The view on and off stage

Hello! I’m Ian M., one of the contributors to the Stanbridge Academy “Bulldog Blog.” Since this is the first post for the new blog, I should let all of the readers know that I am an 11th-grade student who has been at Stanbridge for a number of years. I am also the guy who sang Sam Smith’s song “I’m Not the Only One” in this year’s Student Talent Show earlier this month. In this post, I am going to describe my Stanbridge Talent Show experience, as both a performer and an audience member.

To kick things off, I will start with my journey as a performer and what it took for me to get where I am now. I didn’t exactly come out of my mother’s womb singing falsetto. For me to sing as high as I did at the talent show took more than a year of practice. I have not taken many singing lessons. Let me rephrase that: I have not taken many singing lessons and paid attention to them. I once took lessons from a good vocal coach, but I was a 12-year-old boy, so I only went to the lessons because he had a bowl of candy out for the students that were still children (me included).

As for the much harder explanation of what it felt like to be an audience member at the talent show... Considering some of you readers were at the Stanbridge Talent Show, you probably know what it’s like to watch someone sing or perform on a stage. But being both a performer and an audience member was difficult for me at first, and sometimes it still is. 

My brother is a musician in a band called Ruse. If you were at the talent show this year then you probably saw some cool looking rocker dudes with purple hair and baggy jeans walking around. Purple-Haired One, thy name is Grant (a/k/a my brother) who has purple hair and is much trendier than me. 

Anyway, I feel inspired by my brother, and try to put effort into my voice and my ability to sit still and laugh while my classmate Tarek tells a funny joke, or when Lizzie, another classmate, sings “1Up Girl,” one of my favorite Video Game songs (basically the only Mario Odyssey song I can name). And I would mean it when I cheered or laughed, because my favorite part of the talent show wasn’t when I was performing myself, or accepting compliments. It was when one of my friends stood up from the crowd and performed something extraordinary, and made sure that people were liking the show the whole time that they were up there. That is why I am so honored to be up on that stage, so grateful to be an audience member, and so proud of all my friends for putting on such a good show.

So ask yourself: Now that you know how I feel about everything entertainment related, what can you do with this information that can benefit you if and when you perform or are watching a performance? What new skills can you apply in class? I’ll leave you to think on that.

Until the next blog post—peace out Stanbridge Bulldogs, and have a wonderful day!

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