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This is the Live Your

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Bloom podcast, where I interview people

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sharing stories about their ongoing

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journeys to blooming and fulfillment.

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My guest this week is Elisa Di Napoli.

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She's an artist, a coach,

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a hypnotherapist, and

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a multi-instrumentalist

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singer and songwriter.

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But in addition, she's the best selling

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author of the book online course and

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podcast, Dare To Be Seen, which helps

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artists command the stage, magnify

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their presence and defeat stage nerves.

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Something I know a lot about. Also under the name Elyssa Vulpes,

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she has produced 12 albums.

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In fact, we're listening to one of

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the songs from her most recent CD.

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It's called, 'Do You Wanna Play'. *Song playing*

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Love that song. Welcome, Elisa.

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Thank you for having me.

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Oh, my pleasure. You have a very unusual style of

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music, kind of an ethnic thing

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infused with all your songs. Did you have a lot of music

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in your family growing up?

1:05

No, actually not really. My parents just liked classical music

1:07

and we listened to all the big composers.

1:13

And then they, my father loved

1:13

the opera, but that's it.

1:16

They couldn't play anything

1:16

and they never sung.

1:21

It was not something that

1:21

I was expected to get into.

1:24

I wasn't either, so it

1:24

was, my parents weren't thrilled with

1:27

it, but eventually they accepted it.

1:30

Yeah, exactly. But I have a lot of influences

1:31

from different places, places that

1:34

I've lived, influences from Italy,

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influences from Scotland, and

1:39

Ireland, and boyfriends as well.

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I discovered different kinds of music.

1:43

I would like our

1:43

people to know that you are coming

1:45

to us right now from New Zealand. Yes.

1:47

Yes, we are. I am.

1:49

And I know on your

1:49

CD you do sing a few songs in Italian.

1:53

Yes.

1:54

Yes I do. Yeah. I sing in English.

1:56

I sing in Italian. Yeah.

1:58

Well, you know, I'm always interested in the journey of the musician and I would

2:00

enjoy hearing yours how an Italian

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woman ended up in New Zealand.

2:07

Well, it, it is

2:07

a long story, but just to cut it

2:10

short, to give you the essentials. When I was 16, my parents went

2:12

around the world for a trip to

2:16

celebrate their marriage, the 25th

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of their marriage anniversary.

2:20

And they basically decided to

2:20

move to New Zealand because

2:23

it was a beautiful country. They were fed up with

2:24

Italian politics at the time.

2:27

And I vowed never to come to New Zealand.

2:29

I was like, 'I'm not going. You guys go.' I don't care.

2:33

A typical teenager.

2:35

And then they

2:35

left and I went to Scotland.

2:38

And then after a while they basically

2:38

told me, 'Look, you can get citizenship.

2:42

If you come here later

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it would be difficult.

2:44

Just, just come for holiday.' So I went to New Zealand, really liked it.

2:48

Ended up staying for 12 years on and off.

2:52

And then, moved away to Scotland where I

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spent another 10 years and I've just come

2:57

back now after the recent pandemic mess.

3:00

So I was actually in New Zealand.

3:02

And how

3:02

did you get into music?

3:04

How old were you when

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you started your career?

3:06

Well, I started

3:06

singing when I was very young.

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I used to love cartoon

3:10

opening credit music.

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And I recorded my little tape recorder

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and, and learned them all, and I thought

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that's what I'm gonna be when I grew up. And so I might have been,

3:20

I don't know, like six.

3:23

I was so young. And then after that, I started playing

3:24

piano when I was 12, but I, I gave up

3:30

really after a year because I was studying

3:30

classical and I, I actually wanted to

3:33

study pop and rock, but I was too shy

3:33

to tell that to my teacher so I stopped.

3:40

And then I started playing guitar when

3:40

I was 16, and then finally drums much

3:46

later on in my life, like 37, drum.

3:49

So, and then I, I got piano. I got back into piano

3:50

a couple of years ago.

3:54

And I love the piano now.

3:56

It's my favorite.

3:57

Do you play a lot

3:57

of the instruments on your CDs?

4:00

Yes. On the particular song that you

4:01

were playing, I was playing.

4:06

What was I playing? The guitar and the bass and I was singing.

4:10

Now at the moment I'm

4:10

playing also the piano.

4:13

So I plan to play the drums as well.

4:16

That's kind of the, the whole point

4:16

is to be able to play everything.

