Ep38 Phoenix out of the fire - Glenda Benevides

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Luke 00:00:06  Welcome to another episode of the Improv Pod podcast. My guest today is Glenda Benavides. Tell us a bit about what you do.

Glenda  00:00:14  I'm a singer songwriter, author. I also have written a musical and a score for a film. I've done a variety of things.

Luke 00:00:24  What film was it?

Glenda  00:00:25  It was called change. It's, It's a ten minute short which won an award at the AOF Film Festival in Los Angeles. It was very challenging, but very fun.

Luke 00:00:40  I'm going to play your piece of music, and it's completely improvised. I want you to tell me what it makes you think of. So that means anything that comes into mind. Any kind of thoughts, ideas, that sort of thing. Here we go. So what did you think of that?

Glenda  00:02:12  Beautiful. I immediately saw stairways into the soul, so I was like, going up and going up. You're really experiencing levels of life, the evolution of your soul. And then at the end, it's like taking the hands of someone that you love and just feeling comfortable, like in that space.

Luke 00:02:34  It's interesting how this idea of staircases and ascension is often reflected in the first piece I play. There was a sense of connection there. You thought in terms of what you imagined?

Glenda  00:02:46  Yeah, absolutely. It was like one was on their journey for themselves to evolve and move up, up the staircase of their soul type of thing.

Luke 00:03:01  So I'd like you to tell me a story of some kind. And then what I do is I improvise a soundtrack to the story, so I'll break it down into sections.

Glenda  00:03:10  It was 2004 or 5. I was in the south of France, and I was to join in on a conference called medium at the time in Cannes. I was super excited to be there, and it just felt like my career was going to take off, and it was so promising. And I had in advance. What you can do is you can set up appointments with record companies, with independent companies. I felt like it was going to be an opportunity for me to share my music, and when I got there, I had got my badge and I had walked in, and as soon as I got in line, there were thousands of people I didn't realise.

Glenda  00:03:57  It was just amazing because it was a international market of musicians, of artistry, of some sort, and it was phenomenal and I was extremely overwhelmed. I finally got in and I was very nervous and it was super intense. And then I stood at the top of the stairs, looking down the stairwell into the conference exposition area. I took a moment and I started crying because in that moment I was aware that my career had been over 20 years ago. That was my ego telling me, it's over. You're no good. You can't do this. There's too many people. The litany, all artists go through it. And on some level, I was right. My career was over 20 years ago and I didn't know it. At the same time. The sky was the limit and I had an opportunity to create a new career and new me and new life, a new artistry. And that I was modeling myself on an old way of thinking and that old way of thinking crashed and burned. And from that moment I turned around.

Glenda  00:05:10  I left the conference, and I went back to my hotel room and started crying. And I was just shattered. And thank God, I had a very good friend of mine who was a filmmaker in Los Angeles. He was there to comfort me and tell me, no, that's not true.

Luke 00:05:25  So it was a sort of moment of realization. If you hadn't have gone through that unpleasant experience, you might not have pushed you in the right direction, which is often the way it takes something uncomfortable to change a career.

Glenda  00:05:38  It can definitely. I think for me it was really a come to Jesus moment, so to speak, because I was living off of old fantasies or old dreams or old thoughts of the way the music industry is. Right. I had bought something from 1980, in my mind, and it wasn't like that anymore. And that wasn't me. You bought the lie. You're on that path. It's not your path. And then you hit the end and it's, oh my God, I'm on the wrong path.

Glenda  00:06:10  That was pretty phenomenal, actually. It did shift everything. I'm going to go.

Luke 00:06:15  For the sense of initial excitement before you get to this place. Your 80s aspirations like, and then I'm going to go for this massive sense of overwhelm that then descends into panic And then this kind of phoenix out of the fire vibe helps you in your career path in the end.

Glenda  00:09:22  You made me cry. Excuse me. Wow. Definitely translated that pretty amazingly. I was like, oh my God, I'm gonna cry.

Luke 00:09:33  I've made anyone cry before, but almost.

Glenda  00:09:36  But beautiful. I think that's a good thing. If you make somebody cry and tell the tell their story.

Luke 00:09:43  So can you talk a bit about how that music reflected your story?

Glenda  00:09:47  Yeah. Musically, I felt like you were following my story emotionally, and it brought me back to that scenario. Yeah, the the life of an artist is not easy. And if you could take your instrument and have people feel something, I think that's a huge benefit for healing.

