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[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Welcome back to You Can't SAY THAT! I'm Tonya Pinkins, and you're listening to my spotlight, the Red Pilling of America, with Susan Eichhorn Young on You Can't SAY THAT.

[0:13] Tonya Pinkins: We gotta speak to life. We gotta say one drill for you.

[0:24] Tonya Pinkins: I can't understand you. You is kind. You is smart. You is important. You is dead.

[0:36] Tonya Pinkins: Tonya Pinkins' horror film RED PILL brings African American perspective to the progressive movement. We are a majority in this country. And we're gonna win the election.

[0:55] Tonya Pinkins: Do you know what the red pill is? A red pill is someone who infiltrates a group and then destroys them from the inside.

[1:06] Tonya Pinkins: This place is spooky. Some people like to live dangerously. Yes, why are you so jumpy tonight?

[1:13] Tonya Pinkins: You know what, guys? I'm gonna go back tomorrow. Did you hear about the creature woman that attacked a father and son hunting down here? I don't see the case. This place creeps me out. I think we should call the sheriff's office.

[1:51] Tonya Pinkins: They're after all of us. What do we do, Amelia? We die. But we take some of them with us.

[2:04] Tonya Pinkins: I have not sung in forever. Wanna play with me? Let's play. Yeah. You want to sing a little bit? I'm scared, Susan, but I'm gonna risk it.

[2:11] Susan Eichhorn Young: Okay. See, just the fact, you know what? You don't have to drop the armor, right? So do this from an acting perspective. Like give yourself a motivation.

[2:27] Susan Eichhorn Young: Okay. Right? So all I want you to do. Oh, you're lucky. I stayed at the piano, so I can actually or am I not lucky? I want you just to take your hum.

[2:44] Susan Eichhorn Young: What hum? Just uh just uh if you think mum. Mum. Yeah. Now see, that's anchored in the speaking voice already. So all we do with the singing voice is extend the pitch.

[2:57] Susan Eichhorn Young: So if you just I'm gonna take you here. And we're just gonna do one, two, three, two, one, and then we're gonna release so mum. And let it live behind the warrior armor of you.

[3:23] Susan Eichhorn Young: Here one more. So you were kind and you took me to my place where I'm like so solid and anchored. And let's take me to the place where I start cracking. Take me to the Passaggio.

[3:55] Susan Eichhorn Young: Okay. You wanna go there? All right. So do a five, but stay in that hum. Yeah, stay in that hum. So now do a five. Mum mum mum mum mum mum mum mum mum mum. Trust yourself.

[4:17] Susan Eichhorn Young: Yeah. That's it. That's okay. So that's that spot, right? That's that spot. So tell me what night it is. Right. And then and then you're over it.

[4:45] Susan Eichhorn Young: So physiologically, what's happening is your voice is wanting to move into another resonance chamber. And the musculature simply needs to elasticize to allow for that stretch to happen.

[5:00] Susan Eichhorn Young: So how does it do that? Breath. Exhale. So now this time just do a triad, but I want you to use the SH. Think of the SH like a shea butter breath. Nice, nice and thick, and it'll settle in.

[5:18] Susan Eichhorn Young: Shumum. You're just gonna come down. Shum shum mum. Beautiful. Sham. Yeah, let that slide, because that's the breath. One more. Shum.

[5:58] Susan Eichhorn Young: And then you just mix together that passaggio. What if I don't have a sh to get to breath and make that I don't have that?

[6:08] Susan Eichhorn Young: Then you what you do is you practice this till the body recognizes the behavior so it will find any onset, any consonant in a word that moves your air and says, Oh, that is familiar. My breath is my familiar.

[6:25] Susan Eichhorn Young: Yeah, my breath is not my familiar. But it will be. Before we're done, it will be. My familiar. Do you still study?

[6:35] Tonya Pinkins: Yes, I do. Who's your teacher?

[6:37] Susan Eichhorn Young: I study with a woman in Canada named Irena Velahashberg. Okay. Um, I've worked with her for over about 20 years now.

[6:48] Tonya Pinkins: And what has changed in your voice over 20 years?

[6:52] Susan Eichhorn Young: Um, it's gotten richer. Um, it's gotten much more grounded. She really, when I first went to her, I had a lot of, I had some vocal trauma. Um, and so she helped rebuild with me the top of my voice.