4:20

But of course it takes that point.

4:23

And, in the midst of

4:23

all this, you, you have a story of stage

4:26

fright because that's what prompted you

4:26

to actually get into this line of work.

4:31

So what is your story of stage fright?

4:34

Yeah. Well, I, I was really not in a good

4:34

place in my twenties, I used to be very

4:41

nervous before a show and I sometimes

4:41

I even lost my voice before a show.

4:46

Like suddenly, magically, it would

4:46

just go and I'd be like, 'What?

4:50

I had it yesterday, today I don't have

4:50

it.' And I'm not surprised now, but

4:54

leading to really not do the show. And I also, when I did do the

4:56

show, I just didn't feel very good.

5:01

You know what? I spent the entire time worrying

5:01

about what other people thought, made

5:05

mistakes wasn't very, you know, my,

5:05

my performance wasn't very brilliant.

5:10

I knew I can do better. And then afterwards I would berate

5:12

myself about all the mistake

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I've done, and I'm not that good. I'm much better than this, et

5:17

cetera, and then apologize.

5:20

And then at one point I almost gave up

5:20

because I remember one time, I was singing

5:26

and in the middle of a song, I got this

5:26

thought that says, 'What if now you're

5:32

gonna forget the entire song?' And then,

5:32

of course, I forgot the entire song.

5:38

Like I knew the song I played

5:38

but it just was and vanished.

5:42

And there was nothing I could do. I froze and I had to run away in

5:43

the middle of the performance.

5:47

It was so humiliating. I thought, 'oh my God, I'm

5:48

never gonna do this again.

5:51

This is, this is just, I'm not

5:51

meant to do this', et cetera.

5:55

So I thought, okay,

5:55

maybe I need to give up.

5:57

But the thought of giving

5:57

up was just too painful.

6:02

It was like, ' Oh, it might as well

6:02

cut my arm off.' So I decided to do

6:07

something about it that wasn't what I

6:07

already had done, which was BW blockers,

6:12

drinking wine, doing improve classes,

6:12

acting classes, or things that maybe a

6:19

little helped but didn't get rid of it.

6:21

They didn't really look at

6:21

the root of the problem.

6:25

So then, see, at the time

6:25

I was also hypnotised.

6:28

I was still a hypnotherapist back then.

6:30

And, but it didn't occur to me to

6:30

use hypnosis because, you know, it's

6:34

a little bit like fish in the water

6:34

don't realize that there is water.

6:38

It's obvious, but they just don't see it. And at the time I, it suddenly occurred

6:40

to me, I thought, what a minute.

6:44

What about it process you? It works on so many things.

6:47

So then I went to a colleague. And I asked them to gimme a couple

6:49

of sessions that really worked.

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It worked like about 70% and I thought,

6:53

okay, if this is just a couple of sessions

6:59

can help 70%, I need to look into it more.

7:02

And so I went to other hypnotherapists.

7:05

I started studying it, getting

7:05

clients, helping see what worked with

7:10

them, and then applying it to myself.

7:13

And then that whole thing basically

7:13

led me to find fundamental kind

7:18

of principles and, and, and

7:18

sessions that would actually work.

7:21

And, and then I wrote a book

7:21

and an online course about that.

7:24

Yeah. On your website you state that

7:25

fear can make you a bad performer.

7:30

How so?

7:31

Well, what I mean by

7:31

that is that you are not in the present

7:34

and you're not connected to the music.

7:36

No.

7:37

You are lost into, into

7:37

this what I sometimes call like a, the La

7:41

La Land of, of your conscious thoughts.

7:43

Of what ifs and, and then thinking about

7:43

whether you're good enough or what are

7:49

the audience thinking and what if I

7:49

make a mistakes and all these things.

7:53

They get you, they take you

7:53

away from being present.

7:58

And being present and in the flow

7:58

and connected to your music is all.

8:02

It's what it's about. Right.

8:03

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, as I, we talked about, I,

8:05

I know about stage fright and when I

8:10

first started working with my husband

8:10

in the band, he had come one of, he

8:14

was older than I and had an extensive

8:14

career in Las Vegas, big show band.

8:19

He was MCing doing comedy and all this.

8:22

So he, he turned to me at one point

8:22

and he said, okay, announce us off.

8:26

Or, there's a birthday in the

8:26

house, announce the birthday.

8:30

And I would lean over

8:30

and, 'don't do that.'

