Time to branch out, says teach.
The coloratura is skipping along, but ruining my tone, says teach.
She can see me going bonkers after six weeks of just doing scales, says teach.
We've been taking a break from arias for a while now, on the notion that the techniques are getting in the way of just singing -- letting loose and grabbing my diaphragm and larynx and having a run for it.
So we've been doing scales. Hundreds of scales. Up ones and down ones and two-octave-long ones, and octave-jump ones, and clever ones and traditional ones.
They're boring.
I realized yesterday that I still hadn't nailed a certain slide (after a month) because I hadn't practiced. At all. Not in my car not in the elevator not in my head not in the evening not too early on a Sunday morning.
My motivation slipped past my willpower and took an autumnal nap.
My willpower kicked in and asked teach for a song, something fun, to reward all the hard work we've been easing through our glands.
Sure, she said.
Something pop, she said, no opera.
Joni Mitchell, she suggested, and I gave her a listen and while her lyrics are stunning her songs leave me uninspired to do my own singing. Wrong pitch for me to throw myself into, maybe.
So I need suggestions. Celtic is my preference, but exposure to Betsy has left me with wide openings for jazz, and my general state of mind means folk always feels right.
I've got a good slew of jazz suggestions already.
Anyone know any good pub songs that have room for a soprano and don't include seventeen versions of the same verse about pirates or Sherbrooke?
And in other news, I don't have cancer of the cunt, just squamous cells meandering about that require another test in the spring.
In still other news, I am finally addicted to Neverwinter Nights and woke up this morning with the urge to smack around a few zombies.
In the otherest news of all, life is good, I'm missing a fingernail lost to a slicing-dicing time-saving device but it'll grow back in a month, and I realized last night
that I've been working way too hard this month.
Way too hard at work, at trying to make friends with my family, at perfecting the house in no seconds flat (the deck and new shelves and plants and windows and garden are BEAUTIFUL and yes I still want to redo the bathroom, bedroom and basement) -- but I need fun now.
Not just people-over-for-dinner fun, while the warm fuzzies of feeding frenzy are the penultimate social pleasure -- I need a lazy, pizza-and-science-fiction, pool-playing, laughing, sitting, resting weekend.
Good thing we've got three days since we still have to paint the new windows and waterproof the porch and re-pot a few plants and hem the curtains and
shutting up now.