Another long one
But guess what! I broke it into sections this time. Sooo,
Part One:
This might be really interesting, or really boring. But to me it is fascinating because I am extremely self-involved sometimes. I've been wondering about this for a while now. What is it about me that attracts men? I'm not talking about long-term, relationship-type attraction here. I would just like to know what is physically attractive. What is it that makes black men say "Hey, baby girl...", beer bellies gawk at me, assholes honk at me, intellectual types regard me with interest, artsy guys gaze at me, old men make irritating comments about my attire/hair, and nerdy guys nervous around me? I can't fathom what it could be. I spend much of my random time while out and about, pondering this mystery. My face (in my opinion) leaves much to be desired, though it has it's good parts. My eyes are especially piercing, or so I understand. But I don't think that would motivate disgusting men to check me out from far away. My body is not exactly the sort that models or celebrities or even just "sexy" women tend to have. And obviously it's not my hair, since its length and the amount of catcalls and stares I receive daily are not proportionate in any way. So it seems to me the only plausible explanation is just that men do this to every woman they see. Please, ladies, help me out here. Does this happen to you a lot? I mean, a lot, a lot. Because most of my friends feel offended or flattered when this happens to them, but for me it occurs so often that it fails to phase me anymore. Seriously. It's ridiculous. Just wondering. So now that I'm done being extremely self-absorbed and egotistical and what have you,
Part Two:
Maybe you do know this already, but I'm going to write it anyway. My favorite foods are the heartiest. Bread, pasta, samosas, beef, etc. Things that really fill you up so that you feel ready to burst. But the foods I eat the most of are breakfast foods. As in, for dinner tonight (and just so you know, I try to eat six small-ish meals a day, so my dinner consists of two separate meals - one at six or so and one at ten-ish.) I ate two eggs, a bagel with low-fat (of course) cream cheese, four pieces of turkey bacon, some muesli, a whole wheat pancake, and a beer. I don't know why, but I just love eating breakfast foods. The majority of foods I have in my fridge and cabinets are such. And I eat them at any and every time of day, too. Weird. Aaanyway.
Part Three:
My first voice lesson ever. For some reason or another, it's not dated, but it was senior year at MHS.
~
I'm two minutes late. I'm always fucking late. But I'd never driven here before and I didn't know how to get inside the church. The scent of the church unearths feelings and memories of St. Paul, but I try not to think about that right now. Just focus on finding the room. Ah there. Little alcove, two chairs, a couch, a small table with a phone. That's odd. Who would call?
I know it's the room because I can hear soprano warblings on the other side of the door, accompanied by a studio piano. The door opens, and there stands Mama Cass, in her late forties with curly hair - Theresa.
"Emma?"
"Hi." Hand shake.
"Come right in." I walk in and sit on the stool by the piano. "Stand up. What part do you sing?"
"Soprano."
"One or two?"
"Well, two, but--"
"Arpeggios, please." And she presses a B flat, where most vocal exercises begin (because that is the note at or around which most women speak, but anyway). Barely comprehending, I produce a somewhat flat arpeggio, and she responds with the same note. I fix my mistake enough to move to the B. The exercise continues until she is satisfied. "Chromatic scale." She begins again at the B flat. Again, I produce the desired results until she says, "Whole steps now." Harder, but with my ridiculous amount of experience, still a simple task. "Goood," she praises, surprised a bit. "Have you done descending arpeggios?" I nod. She presses the B flat again, this time descending until I'm in tenor range. "Nice range," and then comes the bit I was expecting at first.
She asks about my experience, my goals, my strengths, my weaknesses - really everything she's supposed to ask about. I present her with the audition piece that I detest the most. God, melismas again.
Let me just explain for a minute about melismas (aka the runs). The whole idea is one syllable, many notes. Think "Angels We Have Heard on High"; the chorus is one big run. According to Wikipedia, "music of the ancient cultures used melismatic techniques to achieve a hypnotic trance in the listener, useful for early mystical initiation rites and religious worship." Well, early renaissance composers created their masses with such church music in mind, and several techniques from said music came out in a different form and stuck that way. An example is the melisma. Many composers (Mendelssohn in this case, but also Brahms, Haydn, Faure, and many, many more) think it's just ever so much fun to make sopranos sing 15- or 20-measure-long runs that start at, say, an A in the middle of the treble staff and end at, oh i don't know, a D or E above the staff. Some composers are worse than others, tending to think that Sopranos are flutes or occasionally piccolos. It's not a problem at all in choral singing, where staggered breathing is acceptable, but in solo performance (like a voice lesson or audition piece), any breath-taking at all within the pattern is forbidden. Not to mention that, just as with any other wind instrument, singing higher notes takes more - more air, more relaxation, more concentration, more focus, more control - no matter what part you are. Furthermore, runs tend to be especially irritating because composers also like to make them piano or pianissimo or have an enormous crescendo (or decrescendo for that matter) over the entire thing.