8:33

And he looked at me like, 'what did you

8:33

say?' I said, 'not, I don't do that.

8:37

You have to ask somebody else for that'.

8:39

And he, he just said, 'I have

8:39

never heard of that before,

8:42

but we're gonna work on that.' And you know what, I was gonna ask you

8:44

though, those feelings of not being good

8:48

enough, having that inferiority thing.

8:51

Did you find in your personal life

8:51

you felt that way, or did it really

8:56

exacerbate when you played music?

8:58

Well, I felt that way

8:58

in my life to some extent it exacerbated.

9:02

So the answer is yes to both questions.

9:05

Yeah. Cause I did too.

9:07

And I, and I found the older that I

9:07

got, the freer that I got, the more

9:12

into my music that I got, I started to,

9:12

I started to settle into saying, 'Hey,

9:17

wait a minute, I'm a good musician,

9:17

I'm a good writer, I'm a good singer'.

9:20

And I, I can't think of anything

9:20

really, truly better than being able

9:25

to just drop into the song, connect

9:25

with the song, and just not care and

9:31

trust the fact that that connection

9:31

is what people are gonna relate to.

9:35

It doesn't matter. Nothing else really matters.

9:38

But that, and it, it took years,

9:38

years to work to that point.

9:42

It does take time. But you know, there are ways

9:43

in which you can speed up the

9:46

process if you know what to do. That is.

9:48

And that's what you do.

9:50

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the, the thing is,

9:52

there's, there's two main causes

9:56

of performance anxiety, right? The main causes are, the first

9:58

one is "negative conditioning".

10:02

And by that I mean, the experiences

10:02

that we've had at any point in our

10:07

lives, often in childhood, but not,

10:07

not necessarily only that teach us

10:11

that it's not okay to be ourselves.

10:14

It's not safe to be ourselves.

10:17

So that's one thing that we need to work

10:17

on and figure out what this negative

10:21

conditioning is, or negative conditioning

10:21

also create negative limiting beliefs

10:25

that also reinforce the conditioning.

10:28

Then, the second thing is what I

10:28

call "negative mental rehearsal",

10:32

which is basically worry. Worry about all the things that will go

10:34

wrong and imagining those things because

10:38

that's what our brain naturally does. So these two things, either or,

10:40

or combined like it was in my

10:45

case, fight or flight response. And then, fight or flight response, you,

10:47

you just cannot really function normally.

10:53

That's not what I wanted to say two

10:53

things created that like the fight

10:57

or flight is created by the excessive

10:57

fear of rejection that we get it.

11:02

Yeah. I read stories, I did some research

11:03

before this, and some of the singers

11:07

that have been crippled by anxiety.

11:10

A lot of people know about Adele

11:10

because she's made that very public.

11:13

But they didn't. They don't know about Barbara Streisand

11:14

who seems like the most confident and

11:18

experienced singer, and she goes through

11:18

tremendous anxiety before she performs.

11:23

Rod Stewart, who has a long history

11:23

of being in rock bands and doing

11:27

all different kinds of music. And I did know about Carly Simon

11:30

also, and there are a lot of others

11:33

who are professional, successful

11:33

singers who really do not enjoy

11:38

the performance aspect of it. Love the studio.

11:41

Don't like to perform and promote. Have you ever had someone

11:43

that you really couldn't help?

11:47

With this particular

11:47

problem, with other problems?

11:49

Yes. With this particular

11:50

problem, well, not really.

11:53

Like the only person people that I

11:53

couldn't help were people that came for

11:58

like a 30-minute sort of consultation

11:58

to see if we were a good fit.

12:02

And then, they decided

12:02

just not to go ahead.

12:04

They decided not to do it. Not, not to, they gave up

12:06

even before we started.

12:09

So if you have that attitude,

12:09

then yes, it's not gonna work.

12:12

Yeah. I, I when I work with people, I know when

12:13

they are committed and they show up for

12:19

themselves, and they really say, 'I say

12:19

this because of what I did to change.

12:25

I just said to myself, I

12:25

don't wanna be like this.

12:28

I don't wanna be like this. I'm gonna do what I have to do to change.

12:32

This is not the way I wanna

12:32

go out.' And I worked at it.

12:35

So what? When I went for help, whatever

12:36

they recommended I do, I

12:39

did it, whatever it was.

12:40

I think that's really important. If you have enough of, 'Oh, let's see.

