I'm Simon Shapiro and this is Sing out Speak out. Here I give you the philosophies, ideas, and songs I've been working on for many years, but until now I've shared just too few off. Because I've been afraid of you . And worse, I've been afraid of me, but my will to connect with you and share the best of me has grown greater than any fear and that's why I am compelled to Sing out, Speak out
"to all reluctant acrobats, pushovers and front-door m atts".
Hello and welcome to the very first episode of my brand new show. Sing out, speak out. So excited and I can't think of a better way to hit a new year and a new decade than to launch this ship of ideas. But before I get into the topic of today's show, a couple of things to explain. Firstly, who is Simon Shapiro? The guy who is talking to you and what is Sing out, Speak out. The show you've tuned into.
Well I've been in the music business for many, many years and I've also worn a lot of different hats, not just as a singer songwriter on stage or in the studio, but also I've done jobs side of stage, back of stage in front of the stage, nowhere near the stage in an office. Many different roles I've played inside the music industry, but my primary activity has been as a performer and a music maker and in that regard I've been really fortunate to work with some amazingly talented people.
Some that you would know and some that you wouldn't. I've worked with some of the biggest stars from the eighties and nineties and Grammy award winning producers and then also other artists who are of equal value in my opinion, but you just haven't heard of them because they haven't broken through yet or maybe what they do isn't so mainstream and I don'tt say any of that to big note myself.
I just want you to know that that's where I'm coming from and I'll be drawing from that type of experience when I talk to you and sing to you here. So what id Sing out Speak out? Well, apart from my music life, I've also been a creative writer for pretty much the same amount of time I've been writing books and short stories and poems and a lot of philosophy.
I studied philosophy and I have reams and reams of papers of all these ideas and I just wanted to put the two together, my songwriting and my creative writing. So what I'm going to do here is basically share an idea. It could be something I've been thinking about for 20 years. It might be my idea of the week, something that's just come to me today and I need to share it with you and I'm going to sing you a song that relates to it.
They're not going to be pigeon pair type things on occasion that may occur that the song, you know has similar lyrics to the things that I speak about and other times it may be more of a loose connection. I don't want to have any rules here other than I want to be honest. I want to be open. I want to share more and give, contribute more of myself. So let's get to the first episode. It's titled 'between the noise', which is the title of my very first album that I released a number of years ago.
People have asked me what that means, and to be honest, that's grown for me over time. Now you've all heard the expression to read between the lines, no doubt. When you see something written down or somebody says something to you and your job is to find out what is actually being said, what do they mean by these words? Well, to hear between the noise is kind of similar, but it's more about sounds and the movement around us. What does that all mean and what's in between all of that.
So what I've found, what I believe, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, is that life has gotten noisier and noisier, especially in recent times. You know there's always that constant notifications of the mobile phone. It's pinging at you to let you know about a social media post or your next dentist appointment or you know when you've got to get up and go to work.
And then if it's not your phone, then in the minutes in between, it's your partner's phone, pinging at them about some social media posts that they should be looking at or their next dentist appointment. And if it's not them, it's your kid's phone or the person next to you at work or the person next to you on your commute to work.
And then there's the daily meme's and news stories that we have to look at or otherwise when we stand around the water cooler, we're the only one who doesn't know what's going on. And what about the latest series on Netflix that if you haven't seen at least three episodes this week, when you catch up with your friends on the weekend, you're going to be the only person who's completely out of the loop.
So what we've done is we've found a way to just increase the noise in our lives and fill every space. And now some of these noises are important. Some of these messages we should be listening to, and I'm not here to judge the meaning or the importance of any of those noises. But what I am saying is that all of those noises are external. They're all from the outside world.
And when we allow that voice to be the biggest voice, and even worse, if we allow that to be the only voice that we hear, then what we're doing is we are reducing the time and the space on our awareness screen for the voice that we should be listening to. And that's the voice within. And in my opinion, that is a modern tragedy. Now I'm guilty of this and I don't say that to shame myself or to judge anyone else who has also allowed that voice to be smothered.
I just want to acknowledge it and all I want to say is that for me, I'm making a promise to myself from today to find 20 minutes and for me, that's going to be before I go to sleep to just sit in my own silence and have no need to put anything in there. For now I just want to open the conversation again with my inner voice.
Now, if that's something that you choose to do as well or it's something that you're already doing, I would love to hear from you to find out what your experience is and what you're discovering. So as I said earlier, there are no rules here, so sometimes I may sing to you live and other times, like today I'm going to play you City Talks, which is where the expression between the noise comes from.
It's a song on my album, my first album, which I released a number of years ago and I hope you enjoy it.
[inaudible]
every city has a voice. [inaudible] can you hear between the noise?
City Talks song by Simon Shapiro.
[inaudible]
if you like the song, it's available at all the places you usually can download stream buy or otherwise share music. Thanks for being here today. Whether you are watching on my YouTube channel or listening to the podcast, I'd love for you to do any of the following things. If you've got something out of the show, then please subscribe to it like it, share it with someone you think might get value out of it, leave a comment or write a review.
Any of these things can help me grow the show and make it even better. I'll be back next week with another episode and I can't wait to share more with you then
"to all reluctant acrobats, pushovers and front-door matts".