[7:07] Susan Eichhorn Young: I'd lost the top of the voice. And uh has become one of my very best friends over all of this time. But she got me back into my breath in order to access the physical again.

[7:18] Susan Eichhorn Young: But the breath makes you feel things and it's emotional, make you know, you can feel that someone's gonna see something really you don't want them to see or you don't want to feel right in this moment or something.

[7:33] Susan Eichhorn Young: But what if the breath was the elasticity of safety that you could wrap yourself in like a beautiful piece of chiffon that nothing penetrates unless you say it's okay.

[7:50] Tonya Pinkins: How would I ever get to that? I can't. That's a nice sentence. I don't see how I think you're closer to that than you. I think you're very close to that.

[7:58] Susan Eichhorn Young: For me, the breath is um it is the uncontrollable wind storm that could take you, you know, you could lose your mind, you could do anything. The breath, the breath could hit something in you, and you literally don't know what it's gonna be that's gonna express.

[8:16] Susan Eichhorn Young: But if you train with it and not against it, if you harness the power of that, it becomes the armor that you can wrap around yourself, so you choose who gets through that and who does not.

[8:35] Tonya Pinkins: I like the sound of it, you know. The Native Americans and the actually some of the witchy fairy people talk about the wind as a god and that we actually sorrow from that god to actually animate ourselves.

[8:47] Tonya Pinkins: Uh, you know, that we are asking permission of this god all the time to even live.

[8:54] Susan Eichhorn Young: Yes. Yes, yes, and you do that every day. I mean, you are breathing life into what you're creating right now with this movie.

[9:06] Tonya Pinkins: That is true. It somehow feels safer. Just it has a different form. It has a different and the form of song is naked.

[9:20] Susan Eichhorn Young: To me, singing is the most naked thing that I would ever do. Yeah. How did you lose your upper voice?

[9:28] Tonya Pinkins: Um, I was doing uh an opera and one of my kidneys began to fail. But I did not want to um lose the opportunity, so I sang through it.

[9:43] Tonya Pinkins: And so the combination of being, you know, working with medication and doctors and in rehearsal, um, I just lost everything on the top of my voice because I was in so much pain I couldn't support, and the breath wouldn't move.

[9:58] Tonya Pinkins: So I was slamming my chords together with no airflow. What is the connection between kidney, breath, voice?

[10:06] Susan Eichhorn Young: Kidney is um, there's a lot of sub there's a lot of subconscious energy in the kidneys and um it a lot of fire. Yeah. Did you save your kidney or did you have to no, I saved it, yeah.

[10:26] Susan Eichhorn Young: Okay. Um, I've had issues with it over the years. Um, but you know, it just kind of rears up once in a while just to let me know that I might need to clear some of that fire again.

[10:37] Susan Eichhorn Young: But um, yeah, we were able, and we we weren't sure, you know, if we were able to if to even repair the voice at that point. And Irena just said, Listen, I have no idea. Let's try.

[10:49] Susan Eichhorn Young: She said, But you you aren't going to be singing for anybody for six months. So we worked twice a week for six months.

[10:56] Tonya Pinkins: So I want to talk about something that might be hard for you, but like you know, I I mentioned to you before we came on that I had surgery in my throat last year, and I turned off for six years, even though the condition I had they said was terminal.

[11:09] Tonya Pinkins: Um, but what they said is that the surgery could cost me my voice, and I was like, you know what? If I lose my voice, I'm gonna want to die anyway. So let me just risk dying before I'm gonna let you do some surgery.

[11:20] Tonya Pinkins: That means so. What was it like for someone to tell you you can't sing? I mean, that's your love and your livelihood. What was that?

[11:27] Susan Eichhorn Young: That lit the fire. I said making you sick. I said, Oh hell no, I am going to get this back. And that's what we did.

[11:43] Susan Eichhorn Young: So, you know, my Achilles heel and my best trait are that I'm very stubborn, you know. I was stubborn and pushed through and when I shouldn't have. But then I said, no, this is not taking me out.

[11:57] Tonya Pinkins: You know, yeah, that's some fire. I mean, and the same thing happened with, you know, about nine years ago, Thomas and I were in a near fatal car accident, and uh that was another one where I said, no, uh, 18-wheeler truck hit us, and uh that is not taking me out.

