Tantrum
I went to my voice lesson today in Tantrum Mode. I knew I was in tantrum mode, I’m nearly sixty years old*, I’m only doing this for fun** and I haven’t done it for very long, so it’s not like this was going to be a world-melting tantrum or anything—also I’ve been listening to the finals of the Cardiff Singer of the World this week, and if there’s anything better calculated for making a nearly-sixty-year-old new singer who can just about be heard across the room on a good day, chiefly because she’s piercingly SHRILL***, feel like a very good baker of brownies and hurtler of hounds, I don’t want to know about it. Cardiff was enough. And of course you don’t, when you’re an elderly new amateur singer, compare yourself with fabulously talented and optimally trained young singers hoping to make a career of it. No, actually, I’m not being ironic, you don’t. But what happens is that you still fall in the chasm. I can stand not being a finalist for Cardiff† like I can stand not making it to the national dressage championships. But there’s a difference between being able to do nice round elastic transitions, and maybe even a flying change and a half pass or two, in your semi-flat back field with your nice (relatively) sound (relatively) cooperative half-bred nothing horse with whom you have a long-standing (relatively) friendly relationship and with whom you communicate pretty well (relatively)†† . . . and cantering around your back garden on the broomstick you have named Desert Orchid††† and made a bridle for out of shoelaces. I do not want to canter around my back garden on a broomstick. ‡ But I feel that’s what I’m doing with my singing.
Blondel managed to distract me somewhat from my essential awfulness by flinging music at me: I was so busy learning tunes I didn’t have time to get stuck on what I sounded like ( . . . relatively). Although I think this halcyon phase was coming to an end anyway; I took lessons from him for about a year and he managed to magick me from ‘hopeless’ to ‘something there to work with’. And once you start thinking that maybe there’s something there to work with the Quality Police are all over you like pink on Mme Isaac Pereire. ‡‡ And the problem with singing folk songs—even Benjamin Britten’s settings of folk songs—is that they’re so frelling naked. As Nadia herself says, with a glint in her eye, singing something simple like a folk song well is very difficult. Yes, I know, I reply. Kathleen Ferrier.‡‡‡
Anyway. The point is, I suck. I suck. I mean, the Quality Police would probably take my broomstick away from me. § It’s all very well that I’m only doing it—singing—for fun and I haven’t been doing it for very long and my goal is only to be able to sing in an amateur choir a rung or two of the ladder above the Muddlehamptons—which goal has a lot less to do with perceived quality than with choice of material: no stupid frelling pop songs§§—it doesn’t matter. I SUCK.
Tantrum. I told you.
So I went in and told Nadia that I was having a tantrum, and that I’m tired of being a squeaky, useless little nebbish, and that practising at home is just an exercise in self-loathing and that the only reason the Muddlehamptons will have me is because they’ll take anyone,§§§ and when I can listen to Marilyn Horne or Joyce DiDonato on CD why am I BOTHERING?
And she listened to me calmly, asked me a lot of questions toward a more practical definition of the description ‘suck’, reminded me that one of the things practise is for at the moment is merely getting my voice fit enough to, you know, do stuff, suggested a few alterations to the how and what I practise . . . and then did her Teacher Magic so that by the end of the session I was singing The Ash Grove with almost more good notes than bad ones. And shot me back out of there absolutely hot to get another week’s practise laid down so I can get closer to my goals. . . .
A good teacher is worth her weight in gold. Or, in Nadia’s case, more than that. She’s quite a small person. And she’s worth quite a lot of gold.
* * *
Earlier today someone on Twitter referred to DEERSKIN as a horror novel. I retweeted saying, it is? And there’s been an interesting conversation about this—and about whether SUNSHINE is horror either—I don’t myself think either of them is, and while I understand the argument for SUNSHINE (I just don’t want it in the horror section of your local bookstore/library) I was pretty startled to see someone suggest that DEERSKIN belongs in that category. I managed to blurt most of what I’d want to say about the matter in a series of 140-character bursts, but I’m still thinking about writing a blog post about it. If any of you wants to weigh in, either in the forum here, Facebook, or Twitter . . . please do. Hey, the more interesting comments there are the less I have to write.
* * *
* Eeeeep
** As I keep reminding myself. I’m only doing this for FUN.^
^ I’m only bell ringing for fun.+
+ I’m only KNITTING for . . . ~
~ Trauma, lumps, too many ends and despair
*** Peter keeps claiming he likes to hear me sing. Isn’t that sweet?
† And a good thing too. No, but I like being a writer.^
^ Um. Sometimes.
†† Anyone who does it all perfectly all the time is either an alien or lying. And their horse is either an alien or lying too.
††† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Orchid
‡ All witch/hag/crone/sorceress references here will be scorned.
‡‡ http://www.davidaustinroses.com/english/showrose.asp?showr=551
‡‡‡ Because I am totally hopeless and stupid, I have just wasted a good ten minutes looking for a YouTube of Eileen Farrell singing Blow the Wind Southerly, when eventually it occurred to me that who I meant to be looking for is Kathleen Ferrier. Shoot me, I’m too dumb to live.
But meanwhile, if you have the stomach for it—and anyone under the age of fifty probably doesn’t—listen to the frelling quality of this voice. Shoot me again, before I start singing (again).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VB_wz6Pdzc&feature=related
Oh, and yes, I have sung Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms.^ I play it (on the piano) too. How can you resist a lyric that goes ‘Let thy loveliness fade as it will/ And around the dear ruin, each wish of my heart/ Would entwine itself verdantly still.’
Anyway. Here’s what I meant to be finding for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjvHg9cBriw
Sigh.
And, just because I love it^^, and because Blondel let me sing it . . . and because it provided one of those critical Moments of Ultimate Trauma, in this case when I had to come in ALL BY MYSELF WITHOUT THE PIANO . . . argle gargle blerg whimper, but listen to this voice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68j0aCur3lM —Just by the way, I feel only someone with a Kathleen-Ferrier voice would dare take it this slowly.
^ You call that SINGING? —Only very late at night, after a couple of glasses of champagne. Hic. Which would be now, since you mention it.
^^ Unfortunately, Oisin says that the Muddlehamptons sang the Messiah fairly recently. Oh well. I’m not going for any solos anyway.
§ Not to mention all my pink t shirts.
§§ But it probably would involve passing an audition. I’ll think about that later. Like, 2015 or something.
§§§ See: not having to pass an audition.
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