So I'm singing this Mendelssohn melisma that goes on forever at a mezzo piano with a crescendo that goes over my break (Breaks are too complicated to explain now, but I will say that it's not the sort of break that occurs going from chest voice to head voice. I'm not stupid.) at the F and continues to peak at an A above the staff (not too high for a first, but still) before tumbling back down, and I'm doing it all in one breath...Right. But I have to, which is why I'm here really. I'm auditioning as a first, so I have to sound like a first, so I have to come here for help.
She makes me do it over and over and over again. The same run a hundred times. My voice is tired and I know I've strained it, but I keep going because it's getting better every now and then. She doesn't play it on the keys, she just gives me the starting chord and sits and watches and listens and taps the occasional note when I've gotten completely off course. My water's gone, I'm sweating, my voice aches, I hate myself to the nth degree, I'm feeling dizzy, and the lesson is over. She take the cassette tape I brought from me and sets her tape player to record the underlying piano part alone and then just the soprano line. "Do you have access to a piano?"
"My parents bought me a really nice keyboard."
"Do you play?"
"Not too well, but enough to accompany myself."
"Well, good. See you next week."
And I'm so exhausted that I can't believe I still have to drive home. I have realized over the past few visits to Susan, my "alternative physical therapist", that my body is never more tense than when I am singing. For some reason, I feel that because my throat must be relaxed, the rest of my body must be taut, ready for anything. But I know that a lot of it comes from the focus. Because when I'm singing I am so focused on so many things that all culminate into one thing. One thing so big and intense that requires so much effort that I don't have time to notice anything else. My voice.
Part Four:
This part may only make sense to me, but whatevs. I was just thinking about that sort of tension today at choir. It's still true. My entire body is so geared towards the seemingly simple act of producing a beautiful sound that every muscle is tense and waiting. I notice it most during the breaks. Dan's up there talking about his baroque ensemble or Christmas in Washington or who knows what, but I'm still forward in my chair, ready.
When I sing I can't watch the director's hands or arms or baton. I have to watch his/her eyes. From there I can not only see the beat of the hands, the flow of gestures...I can also see the emotion behind it; I can anticipate the next swell or tempo change; I can see the cue to breathe or pause coming before it's formed. It always bothered me that Dr. Hawkins told us to watch the baton. Sometimes Dan says that, too, but mostly he just says "Watch me," which I like a lot more. As a result of my direct eye contact, though, Dan tends to always look at me whenever he cues the second sopranos (makes me uncomfortablllle).
What is it with music people and being too willing to share your whole life story with people? Voice teachers, choir directors, band directors - they all tell you things you never wanted to hear. And they'll just go on and on about extremely personal things that aren't necessarily appropriate. Perhaps it's the personal nature of music itself. Art teachers tend to do it, too. Maybe sharing their arts, their passions, causes teachers to think of you more personally than you think of them.
I think it's interesting, then, to contrast this openness with theatre. Theatre directors don't do that. They usually maintain a very professional distance (at least while actually directing), whereas the actors on stage have personal relationships bound entirely by the confines of the stage they act upon. Showmances and all that. As an actor you tend to become your character, or at least your character becomes a large part of who you are, depending on your acting strategies and how much you get into it. (As a side note, I'd just like to say that, in professional theatre, when characters have sex on stage, they are usually actually having sex. I say usually referring to the physical, but emotionally they always are, whether it be rape or incest or love or lust or whatever.) You have these unbelievably intense emotional relationships onstage with people you may barely know off. A theatre director has to stay impartial, to remind the actors occasionally that it is all just an act. Without that reminder, I have no doubt that at least some actors, if not most, would literally become they're characters permanently.
So really, a theatre director and a musical director are almost opposites. A musical director (and I'm talking about ensembles here) has to create some sense that you aren't yourself, that you are part of this large, amorphous being creating one complex sound. Blend. A musical director becomes a part of the ensemble, the metaphorical head of the being, you might say. He gets so wrapped up in what's happening in front of him that he blends into it himself. Is this director just another actor on stage? What would it be like if theatre directors behaved that way? Being both an actor and a director in the same play.
This is what I love so much about performing. I become this completely different thing, be it a part of this amorphous being by creating blend, or an entirely separate and individual being. I become so absorbed in being this other thing that I lose myself sometimes. And when I finally find that one piece of the puzzle that completes the person that I am pretending to be, I feel overwhelmed by the enormity of it. But returning to that sense of self creates a sense of accomplishment that is inexplicable. Effort well spent.
Damn I love to sing.