[12:18] Tonya Pinkins: Uh okay. Okay, you drop that in 18 were any were there any fatalities?

[12:25] Susan Eichhorn Young: No, thank goodness there were not. Um, what were the injuries to all of the people, the three of you?

[12:32] Susan Eichhorn Young: Um, Thomas and I were in one car and there was another couple in another car. I'm not sure what their injuries were. Um, and I don't recall any of this. I have just bits and pieces.

[12:42] Susan Eichhorn Young: Um, but I was yeah, and and I was out, like they had to airlift us to Morristown. So I was in uh trauma unit and then moved to a rehab hospital and had to relearn how to walk.

[12:58] Susan Eichhorn Young: I broke the top three ribs off my sternum, and singing saved my life. I know that sounds absolutely hokey, but um, when my spine surgeon came in, I I mean I broke basically everything on the right side of my body.

[13:15] Susan Eichhorn Young: So, and major head trauma. And uh so, you know, I am here and I am here. But he asked me, what do you do for a living? Because he said, most times when we see um ribs off the sternum, because of the location of the lungs, they pierce the lung and you're gone.

[13:36] Susan Eichhorn Young: He said, Your intercostals are so overdeveloped, your your intercostals just held your ribs in place. So he said, What do you do? And that was from singing. And he said, Okay, that makes total sense. I figured either you're a singer or a swimmer, because those are the only two things that would develop the intercostals like that.

[13:57] Susan Eichhorn Young: So intercostals are, but I'm gonna go look that up right now. All these all these muscles between the ribs, right? Just held everything together. And what about Thomas? Thank God he was fine. I mean, he had a he had a concussion, lost a couple teeth, um, you know, had a few stitches, but he he was you know released after a week or a few days. I don't even know exactly. Thank goodness. Because if the two of us had been like me, that would have been a mess.

[14:28] Tonya Pinkins: How long were you in the hospital?

[14:29] Susan Eichhorn Young: Um, this happened mid-June, and I think I was out in August and home.

[14:36] Tonya Pinkins: Were you the driver?

[14:37] Susan Eichhorn Young: No, I was in the passenger seat.

[14:40] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah. And what about those ribs that came off? Do you not have them or did they have to no?

[14:43] Susan Eichhorn Young: They they fuse them back in, like they literally just wrap me up and let them fuse back. So it automatically happens, the body does that?

[14:50] Tonya Pinkins: The body can do that.

[14:55] Susan Eichhorn Young: So that was, you know, and then I had other breaks that had to be repaired and surgeries and all that kind of stuff.

[15:00] Tonya Pinkins: But you're like the bionic woman.

[15:05] Susan Eichhorn Young: I I have angels, I tell you, I do for sure. Earthbound angels and angels throughout.

[15:13] Tonya Pinkins: Okay, so we know that's we know at least two deaths in this life. She's got at least nine lives. She's a cat. Um for you coming that close to death. How did it change how you live?

[15:23] Susan Eichhorn Young: Um, it there's a control thing right there. When your control is gone.

[15:31] Tonya Pinkins: Wait a minute, someone's got a mic, they need to mute. Nate, can you mute?

[15:35] Susan Eichhorn Young: No far. No far. Can you mute? So that um Susan can speak, please.

[15:41] Tonya Pinkins: Yes, I'm sorry about it.

[15:43] Susan Eichhorn Young: Um, it it uh it reveals that you're not as much in control as you think you are. And because I am an earth mama and I want to look after everybody, um, I couldn't even look after myself. Someone else had to. So it was a real reckoning with releasing that control and learning how to stay in the present moment.

[16:11] Tonya Pinkins: Did you cry a lot?

[16:13] Susan Eichhorn Young: I did and I didn't. It was an interesting time. I got very still. That's something I remember because I had no choice, literally and figuratively, you know. Um, there was a stillness that came over me that was new, but recognizable at the same time. It was fascinating.

[16:34] Tonya Pinkins: Were there any other insights that came to you at when you're, you know, you're getting a second, a third chance?

[16:40] Susan Eichhorn Young: Yeah, I think it was that being present, releasing that survive. I mean, I was surviving, but releasing that panic that so much we feel in our business too of just surviving and what's gonna come next, and then will there be work? And you know, I couldn't go to the bathroom by myself, you know what I mean? Like it was it that all that other stuff didn't matter. I was, and I mean, my mantra every night as I fell asleep was, I am alive and I will be well. It was just like everything just became very still. You know.

