A Quote by Michael Tolcher

I write and perform for the feeling it gives me, and the experience of being connected with a room full of people to the vibration of music — © Michael Tolcher
I write and perform for the feeling it gives me, and the experience of being connected with a room full of people to the vibration of music
Seeing people catch a feeling in their spirit and sprint the aisles of the church while my cousins played driving, uplifting gospel stuck with me. I let that same feeling wash over me when I experience and perform music.
The energy and generosity of spirit of the people I meet everywhere I perform is what inspires me to make music and through the music, we share a bond even if we may never have met. As long as there is a single person who may find something they are looking for or a feeling they need in my music, I will continue to write for that person
I know what love feels like. That is one thing I have found. That is one thing that is much clearer because of fibromyalgia. Because once you experience real pain you recognize the vibration, the feeling of being healthy, happy and loved. If I'm not living from my heart, I get sick. I need to do things that feed my soul, like being with people I love, or playing my guitar, or listening to music.
There's nothing that compares to actually being in a room and having that sense of collective experience, feeling the music in your body and having all these people around you.
I've written arrangements for choirs and strings in the past, but I usually write music with my voice or a keyboard and then I'll get someone who is good at writing scores to write it out. Or, if I have the luxury of time, I will go in a room and hear the people perform and then change it through what I hear, not on paper. I can read music OK, but I probably rebelled a little - music changes into something else when you read it.
Music is my first love and the thing that I feel extremely connected to. I feel like I still have a long way to go within that in terms of being able to perform and write songs. But, yeah, I really hope 'The Possession' opens doors for me to do more acting, because I really enjoyed it.
I had a real feeling of being fated to be an actor and do my work, and I remember so much speaking up in a room full of people who authentically knew as much or more than me, and feeling like I was absolutely equal, and what I had to say was important.
Music expresses feeling, that is to say, gives shape and habitation to feeling, not in space but in time. To the extent that music has a history that is more than a history of its formal evolution, our feelings must have a history too. Perhaps certain qualities of feeling that found expression in music can be recorded by being notated on paper, have become so remote that we can no longer inhabit them as feelings, can get a grasp of them only after long training in the history and philosophy of music, the philosophical history of music, the history of music as a history of the feeling soul.
I don't like being in big crowds, I don't like being in a room full of people. I get anxious and nervous, but I'm pretty confident about my music. It excites me because I get to sing to all those people.
When I create music, the feeling that you get... I get first. You [the listener] have a delayed experience with the feeling I initially get when I have a creative insight. Not just the voice, but all the creativity - the production, the idea, the concept, the music involved. There is a high. There is an emotional experience that happens when everything comes together... I made music as consistently as I did, especially back in the day, because it made me feel so good... When everything is on, it's a wonderful feeling.
But the experience that I had, which was basically just feeling loved and taken care of in a room full of thousands of people I didn't know, seemed to be a pretty strong sign that what I was doing was a good thing.
In some ways, my most comfortable feeling has been that of being an outsider coming in, but over the years I've tired of that and I'm ready to feel at home. That's what music gives me: a feeling of absolute home.
Every time I'm feeling anxious, I go to my little meditation corner in my room and write down whatever I'm feeling. If I'm feeling terrible, I write that I'm feeling terrible and I accept that and I keep going, but I'm not going to wallow in that moment.
I can't write music unless I'm deeply connected to it and that connection almost always comes from some experience that I have had or am having.
To perform in front of a room full of people you go to school with would be terrifying. I couldn't do it now.
I think, with music in general, people just inevitably connect with feeling. The opportunity to hear expressed feeling. And that's what has always drawn me towards music. It's something where, by connecting to someone else's voice, I feel less lonely. I feel more alive. I feel more connected to the world and to the rest of humanity. Sometimes a voice can be like a lifeline.
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