12:44

Let's test if this is gonna work, or I

12:44

bet its gonna work.' I say immediately,

12:49

'we're not working together because

12:49

you are sabotaging the entire thing.'

12:54

Point. Yeah. If they, if you would give an exercise

12:55

or, or if I had received a homework

13:01

assignment, basically, do this three

13:01

times a week, do this four times a week,

13:05

maybe meditate, maybe journal, whatever.

13:07

I would do it. And I changed.

13:10

If I get someone who comes back to

13:10

me and says, 'Oh, I had such a busy

13:14

week, I just didn't have time to do

13:14

it', then it's not that important.

13:18

It's it, it's got to be important where

13:18

you show up, cause if you don't show up

13:22

for yourself, nothing is gonna happen.

13:24

Yeah, and I mean, sometimes there are underlying causes for that.

13:28

I often, before I just say, 'Look,

13:28

obviously if you can't commit then

13:32

there's no point in working together.' I

13:32

do may try to investigate what happened.

13:36

Cause sometimes people may

13:36

have an underlying belief that

13:40

you know, 'Oh, just, I'm not

13:40

good enough to even do this'.

13:43

And work on, on that first.

13:46

So there are cases which that might be.

13:49

'What we need to do?' But

13:49

otherwise, I totally agree with you.

13:51

It is a collaboration. It's not magic.

13:54

No, it's not. No. And I, I, I can't tell you why I was

13:56

like that, but that's the way I was.

14:00

I, I don't know. I, I think sometimes we, some of us have

14:01

this very strong learning quotient kind

14:08

of like we feel like we really have to

14:08

put in a lot more time in order to be

14:12

good enough to be proficient enough. And every time we hear someone

14:14

who's better, we admire

14:18

it, but we come up short.

14:21

We just come up short. And, that was the thing I

14:22

had to work on overcoming.

14:25

And every once in a while it still

14:25

haunts me, but I, I recognized it.

14:29

I, I just, I, I feel like it's a little

14:29

person that comes and sits on my shoulder.

14:34

And I always say, 'I know you're gonna be

14:34

here, but you're not sitting next to me.

14:38

Sit back there.'

14:40

I love that. That's, that's wonderful. That's exactly right.

14:43

You know, it's like thinking,

14:43

okay, you know, like fear, fear

14:46

is always gonna be with us. It is here for a reason.

14:50

It's to protects us from dangerous. But not being in a car with a kid who is

14:51

super scared of driving and he is driving.

15:00

You don't want a kid to drive.

15:02

You wanna be the adult and you

15:02

can, the can be in the back seat

15:06

and you can be like, 'okay, you,

15:06

you'd be there in the back seat.

15:09

I take care of the driving.'

15:11

Right, right. So someone comes to you

15:12

and they start your course.

15:16

What's the first thing you would have them do?

15:19

Well, I mean, they

15:19

can do my course on their own, but

15:22

if they need help or they want more

15:22

guidance, then I would usually have

15:26

a consultation first with them. And the whole point of that is

15:28

to understand where they're at.

15:31

Because there's people that the main

15:31

important thing, the most important

15:35

thing is to understand your negative

15:35

conditioning and your negative beliefs.

15:39

Like those are the first

15:39

thing that we need to look at.

15:42

So there's an exercise I get them to do

15:42

where they think about performing and

15:48

they write down their automatic negative

15:48

toxic thoughts, they write them all down.

15:56

Like, 'Oh, what if this happens?

15:59

Oh, I'm not good enough.' Whatever may be. And then, we work on flipping them,

16:01

changing them, creating empowering beliefs

16:08

that they can actually, believe in.

16:11

Things that are, that are

16:11

personally make sense to them.

16:14

Because, you know, if we just use general

16:14

empowering beliefs, it might not work

16:20

because the person might be like, 'Well,

16:20

this, this doesn't resonate with me.

16:23

if I just, you're a great performer.'

16:23

Some people might be like, 'yeah, okay'.

16:27

And other people be like, 'absolutely not.' So first thing we need to do is

16:29

find out what those negative beliefs

16:33

are, flipping them, and then we

16:33

need to work on the, the negative

16:38

conditioning if there anything there. Like negative experiences,

16:39

that kind of thing?

16:43

And I also get them, I've got this

16:43

master class where even before

16:47

any of this, if the person feels

16:47

particularly physically panicky.

