New Direction

So today I wrote a vocal instructor to start lessons again. I think it is a step in the right direction. I think if I know I have someone else's ear I can turn mine off and concentrate on the feeling of proper singing.

I need to make this a commitment, however, and not let things I'm doing with other people stray me from my path. The path only gets exciting if you're making progress and not ending up at the same spot over and over again.

Besides, maybe some of the qualities in my voice that I'm obsessing over may be my own vocal idiosyncrasies. It's better to just get a professional opinion, and stick to it.

The only thing that makes me nervous is that I don't already know this person, but I also think that will be better.

Tension

I guess I'm writing this to put some sort of energy out into the world that will come back and manifest itself in my life, or more importantly, my voice.

I finally started vocalizing every day (again), and felt so much improvement in the ease of singing, and placement of the sound. I promised myself that this time I wouldn't stop practicing, and for the most part I have upheld that promise for the past couple of weeks, but the events of this week proved to be an effective deterrent and psychological block.


When I finally mustered up the courage to take singing lessons last year, my vocal problem was identified as singing with a closed posture and too much tongue tension. I've been lip rolling and tongue trilling myself into a frenzy, over the past few weeks and was really noticing a difference.

Today, however, brought a new surprise. I just got a new computer this week and decided to record my voice to listen to all the great progress I knew I had made, only to feel like I hadn't made any.

I'm wondering if external events are putting a negative spin on how I perceive things. Even as I type this I'm starting to feel as if I was way too critical when I was listening. I feel like I could "hear" my tense tongue when I was vocalizing the notes, and hear the tentativeness in my technique and intention when I sang a couple of lines from a song.

In the back of my mind I've been thinking to myself, "Does a calling require this much of a struggle?" It's making me question why I feel like it is my calling to sing in the first place. I only know that no matter how much I feel like I'm struggling, I just don't want to give up. I just want to be heard by someone one day and for all people involved in that exchange of feeling and sound to be pleased with what they experienced, myself included.

I remember listening to Eckhart Tolle talk about the symbol of the cross, and how it was the symbol of both suffering and salvation, and that we each have our own crosses to bear. I have never looked at a cross the same way, and I have felt that my struggle to be heard and gain my voice, though currently the source of my anguish, is the ONE thing I hope sets me free. I never prayed for such a long time, but did so for the first time in a long time when I was laying on the table in Thailand about to be put under for reassignment surgery. My prayer was, "God, if I am not going to sing, don't wake me up." I vowed with my whole heart that if I woke up I was going to take this seriously.

It all sounds so simple, but I feel like there is some spiritual or physical reason why I can't let go of the tongue tension. I know that my voice teacher said it is really just a habit that a lot of singers have to unlearn, but I really see it as a fear of letting go. Despite the fact that I know it is not the most efficient and free way to make sound, I feel that something else is making me hold on to old ways.


I definitely need a breakthrough . . .

Refocusing

Thanks to my new found free time, I will be posting regularly, and resuming my efforts to learn the piano.

I definitely must be careful of what I write due to ongoing circumstances, so I will confine this blog to musical, spiritual, and culinary topics.

I will make the best use of this to time as I go into the next phase of my life. 

Going off on a tangent . . .

This morning I've gone on a tangent looking for less common uses of a crock pot. It started when I saw a diagram of a crockpot distiller on someone's facebook page. It can be used to make moonshine, although you could probably use it to make your own distilled water. Using this method can apparently yield a quart of liquor...hmm....

More along my speed is using a crockpot to make duck confit...although my longstanding food fantasy for 2010 was to make confit using turkey dark meat.

I also found that you can use your crockpot as an indoor smoker. My only question there is why so much liquid is used, but comments I've seen online say that there isn't enough water to braise it.

I like the idea of using your crockpot to make olive oil soap, or even rebatching old soap with your own scents and colors. I even like the idea of using Ivory soap for this purpose.

Freaky Friday

On Tuesday we started a new unit in beauty school, and three new girls started, which means that we all have to go around the room and introduced myself.

When I was a new student I remember someone saying that they were married to a preacher, "just like" one of the instructors. Somewhere in there I attached that description to the wrong instructor, and proceeded to open up more to the other one.

This is so interesting to me because I really have to confront my prejudice or even fearful reaction to people who claim to religious. I know that it comes from my harmful upbringing as a Jehovah's witness. I guess you could call "post traumatic 'spend every minute preparing for Armageddon' stress syndrome". I grew up thinking that if I could just hold out and make it through Armageddon, I could not only avoid death, but would be cured of all the things I was told were ailing me. Not the right message for a slightly obsessive teenager with ADD who was also grappling with gender identity issues.

So, the freaky part of the whole thing was that I had mixed up the names and labels, opening up more to the one who I thought wasn't married to a preacher, while being reserved and withdrawn around the other one. On Tuesday I found out that not only was she not married to a preacher, her husband had been a truck driver and a sailor before that.

In the few days since, l've been opening up very quickly, and have learned a valuable lesson. Don't use labels to determine how you react to, or treat other people.

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Global Weirding

I'm going to try to do "Wordless Wednesdays" from now on by posting an image, though I'm not sure how wordless it will be because I'll comment on it. (Maybe I'll think of a new alliterative name with a similar concept.) Today's image is of the giant sinkhole in Guatemala.


It's hard to take in. It looks so perfectly round and bizarre. It will be added to the list of irrational fears that no longer seem so irrational: the ground falling out from under me. My #1, #2, and #3 irrational fears all center around bridges, either collapsing, or somehow becoming unstable, or me having a blowout, or just being blown off in a windy storm.

My completely rational fear: Global Weirding, as promoted by Thomas Friedman. The hots get hotter, the dry(s) get drier, and the wets get wetter. Setting a record for snowfall over the winter doesn't mean things are cooling, that's actually the "wets getting wetter"... I think a month's worth of rainfall fell in Guatemala City over a 30 hour period, and that's a months worth of rain for a tropical country.

Tuneful Tuesday

Today's clip is from Dame Shirley Bassey, whom I adore and love, she is among my top three favorite singers (including Sarah Vaughan and Leontyne Price), and I honestly can't rank them. They are so different, and I find each one of them absolutely necessary in my weekly playlist.

DSB (as she as often referred to on the internet) recently released a new album, "The Performance". It is fantastic to see how great she sounds at 70+ years, and of course, she STILL looks amazing. This clip contains one of her earliest hits, "Kiss Me Honey, Honey", along with a WONDERFUL song from her new CD, "Almost There."

"Almost There" is such a great song of regret over mistakes with the person who you almost had something great with. I've listened to this SOOOO many times over the past few days that my neighbors should probably know the lyrics.