I'm my singing teacher's FAVOURITE student.
All this after only two-and-a-half half-hour sessions.
All this largely due to the fact that I actually did my vocalizes every other morning for fifteen minutes or so. Granted, in my head and ear it made a huge difference, but I DIDN'T do the hour a day that I was supposed to... So what are her other students doing, and how can they possibly learn anything from half an hour a week?
Must be something in the water supply. Must drink more water.
Once again the reality of learning something because you really want to, rather than because mom signed you up for it, is made painfully clear.
Once again, I'm thinking about going back to University now that I really want it, rather than back when I just wanted to get it over with. (which was mostly the last semester, but boy was it a rotten semester)
So I have the makings of a dramatic soprano, says incredibly encouraging singing teacher, we were messing around with high-C and I think I shattered my abdominal muscles and all of a sudden I could have sworn the water glasses were trembling.
If only I could learn to carry a tune.
So far we're still working on very very very basic theory, and while I'm devouring it whole, from registers (or what geekslut calls his regular voice and head voice, apparently there's actually four of them and all of mine are way too high, which I don't find nearly as feminine and sweet as my teacher does) to rounding and crescendoes and diva-notes, from breathing (swimming helps!) to watching my diaphragm jump through hoops, the difference between dramatic voices and lyrical ones.
My brain is loving the influx of information, but my heart is desperately yearning to learn how to carry a tune.
I'm getting there, though. I can actually sing three of my nine vocalizes without the tape now. I can remember the painfully simple melody. I can't jump keys with them yet, but I will. SOmeday soon I will.
My favourite thing about this teacher, despite the hour of driving to get there, despite the too-short time we have together, despite her propensity to babble on even more than I do, despite the fact that she's just a little on the self-conscious side, is that she randomly exclaims beautiful things.
We were talking about math in music. I got all excited about measuring Bach fugues on a tangential scale. I explained the concept of tangents and scribbled on the back of her notebook.
She blinked a few times and announced that she had no idea I was into math, and when I responded with "it's my very favourite thing" she exclaimed that I must be made to be musical.
Kaff corroborates the math-in-music-theory theory, but learning a new way to think, be it mathematical, non-linear, lateral or equilateral, is so small a part of anything.
Both teacher and I are of the stronger opinion that everyone should have great musical capacity if only they are surrounded with enough of it and love, but her emphasis on my natural advantage at something, was sweet and good for my ego. The fact that it meant nothing at all means nothing at all.
It was just a purely proud moment, in a millieu where I am still desperately weak and afraid, quite literally, of my own voice.
I'm just wishing she stop complimenting me now, and start correcting me. Yes, we're very impressed that I can do lesson three-A rather than three-B because it has twice the rising and falling notes in it, but twice six is really not that numerous.
I believe that she knows what she's doing though, so I'll wait. And when I'm finally singing real enough to be told when I suck, the world will hear about it in a high, shrill diva-note.
Last night I climbed like an old shoe hurled listlessly at a wall. Part tired, part whatever, at least I pushed hard enough to maintain my strength until next Tuesday. That, and my climbing shoes have finally stopped bruising my toes.
This morning my mailbox was flooded with shining faces from Sweden, France, Vancouver, Ethiopia. The SysAdmin at the last bank I worked in, emailing me to ask how many machines I've broken since I last turned his life upside down right before his vacation. He wants to know when I'll be in Paris next so that he can take me out for a quiet night of beer "free from the stress of the workplace". He also wanted to point out that he's always wanted to date a geek.
So many people do.
Funny how I'm dating one of the few people for whom that wasn't a priority. It used to be my main selling point, since for a long time I was convinced it was the only special thing about me.
I mean, aside from the nose-picking and the brain-eating.
I just heard back from the guy trying to start up that public-sector project that I've been most excited about.
"We have been doing a large amount of planning for an upcoming project which I discussed briefly with you. Your name has come up a couple of times and we may have an opportunity for you as a security and programming resource in the near future (next two months, for possibly an extended time period, if you are available). I will keep you informed or feel free to write me back."
I'm keeping my intestines curled into a pentacle (my fingers are too sore to cross).
This evening we're hopping into a manual-transmission car and driving six hundred kilometres for frog-flavoured hugs.
I've been charged with a missive from a friend, which I will deliver as powerfully as I can.
[hours later, hours of running and calling and writing]
I just spoke to John, in anticipation of seeing him this weekend. Just as I spoke to cf, and Marv and Kaff, glorious moments previous.
John and I swiftly fell into familiar amphetamine chatter, talked of films and tattoos and mocked each other and raised each other onto skyscraping pedestals, and then at the end of it he said
"every time I get a second to talk to you, I realize how much I miss you. You're one of the few people, who always, always, understands. Just... understands."
Gosh.
I'm going to go understand my way through all of my chores now.