[17:29] Tonya Pinkins: How did your daughter uh she was a rock, and I can't even imagine when she got that phone call.

[17:38] Susan Eichhorn Young: She was with her new boyfriend at the time, who's now her husband, and he brought her right out to trauma. Um, I was still in the emergency room, and unfortunately, she had to see me in that state. Um, but um, she was incredible for for all of us.

[17:56] Tonya Pinkins: Wow, I think that those kind of experiences actually strengthen us. Like I was present for births and deaths in my childhood growing up, and you know, so I feel like it's a privilege when you can be present with people uh as they're transitioning from the other.

[18:12] Susan Eichhorn Young: It is a it is an incredible gift that so few people get.

[18:17] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah. Yeah, it's true.

[18:19] Susan Eichhorn Young: And it's interesting when my dad passed before this. One of the last things he said to me was, Suze, where I'm going, I can look after you better. So it was in the in that moment of because nobody thought, like even the people that pulled us out of the car, you know. I ran into them, you know, years later, and they were just like thought they'd seen a ghost, and said, We walked up to that car and said, There's not gonna be anybody alive in that car. So again, angels watching over me.

[18:52] Tonya Pinkins: Wait, I gotta get that little detail. Some strangers stopped and pulled y'all out of the car.

[18:58] Susan Eichhorn Young: No, some of the the EMS people that when they got to the car, yeah, they they actually said to each other being told this after the fact, right? That prepare yourself because there's not going to be anybody alive in that car.

[19:11] Tonya Pinkins: Wow. But we were and your dad, this is like the la one of the last things he said to you. Do you feel him?

[19:19] Susan Eichhorn Young: Yeah, every day. You know, my mom died a couple of years ago, and I feel her more strongly as a positive presence now than ever when she was here.

[19:29] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it?

[19:31] Susan Eichhorn Young: Yeah. Yeah.

[19:33] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[19:35] Susan Eichhorn Young: Necromancy. I was reading about necromancy. Are you familiar with the book called Ancaro Gwynn?

[19:40] Susan Eichhorn Young: No. I mean, I know the title, but I don't know the, yeah.

[19:43] Tonya Pinkins: It's a book for you.

[19:44] Susan Eichhorn Young: All right. I shall look at it.

[19:49] Tonya Pinkins: It's sort of, I don't know.

[19:50] Susan Eichhorn Young: It I was reading it when I saw your picture online, and I was like, it's been such a pleasure to oh, it's been an honor, an absolute honor.

[20:04] Tonya Pinkins: Session offline, or we could schedule it right now.

[20:07] Susan Eichhorn Young: We did something next to week.

[20:08] Tonya Pinkins: Yes, we can. I wanna uh I want to experience this. I you know, I I I know for me one of the challenges, and I s I share my personal stuff with people because I think that a lot of times when people look at people who they have what they dream of or they imagine that it was easy or that it's wonderful or perfect or all good. And I believe what the Balinese believe that life is a balance of both the good and the bad.

[20:44] Susan Eichhorn Young: That is as healthy as you can be.

[20:47] Tonya Pinkins: And for me, with the singing, it's such a it's such a vulnerability and risk for me. Um, and such a ministry for me that I just began to feel that when I sang in New York, it was definitely a throwing of pearls before swine, that it wasn't people did not realize what it was the risk of it for me to do it. And it was like, you know what, you got all these other people and you like them just as much. You can have that. This is this costs too much.

[20:55] Susan Eichhorn Young: Yes.

[20:55] Tonya Pinkins: For me to do this. You know, the cost to me is it's too much.

[21:24] Susan Eichhorn Young: Yeah.

[21:27] Tonya Pinkins: And I think when you recognize that too, it allows you to contain. You know. Um, and I think in this time, you know, as artists and artists in the industry in whatever aspect that this is the change we need to make, recognizing that before things begin to open up. We can't wait till they open up to make those changes. You know? Um that that, and that's what I try to, you know, reflect with the singers in front of me always that you that you are the change, and you can say no. You can you can create that reality in front of whoever the gatekeeper happens to be, and maybe in this time we need to all be that gatekeeper and release all that other, you know, before it starts to pick up again. It'll be too late.

