As I had memorised the lyrics to an italian song that I was to perform, I found the greater challenge was how was I going to deliver the song in an interesting way. The lyrics were simple and few, and the music was just a few basic rock riffs. There was only the emotion of the words to deliver in the song, nothing complex. Love, anguish, heartbreak. Simple. Obvious.
I was unable to emote when I sang them.
I couldn't figure out what the problem was. I knew the intent of the words; I knew the history of the singer and anything else concrete there was to know. How to glean something more out of the song?
I figured I would sing along in English as a language exercise, and as I started singing the song in English the emotion came easily, without any real thought on my part about what the song was about. After a year of listening, a year of planning, a year of translating in as many ways as I could, I found that I couldn't translate the emotion internally. I could understand it intellectually, but my heart didn't process it completely.
When I sang it again, but in italian, I reverted to the quasi-removed version that I had been singing for a year. How do I perform it?
Suddenly (and again for the nth time) I realised how near to impossible it is to learn a language you are not born into and haven't grown up through.
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