16:53

So it's not just a mental thing, but

16:53

it's actually like a physical thing.

16:56

Like for example, they go on stage and

16:56

the throat parches and, and their heart

17:03

rate goes, really goes up and their hands

17:03

starts trembling and stuff like that.

17:07

That's a sign that they're

17:07

in a, in a panic basically,

17:09

in a fight or flight state. And then I get them to do

17:11

a pre-performance ritual.

17:14

That is, that is included

17:14

in my free master class.

17:16

So anyone on this podcast can go

17:16

and, and have a look at that, and

17:19

it's a very practical thing you can

17:19

do to actually calm yourself down.

17:25

Then nothing else would work. First, you need to know

17:26

how to calm yourself down.

17:28

Yeah. One time, someone said a drummer,

17:28

we were doing a concert somewhere,

17:32

and the drummer couldn't make it. He sent a drummer that came in

17:34

who had a serious anxiety problem.

17:38

And he pulled into himself,

17:38

was playing this song.

17:42

I remember it was a rascal

17:42

song called 'Good Loving'.

17:45

And he would not stop playing and, I

17:45

mean, it, it was funny, but it was sad.

17:50

He would not stop playing. He was into himself.

17:52

He was playing and playing. And finally, my husband went up and kind

17:54

of gently touched his shoulders and said,

17:59

'We need to stop now.' Just a sheer panic.

18:02

He, he just went into,

18:02

and he played very well.

18:05

He just was so, so nervous. I really, I felt for him.

18:09

But I had never seen anybody display

18:09

those kinds of that kind of anxiety.

18:14

Yeah. When did you write your book?

18:17

I wrote my

18:17

book back in, I think it's been

18:20

three years ago now actually. But I've just, I just published a

18:21

journal that goes with it this year.

18:26

I had some people, they would read

18:26

the book, but, and they would do the

18:29

course, but, but then they would be

18:29

like, there's some exercises, you know,

18:33

that come with the course in the book. And some of them were like, 'Oh, I

18:35

need something to keep me accountable

18:39

and, and keep me on the right track.'

18:39

And then I'll, okay, well, I can,

18:43

I can create a journal that would

18:43

be, make it easier to just go to.

18:46

You're, I know on your

18:46

site it says, command the stage and

18:50

magnify your presence in 10 easy steps.

18:53

I was, I always think about that word

18:53

presence because what I found when

18:56

I started working on my presence is

18:56

it had like a synergistic effect.

19:01

It just affected my entire life.

19:04

I became a better teacher that when

19:04

I would go back and forth and teach

19:08

in schools, I was leading some group.

19:11

I just became comfortable with it.

19:13

My, my, my presence in my life expanded

19:13

a hundred percent by working through it.

19:20

And I wish I had known you then

19:20

because you only have 10 easy steps.

19:24

Well, I wanted you to know the purpose of

19:24

my online group, Live Your Bloom, is to

19:29

inspire people of all ages - young, old.

19:33

I have some people that are 82 just

19:33

starting their memoirs now to live their

19:38

fullest life for as long as they can with

19:38

no judgment, not an easy thing to do.

19:44

And many of them are just beginning to

19:44

study instruments and some are actually

19:49

pursuing singing careers or singing

19:49

in the church or singing for pleasure.

19:54

Although they are frequently plagued

19:54

by self-judgment, insecurities, and

19:59

that old friend, the inner critic. Got any advice for them?

20:03

Well, so many things, really. I mean, first of all, if you're never

20:05

tempted to give up because you think,

20:09

'Oh, it's gonna take too long'. Well, what I often say to myself is, well,

20:10

the years are gonna pass no matter what.

20:16

So whether you accomplish this or whether

20:16

you give up or not, it's going to still

20:20

10 years, whatever, are gonna pass. So you might as well spend them well.

20:24

You know, you, you might as

20:24

well spend them practicing your

20:27

instrument and in 10 years you'll

20:27

be 10 times better than you are.

20:30

In terms of the critic, I, it doesn't

20:30

matter how, again, how old you are,

20:35

first of all, let's look at comparison.

20:38

I think it's, we live in a society

20:38

that's very much about living

20:41

idealistically, and it's me versus

20:41

you, rather than us together, right?

20:46

So I win, you lose kind. And, also, I'm better than

20:48

you or you're better than me.

20:51

And the reality is that no one's better

20:51

than anyone else in terms of who we are

20:56

and we shouldn't be looking up or down. We should just be look level.