Yeah. I think too much.
Part One:
This might be really interesting, or really boring. But to me it is fascinating because I am extremely self-involved sometimes. I've been wondering about this for a while now. What is it about me that attracts men? I'm not talking about long-term, relationship-type attraction here. I would just like to know what is physically attractive. What is it that makes black men say "Hey, baby girl...", beer bellies gawk at me, assholes honk at me, intellectual types regard me with interest, artsy guys gaze at me, old men make irritating comments about my attire/hair, and nerdy guys nervous around me? I can't fathom what it could be. I spend much of my random time while out and about, pondering this mystery. My face (in my opinion) leaves much to be desired, though it has it's good parts. My eyes are especially piercing, or so I understand. But I don't think that would motivate disgusting men to check me out from far away. My body is not exactly the sort that models or celebrities or even just "sexy" women tend to have. And obviously it's not my hair, since its length and the amount of catcalls and stares I receive daily are not proportionate in any way. So it seems to me the only plausible explanation is just that men do this to every woman they see. Please, ladies, help me out here. Does this happen to you a lot? I mean, a lot, a lot. Because most of my friends feel offended or flattered when this happens to them, but for me it occurs so often that it fails to phase me anymore. Seriously. It's ridiculous. Just wondering. So now that I'm done being extremely self-absorbed and egotistical and what have you,
Part Two:
Maybe you do know this already, but I'm going to write it anyway. My favorite foods are the heartiest. Bread, pasta, samosas, beef, etc. Things that really fill you up so that you feel ready to burst. But the foods I eat the most of are breakfast foods. As in, for dinner tonight (and just so you know, I try to eat six small-ish meals a day, so my dinner consists of two separate meals - one at six or so and one at ten-ish.) I ate two eggs, a bagel with low-fat (of course) cream cheese, four pieces of turkey bacon, some muesli, a whole wheat pancake, and a beer. I don't know why, but I just love eating breakfast foods. The majority of foods I have in my fridge and cabinets are such. And I eat them at any and every time of day, too. Weird. Aaanyway.
Part Three:
My first voice lesson ever. For some reason or another, it's not dated, but it was senior year at MHS.
~
I'm two minutes late. I'm always fucking late. But I'd never driven here before and I didn't know how to get inside the church. The scent of the church unearths feelings and memories of St. Paul, but I try not to think about that right now. Just focus on finding the room. Ah there. Little alcove, two chairs, a couch, a small table with a phone. That's odd. Who would call?
I know it's the room because I can hear soprano warblings on the other side of the door, accompanied by a studio piano. The door opens, and there stands Mama Cass, in her late forties with curly hair - Theresa.
"Emma?"
"Hi." Hand shake.
"Come right in." I walk in and sit on the stool by the piano. "Stand up. What part do you sing?"
"Soprano."
"One or two?"
"Well, two, but--"
"Arpeggios, please." And she presses a B flat, where most vocal exercises begin (because that is the note at or around which most women speak, but anyway). Barely comprehending, I produce a somewhat flat arpeggio, and she responds with the same note. I fix my mistake enough to move to the B. The exercise continues until she is satisfied. "Chromatic scale." She begins again at the B flat. Again, I produce the desired results until she says, "Whole steps now." Harder, but with my ridiculous amount of experience, still a simple task. "Goood," she praises, surprised a bit. "Have you done descending arpeggios?" I nod. She presses the B flat again, this time descending until I'm in tenor range. "Nice range," and then comes the bit I was expecting at first.
She asks about my experience, my goals, my strengths, my weaknesses - really everything she's supposed to ask about. I present her with the audition piece that I detest the most. God, melismas again.
Let me just explain for a minute about melismas (aka the runs). The whole idea is one syllable, many notes. Think "Angels We Have Heard on High"; the chorus is one big run. According to Wikipedia, "music of the ancient cultures used melismatic techniques to achieve a hypnotic trance in the listener, useful for early mystical initiation rites and religious worship." Well, early renaissance composers created their masses with such church music in mind, and several techniques from said music came out in a different form and stuck that way. An example is the melisma. Many composers (Mendelssohn in this case, but also Brahms, Haydn, Faure, and many, many more) think it's just ever so much fun to make sopranos sing 15- or 20-measure-long runs that start at, say, an A in the middle of the treble staff and end at, oh i don't know, a D or E above the staff. Some composers are worse than others, tending to think that Sopranos are flutes or occasionally piccolos. It's not a problem at all in choral singing, where staggered breathing is acceptable, but in solo performance (like a voice lesson or audition piece), any breath-taking at all within the pattern is forbidden. Not to mention that, just as with any other wind instrument, singing higher notes takes more - more air, more relaxation, more concentration, more focus, more control - no matter what part you are. Furthermore, runs tend to be especially irritating because composers also like to make them piano or pianissimo or have an enormous crescendo (or decrescendo for that matter) over the entire thing.
