OpenEmotion.com

I have noticed several public displays of tear-holding- back in the last several weeks by news anchors - (edited)

I have also noticed in myself, having recently learned, finally, to sing, that when I actually hit on the emotion of a song, my voice completely breaks, and I have no control over it. I have also seen this kind of lack of control in the face of an unsuccessful artist I knew, and in the voice of a cousin giving a eulogy for his brother. At the same time, another brother of that cousin gave his eulogy with stoney-voiced calm. The difference between the two brothers was that the stoney-voiced one had a large family and fewer psychological problems, and the artist had dedicated his life to an art with no evidence of success, and no family, and in my own case I have pretty much dedicated my life to art and ideas and don't have a family, so that it makes me think that the shakey/Stoney voiced hing in the face of emotion is about exercise -- meaning that if you constantly exercise your emotions they will be under your control, but if you displace your emotions by practicing artifice (art), then when the real emotions hit you, your muscles will act like someone who has just done 100 push-ups for the first time -- they won't respond to your commands.

The other side of this is that, lately, since I am finally practicing singing all the time, I have realized that if you plow through the emotions each time rather than just stopping because it sounds so out of control, that you slowly get stronger and more in control of your voice.

So all of this is kind of a long winded way of saying just keep practicing and you will succeed. Except that I specifically mean in public and with your raw voice. I imagine this is what wailing was or still is about in cultures where there is a lot of violence and lot of the mourning process is in public, that people get really good and in control at expressing it.

And I think this has also been expressed as, "there are good criers and bad criers," as in you have to know which kind of crier you are -- how your face looks when you cry, especially when you are new in a relationship, because if your partner has not really seen you cry yet and you only know your own crying from the movies, then when he moment comes, you might think you are going to look like Brad Pitt welling up when infact you are going to look like Don Knotts and she is going to run screaming.

There are adult, "at-a-point-of-high-potential-for- emotional- cross- pollination" cries, and there are less adult, "realizing- that-I- am-a- bully-and-that-being- a-bully-can't-be-a-self-identity- and-so- I- have- no-self-identity" cries. But I guess that with practice both can be improved through exercise.

So, inspired by these recent public criers, could there be some kind of platform just for public displays of crying? Maybe the crying could be beautified, not covered up but amplified with video and audio augmentation and artistry to make it easier to stomach for people who are afraid of their own emotion.

OpenEmotion.com