to do yoga, to write, to meditate, to walk, to reflect. Most importantly, I thought, was to do the majority of this in private. I was completely disgusted by the thought of being self indulgent, trying to induce sympathy online or perpetuating the old age adage of the struggling artist, no matter how true it was. I even ran a month-long positivity challenge on my social media, where I focussed on trying to share methods of staying positive in difficult times. It definitely helped me and I think it helped others but I wasn’t ever truly honest about the extent to which I was suffering. But… why? Yes, perhaps I appeared to be strong, positive and coping, I didn’t bring a ‘downer’ to people’s days on or off social media. But do you know what else? I didn’t bring much good either. I couldn’t really write, speak, connect or even really feel anything honestly, because I wasn’t being honest with myself. I had unknowingly fallen into the alluring trap of what has become known as ‘toxic positivity’ and lost all connection with how to communicate the truth.
On the creative side, I was so afraid of making depressing, sad, self indulgent art… that I hardly made any at all. I was afraid of cliches, unoriginality, mediocrity. I have always only wanted to do things if I knew that I could do them brilliantly well. I am a perfectionist through and through. I knew that wouldn’t be possible to achieve perfection in that state of mind and so I chose total avoidance. Of course, social media made everything a million times worse. I mostly drip fed the odd photograph or positive message to my followers, to let them know I was thinking about them all but this was really all that I could manage, most of the time.
This has led me to the present day, where I now feel very angry and ashamed at myself for being so wasteful of the pure luxury that is time, health and youth, as well as having a platform and space to connect with listeners, that I essentially neglected out of fear. To complain about not having made much art or feeling sad during a lockdown when I have a stable flat, meaningful work and loving family and friends feels completely inappropriate and out of touch with reality.
Yet, perhaps the two years haven't been completely wasted. In some very rare moments of emotional honesty, I have actually written 20 new songs. Some of the songs were so painful to write I haven’t even wanted to go back and listen/ edit them or sing them again. Until now.
I have now decided that the time of running away from pain is over and the time of leaning in, is about to begin. I am ready to completely embrace my vulnerabilities and let go of the need to always be strong and resilient. It’s false, it’s exhausting and it’s dishonest. I just didn’t realise the difference between useless wallowing and healthy creative expression. Until writing this article, I felt completely frozen, unable to move.
If you have made it to the end of this article, thank you so much for reading. I hope that these experiences are in some way, relatable to you. I am by no means an expert on happiness or resilience but I just wanted to share some thoughts from the last two years.
Please, let us all lean completely in, and not away from our sorrow, our anger, our bitterness. Let us not be embarrassed, ashamed or afraid of those feelings. Let us not hide them, mask them or underplay them. Let us pour them, completely unedited into whatever creative means of expression we can. And if some of us make abysmal art, depressing art, self indulgent art, who really cares? We made something out of that feeling. Maybe we won’t sell it, maybe we don’t even want to share it. But letting things out is surely better than letting things fester within you, until there isn’t space left for anything else.
Sometimes, I know that it is okay and even necessary to hide and to hibernate but if I ever do this again, I will set a time limit, one that doesn’t steal two years of my life. Life is short and time is precious, I can never get that time back but from now on, I plan to try and live more authentically and creatively, whatever that brings and to not be afraid of anything, even myself. Even if I write something I know isn’t my best work, I know I can edit it or just leave it a personal reflection and nothing more. It wasn’t lost time.
So, please, let us create from a place of truth and honesty. Create absolutely anything, a bad love poem, a really cheesy song, a childish story, a painful diary entry, a cliche painting, a wildly uninteresting article. Let's be honest about our feelings, no matter how painful. I think that our hearts, bodies, souls and minds will thank us for it.
This February, I’m about to announce another Spring tour. It’s been a very long time since I have been on the stage but this time, I know that the artist people will see will be the real, unedited, me.
I also know that those feelings of freedom, peace, joy and excitement that I felt that morning in New Orleans are out there, waiting for me, along with hope for a brighter creative future.
Love to all,
Emily
x