21:00

And so to remember that comparing yourself

21:00

to others is really an illusionary.

21:05

It's a self-defeating practice that

21:05

isn't gonna really work for you, but

21:10

also it's just based on an illusion

21:10

that you can compare yourself to

21:14

others because, I mean, can you

21:14

compare an orange to an apple?

21:19

No, not really. they are two different things. So that one is an orange,

21:21

you got is an apple.

21:24

The only thing that you really should

21:24

compare yourself to is yourself.

21:27

Are you doing your best

21:27

today or, or are you not?

21:30

And that's it. Your best today is what's required.

21:33

And in terms of the critic,

21:33

when, when the voice comes in, I

21:36

think the important thing is to

21:36

recognize that voice for what it is.

21:40

Because we identify with our negative

21:40

voices, and sometimes you have crazy

21:44

voices going, 'Oh, what if I met them,

21:44

I met here, fools on, on my house.'

21:49

Well, that's a silly thing. That's probably never gonna happen.

21:52

Should we really use a precious

21:52

time thinking about this?

21:56

Maybe not. So I'm thinking, okay, the inner

21:57

critic, here's a reason to be there.

22:01

They like a habit that we have fed.

22:05

Probably, at some point, somebody talked

22:05

to us that way and we adopted their voice.

22:11

And we think that that's a way

22:11

to get better, but it's not.

22:15

That's a way to get us worked

22:15

up and stop us from creating.

22:20

And stop us. Yeah. And I always tell people too, like

22:21

if you've been thinking about it for

22:24

a while, guaranteed, you're gonna

22:24

be thinking about it next year.

22:28

You're gonna be thinking about

22:28

it because it's in there.

22:31

It wants to come out. It wants to be expressed.

22:34

That is the only thing that matters.

22:36

That is the only thing. There are many places to go to

22:37

improve your skill if you choose to.

22:41

And of course, if you have

22:41

stage fright, now they know

22:45

where to go to deal with that. But that is the only thing.

22:47

It is the journey that matters. That's all that matters.

22:51

Absolutely. And, but also there are ways

22:51

you can deal with that voice.

22:54

So, like I said, first

22:54

of all, awareness is key.

22:57

And then, there's things you can do. You can, a funny one, for example,

22:59

a funny exercise that your audience

23:03

could try is to just pretend that

23:03

your inner critic is sitting next to

23:08

you and you're gonna be listening.

23:11

And you're going write down

23:11

everything like a, like a secretary.

23:15

You're gonna write down everything it

23:15

says about your performance, right?

23:18

Oh, you're good for nothing, da da da da. And you're gonna all write it down.

23:22

And then afterwards, what I wanted you

23:22

could try to do is write on a piece

23:27

of paper, like say six possibilities.

23:30

One could be game show host, another

23:30

could be a sexy soultrade, I dunno.

23:35

Even porn star, if you like. Something like that or like,

23:37

fascist, dictator, all these

23:41

kind of things, you know. Crazy things. And then decide, pick one.

23:46

And then recite or, or why

23:46

any child, that's another one.

23:49

Recite the, the list

23:49

that what you've written.

23:53

As if you are talking from the point

23:53

of view of say, a game show host.

23:58

For example, you've written something

23:58

like, 'Oh, you never amount anything.

24:01

You're good for nothing. Might as well give up now.' And then

24:02

you just pretend that you're the game

24:06

show host and you're like, 'You are

24:06

good for nothing as well give up now.'

24:12

You know, like you talk, you

24:12

transform the voice if you like.

24:15

Yeah. Yeah. Ridiculous.

24:18

Yeah, it's, it sounds like you would be

24:18

diffusing the power of those statements.

24:23

You're just diffusing taking

24:23

the power away and any humor

24:27

is always a positive thing.

24:30

Awesome. It works very well. That's a great idea.

24:33

I never heard that one. But I love the title Dare to Be Seen

24:34

When you know All Eyes Are On You.

24:39

Yeah. Yeah.

24:40

You have to wear it. You have to wear it, Yeah.

24:43

Of being a vulnerability

24:43

as well, and that it's safe, you know?

24:46

It's okay. And, it's in fact exhilarating,

24:48

but it's also not about you.

24:52

That's the kind of paradox. Because we think even big stars, right?

24:57

You're talking about Adele and it, yes.