[22:23] Susan Eichhorn Young: Yes, yes. I'm gonna say that phenomenology is the it says that each and every one of us is creating our own reality, and uh in that sense, we we do get to decide what that's going to be.

[22:39] Tonya Pinkins: Yes, oh you've told me so many, you know, very personal things. I I have this question because you shared, I don't know. I'm gonna ask.

[22:48] Susan Eichhorn Young: Ask me.

[22:50] Tonya Pinkins: What is something that you thought was the worst thing that could happen to you, but now from the vantage point you have now was one of the best things that ever happened to you?

[23:06] Susan Eichhorn Young: That's a heavy one. Um well maybe I mean in a more specific way, it might have been recognizing I was in a marriage that I should not have been in, and yet the best thing that came out of that was my daughter. You know, that I mean it's like decisions lead to decisions, and so it is never like you say, it's a balance. Because if you say, I wish I'd never done that, and yet how would that have been how would the trajectory have changed? What would not be there anymore, right? And so it's it again, like how do I learn from that as opposed to um, you know, how do I work through those emotions of that time um in order to release that to see the good that has emerged from that? Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, because we can wish it all away, and then what?

Yeah, you know, I have come to this place of blessing and thanking all of the people who I might have judged as being my obstacles or stones in my path, and all the people who said no to me, I I I bless and honor them that they were you know what sharpened me and prepared me for the next place I needed to go.

[24:46] Susan Eichhorn Young: Yeah, yeah. Might be hard to do in the past, I mean in the present sometimes.

[24:52] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, but I think we can change past, present, and future right in this moment. So if we can go back and bless all those places where we were cursing, I think we can change the trajectory of everything.

[25:05] Susan Eichhorn Young: I agree a hundred percent.

[25:08] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, such a pleasure to meet you and and get to know a little tiny bit.

[25:14] Susan Eichhorn Young: Oh, it's been an honor, Tanya. Truly. I'm gonna ask anybody if they had any questions they wanted to ask us before we uh wrap up the hour. Anyone want to ask anything?

[25:26] Audience Member: No questions?

[25:27] Tonya Pinkins: All right. Well, Susan, wait a minute. I was looking, I was looking in the chat. Was somebody chatting something? Um I'm gonna just open up the chat just to see if there was something in there. Um thank you all for coming and it's just been a blessing. I really look forward to getting to know you and working with you.

[25:48] Susan Eichhorn Young: I'm scared.

[25:50] Tonya Pinkins: Oh we will make sounds.

[25:52] Susan Eichhorn Young: We will make sounds.

[25:54] Tonya Pinkins: Sounds oh, Susan, we will make cry and scream and it will be a safe place to do so.

[26:03] Susan Eichhorn Young: Oh, I gotta tell you this one little thing before I we go. Um, I studied with Dr. Lena McLean. Is famous, infamous for being R. Kelly's voice coach, and famous for being Shaka Khan's. Both of them she uh works with at um Kenwood High School in Chicago. And and I when I went to study with her, I was like, Dr. McLean, I wanna I want to sing like Shaka Khan. And she said, Sha, that's not a sound, that's a condition. Like, I want some of that condition. Let's create the condition. So I want some condition.

[26:44] Tonya Pinkins: You are a condition, Miss Tanya. I'm gonna stand in agreement with you.

[26:48] Susan Eichhorn Young: Thank you. Thank you. Bless you and bless Thomas. I look forward to getting to know him as well. And uh thank you for joining us here.

[26:55] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, it is my pleasure and honor. Thank you for asking me.

[26:58] Susan Eichhorn Young: Thank you and all. Please follow us on Red Light. I'm hoping we will have it ready in a month. I think we're that close.

[27:05] Tonya Pinkins: A month. I've been listening to the sound design from Paul Sue. And tomorrow I'm gonna hear the score with T Skull. And it's really I see with my ears. So when I then the sound design came in, I began to go, oh, this has to move, and this has to move because I realize that even when I'm watching movies, I'm doing other things, and the sound tells me when I need to look at the screen that something's gonna happen. Because most of the, you know, it's all filler, and I'm like, okay, sound. Oh, I need to pay attention now.

[27:34] Susan Eichhorn Young: Thank you. Bless you, bless you all. Thank you. Stay safe, wear a mask. They save lives.