Singer Lisa Gerrard’s ‘Language of the Self’

The first time I heard Lisa Gerrard sing was when the film Gladiator came out in 2000. I hadn’t discovered my own Language of the Self back then but something in her songs touched me so very far down deep inside. Years later, and after exploring her other music, I have come to learn that she, like me and many others, has her Language of the Self. She believes that everyone is born with what she calls an ‘emotional language’ and she has been using hers to sing in since she was a child.

There is a wonderful interview where she talks about her language in an article at Igloo Magazine.

So much of what Lisa says in this article about her language is how I feel about the Languages of the Self. Although I believe my connection comes through what I call ‘the Ancients’, similarly Lisa speaks in the article to her connection to the Divine, to nature and to the universe through her language and singing.

Here are a few extracts below but I encourage you to read the full article.

“When I sing, it’s an emotional expression. I’m not accessing other realms. I’m expressing myself emotionally through sound and telling a story. But it’s not a practical story, it’s an abstract story that leads to a place that — I know this sounds a bit convoluted but I believe this is true — I believe it leads us to a place where people have a language that they own, that has nothing to do with the practical language that they were taught to speak in. But it’s a language that we’re born with, with sounds. Everyone in the entire world has an emotional language or emotional sounds that they make. And I’ve developed those into a full language.”

“It really does come naturally. When I was a child, I used to sing in my language. And well, I can’t say my language, our language that we weren’t taught to speak in. And so, for as long as I know, it’s always been there.”

“There are different languages for different pieces of music. There are words that I sing that turn up in all of the music that I sing for some reason, I’m not really sure why they turn up.”

To this day, these sounds, this language of Lisa can move me to places I didn’t know I had in me. It’s always emotional and cathartic and unexpected. Below is a more recent beautiful sample of her singing as well as a song from the movie Gladiator. I hope you will enjoy them and be moved to discover more of her music. Listen with earphones to really be absorbed into the frequency of her language.