Glenda  00:10:10  I don't know why I'm still crying. That's all right.

Luke 00:10:13  Take your time. Sorry.

Glenda  00:10:15  It really allows you to see the transition that happened musically. The shock, the pain, the heartache, then the release. That's how I experienced that song.

Luke 00:10:28  It's interesting how that's like a metaphor for a sound wave. Like the attack, the decay, the sustained release, but also in stories as well. You have to have the the arc, the story arc. Do you have another story you could tell?

Glenda  00:10:50  So I was working on an episodic series with a good friend of mine that's a budding filmmaker and writer, and he and I had come up with this idea to talk about musicians. I was thinking one of the things that we needed for our production team was a tech person. So I started looking around this profile that popped up and it said Gene Williams. It said skills speaks Latin and medieval history, and he was a producer, music producer, and he had some pretty prominent people that he had worked with.

Glenda  00:11:25  Steve Smith from Dirty Vegas. I shot him an email and he told me later on he had recognized my name and he thought, I know this person. So he looked through his music collection. He had purchased my album five years prior. We just hit it off. Within three days I was flying to Boston to meet him, and he's been my music partner ever since.

Luke 00:11:51  It's amazing that he speaks Latin. That's unusual skill.

Glenda  00:11:54  Yeah, I've always been a musician, but he was studying to be an archaeologist, and he'd gone all the way through school and went, nah.

Luke 00:12:03  So I'm gonna go for, in terms of the soundtrack here, your personal improvised soundtrack.

Speaker 3 00:12:08  I love.

Luke 00:12:09  It. So you were attempting a British accent? Yeah.

Glenda  00:12:12  It was. Wow.

Luke 00:12:15  I'll just try and get over that. So I'm going to go for this sense of a discovery. You're looking for someone to do a practical role in this film you were making, and that turned into something that's much more. You have this connection, unexpected discovery kind of thing.

Glenda  00:14:39  I love the creation of ad lib and it's a skill that not everyone has. My experience has been you elicit either emotions or pictures like that trigger in the back of my mind, and each person will have their individual experience, of course.

Luke 00:14:58  Did that reflect your experience in any way?

Glenda  00:15:01  It had a version of it, yeah.

Luke 00:15:03  If I was going to do it again. What would you say improve on? Did you feel something was missing?

Glenda  00:15:08  I think you started out perfectly because you could feel the curiosity and the wonderment. I think I probably would have gone more into shock. There was something dramatic. There's this person, I feel aligned. I think the word came up for me was, I've met my match.

Luke 00:15:23  Okay, I'll give it another go. Take two. Was that any better in terms of reflecting your story?

Glenda  00:17:23  Yes, definitely. I could see myself flying to Boston and then it goes into this dramatic part. It was good.

Luke 00:17:30  So that had more of an effect. The sense of connection was stronger.

Luke 00:17:34  You felt.

Glenda  00:17:35  Yes. And excitement and some uplift to that happened. Yeah. Like a door opening as.

Luke 00:17:43  In the door to opportunity kind of thing.

Glenda  00:17:45  To a new way of living, to a new way of being.

Luke 00:17:51  So what did you get out of this podcast?

Glenda  00:17:54  I really feel like it's a unique way of being able to share your gifts while serving other people, and I think this is wonderful and sharing the soundtrack to people's stories and their life is a talent and a gift. Very unique podcast, I love it.

Luke 00:18:15  Is there anything you'd like to promote?

Glenda  00:18:17  Yeah, if people are curious and interested in what I'm up to, they can go to my website, which is Glenda music. Com it'll take you to the actual music. It'll take you to my podcast. It'll take you to my music videos and all kinds of things. And anytime you purchase anything off my site, whether it be merchandise, music or my book, Courage finds your Fire and ignite action in your Life. I plant trees, I work with a company called One Tree Planted, and every time you buy something, I send them a dollar to plant a tree for you.

Glenda  00:18:56  So right now I've planted about 250 trees, mostly in Scotland.

Luke 00:19:01  That's such a good idea. Planting trees.

Glenda  00:19:03  It's awesome. We need them. They're the lungs of the planet.

Luke 00:19:06  Thank you very much for being on the podcast.

Glenda  00:19:07  You're welcome. Thank you.

Luke 00:19:09  Join us next week for another episode of Impro Pod. Thanks for listening.