So I'm singing this Mendelssohn melisma that goes on forever at a mezzo piano with a crescendo that goes over my break (Breaks are too complicated to explain now, but I will say that it's not the sort of break that occurs going from chest voice to head voice. I'm not stupid.) at the F and continues to peak at an A above the staff (not too high for a first, but still) before tumbling back down, and I'm doing it all in one breath...Right. But I have to, which is why I'm here really. I'm auditioning as a first, so I have to sound like a first, so I have to come here for help.
She makes me do it over and over and over again. The same run a hundred times. My voice is tired and I know I've strained it, but I keep going because it's getting better every now and then. She doesn't play it on the keys, she just gives me the starting chord and sits and watches and listens and taps the occasional note when I've gotten completely off course. My water's gone, I'm sweating, my voice aches, I hate myself to the nth degree, I'm feeling dizzy, and the lesson is over. She take the cassette tape I brought from me and sets her tape player to record the underlying piano part alone and then just the soprano line. "Do you have access to a piano?"
"My parents bought me a really nice keyboard."
"Do you play?"
"Not too well, but enough to accompany myself."
"Well, good. See you next week."
And I'm so exhausted that I can't believe I still have to drive home. I have realized over the past few visits to Susan, my "alternative physical therapist", that my body is never more tense than when I am singing. For some reason, I feel that because my throat must be relaxed, the rest of my body must be taut, ready for anything. But I know that a lot of it comes from the focus. Because when I'm singing I am so focused on so many things that all culminate into one thing. One thing so big and intense that requires so much effort that I don't have time to notice anything else. My voice.
Part Four:
This part may only make sense to me, but whatevs. I was just thinking about that sort of tension today at choir. It's still true. My entire body is so geared towards the seemingly simple act of producing a beautiful sound that every muscle is tense and waiting. I notice it most during the breaks. Dan's up there talking about his baroque ensemble or Christmas in Washington or who knows what, but I'm still forward in my chair, ready.
When I sing I can't watch the director's hands or arms or baton. I have to watch his/her eyes. From there I can not only see the beat of the hands, the flow of gestures...I can also see the emotion behind it; I can anticipate the next swell or tempo change; I can see the cue to breathe or pause coming before it's formed. It always bothered me that Dr. Hawkins told us to watch the baton. Sometimes Dan says that, too, but mostly he just says "Watch me," which I like a lot more. As a result of my direct eye contact, though, Dan tends to always look at me whenever he cues the second sopranos (makes me uncomfortablllle).
What is it with music people and being too willing to share your whole life story with people? Voice teachers, choir directors, band directors - they all tell you things you never wanted to hear. And they'll just go on and on about extremely personal things that aren't necessarily appropriate. Perhaps it's the personal nature of music itself. Art teachers tend to do it, too. Maybe sharing their arts, their passions, causes teachers to think of you more personally than you think of them.
I think it's interesting, then, to contrast this openness with theatre. Theatre directors don't do that. They usually maintain a very professional distance (at least while actually directing), whereas the actors on stage have personal relationships bound entirely by the confines of the stage they act upon. Showmances and all that. As an actor you tend to become your character, or at least your character becomes a large part of who you are, depending on your acting strategies and how much you get into it. (As a side note, I'd just like to say that, in professional theatre, when characters have sex on stage, they are usually actually having sex. I say usually referring to the physical, but emotionally they always are, whether it be rape or incest or love or lust or whatever.) You have these unbelievably intense emotional relationships onstage with people you may barely know off. A theatre director has to stay impartial, to remind the actors occasionally that it is all just an act. Without that reminder, I have no doubt that at least some actors, if not most, would literally become they're characters permanently.
So really, a theatre director and a musical director are almost opposites. A musical director (and I'm talking about ensembles here) has to create some sense that you aren't yourself, that you are part of this large, amorphous being creating one complex sound. Blend. A musical director becomes a part of the ensemble, the metaphorical head of the being, you might say. He gets so wrapped up in what's happening in front of him that he blends into it himself. Is this director just another actor on stage? What would it be like if theatre directors behaved that way? Being both an actor and a director in the same play.
This is what I love so much about performing. I become this completely different thing, be it a part of this amorphous being by creating blend, or an entirely separate and individual being. I become so absorbed in being this other thing that I lose myself sometimes. And when I finally find that one piece of the puzzle that completes the person that I am pretending to be, I feel overwhelmed by the enormity of it. But returning to that sense of self creates a sense of accomplishment that is inexplicable. Effort well spent.
Damn I love to sing.
Yeah. I think too much.