25:00

Okay. We might have this idea of the

25:00

celebrity that we want to make

25:04

into almost like a goddess and,

25:04

and project all our stuff on them.

25:08

When we go and see Adele, or when

25:08

we go and see somebody, somebody

25:11

like that, what we really want

25:11

is to feel something, right?

25:16

We wanna feel these emotions

25:16

that in our everyday life,

25:20

maybe you are cut off from us. And so, so it's not really

25:21

about Adele in that moment.

25:24

She's a channel, she's a conduit for

25:24

those feelings, and that's what, she's

25:31

a servant of the audience in a way. She's serving all of us.

25:35

And so it's not about her in that moment.

25:38

We don't care about what she had

25:38

for breakfast or what she does

25:41

in the morning, or whatever. We don't care.

25:44

Yeah. We just wanna feel the music.

25:46

Yeah, I agree with that. Totally. Yeah.

25:48

And speaking of feeling the music,

25:48

you have a new song out called The

25:53

Night is Falling, which I would like

25:53

to listen to a little bit right now.

25:56

Staring at the clock,

25:59

melts on your hands. It's thro in shock.

26:03

The weather's night is falling.

26:08

So what inspired this song? It's a very unusual sounding song.

26:11

Yeah.

26:12

Yeah. What inspired this song is

26:12

the show, Yellow Jackets.

26:16

I don't know if you know that song.

26:17

Yes. Yes, I do. Yeah. Yeah.

26:19

That's a wonderful show. I loved it so much

26:20

especially the costumes.

26:22

Amazing. And so I thought, 'Aha, I would

26:23

love to write a song for the show.'

26:27

and whether you know, they accept

26:27

my song, no, doesn't really matter

26:30

because it's just an inspiration. So I went on the piano and, and

26:33

started improvising something.

26:37

And the idea of that for me is, is

26:37

that I left it quite open, of course,

26:44

interpretation, so it could be anything. But for me, when I wrote it, it was

26:45

an older person who has a disease

26:52

like Alzheimer's or dementia.

26:55

And, that suddenly time

26:55

has completely changed.

26:59

Their relationship to time has completely

26:59

changed, and they live in this sort

27:04

of eternal, empty, weird, present, but

27:04

also lost in their memories of the past.

27:11

And they're quite confused. So the idea is like time, frozen

27:12

time and being frozen in time,

27:17

but also having these moments. Sudden realization as well of, 'Oh gosh,

27:18

what's happening now when it's happening?

27:23

Because I think I'm fascinated. My, my grandmother had that disease

27:25

and I thought a lot about it.

27:29

What it must be like to, to suddenly

27:29

have your perception of time changed

27:35

so much and so basically that's what,

27:35

what inspired the song, but then I

27:40

also thought of yellow jackets and

27:40

the forest and snow and night, and

27:44

I all went together into a jumble.

27:46

Yes, it's got the

27:46

mood that definitely suits that show.

27:49

Yeah, I liked it a lot. Now I'm gonna have to go back and

27:50

really check out the lyrics there.

27:54

I, I, I know a bit about that. My mom had a little touch of dementia.

27:58

Every once in a while

27:58

she would call me Betty.

28:01

And I was like, I don't know who

28:01

Betty is, but it's okay with me.

28:04

I want our listeners to know that you also

28:04

have some special gifts for them, which

28:10

can be found on the podcast landing page.

28:13

So go back to the page so you can get

28:13

these wonderful links along with the links

28:18

that you're going to need to listen to

28:18

Elisa's music as well as go to her website

28:24

where you, where she offers her online

28:24

course and information about her book.

28:28

All good stuff that comes from

28:28

proficiency and a desire really to help.

28:34

Yes. Cause your audience also gets

28:34

a free book and they also get

28:38

a free master class of English.

28:40

Yeah, that's, that's wonderful. I may take advantage of that.

28:43

So, is there anything else you would

28:43

like our listeners to know about

28:47

you, your service, your music, or-

28:50

Not really. I mean, I'm always here

28:50

for artists and performers.

28:55

It's my favorite person to help. And just, remember that the world

28:57

needs your particular type of light.

29:03

Your particular unique way of being.

29:06

We all, they have something

29:06

to give or shine that light.

29:09

Thank you so

29:09

much, Elisa Di Napoli, thank

29:12

you so much for being here. This has been fascinating and fun.

29:16

I will definitely be on your site

29:16

to check out your masterclass.

29:19

Thank you. Be well.