Prospective Anguish
Voice lesson tomorrow. How can it be TOMORROW again already?* I’ve been putting my practise time in and I’m still nowhere as far along as I meant to be.** I’ve been reminding myself again that you can’t have a breakthrough every week or you’ll be trying out for the Met[ropolitan Opera] by the end of the year.*** I can have a nice, supportive, ordinary voice lesson tomorrow and it will be fine.
Except of course that I’m convinced that I’ll sound underprepared—as if I’ve been lying around admiring myself all week instead of practising. It’s exactly the same arc of non-triomphe as all the rest, about having something to lose. When you are first learning something—okay, when I am first learning something—I have nothing to lose. Everything is a huge fascinating wonderful exciting adventure.† And then . . . suddenly . . . you’ve learnt something . . . and now you have something to lose. I remember vividly this happening the first time I tried to learn bell ringing—when I went from being a very mildly precocious learner-handler†† to being someone who was supposed to be able to ring call changes reliably enough to ring Sunday service. I had something to lose. I don’t think I seriously considered dropping out at that point††† but I was glumly aware that ringing had gone from being the best fun ever to a responsibility.‡ Feh. Thanks to bell ringing however ‡‡ when the something-to-lose line was crossed in my voice lessons, first singing for Blondel, and now, more emphatically, because whether I like it or not I’m farther along with Nadia than I had the chance to get to with Blondel, it was like oh, frelling gods, you again, and wasn’t a huge crisis. Only a moderate sized crisis. I live to make life hard for myself. And I’m good at it. SIIIIIIGH. ‡‡‡
One of the singing things I haven’t been getting on with this week is learning Dove Sei§ because I’ve got hung up on various other things instead—the new warm-up exercise with the consonant clumps, fitting the frelling words to the frelling tune of Se Tu M’Ami, and ditto Cold Haily Windy Night—which last is embarrassing since not only is Cold Haily my own whim, it’s in English and it’s a folk song. How hard can it be? HA.§§
Dove Sei turns out to be one of these madly famous arias that I don’t happen to know. So of course I turned to YouTube.§§§ There are a lot of countertenors but I wanted a mezzo if I could get her. And there, lo and behold, was Marilyn Horne, one of my idols.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-mo0oPw6vg
LISTEN JUST TO THE FIRST TWO BARS. I AM SO OUT OF HERE.#
* * *
* This, you realise, from a woman who regularly wishes she had more money than sense^ and could have another voice lesson midweek.
^ Not that this would, in fact, take a great deal of money.
** Rather similar to where I am on SHADOWS and doodles. Sigh.
*** Not with this voice. I suppose I could try out for Singing Stagehand.
† This is assuming you’re learning something you want to be learning. Although the first week of a new year of school often had this effect on me. This was the year I was really going to learn stuff. As well as get all As. Then reality struck.
†† This means I was ringing both strokes together by the end of my first lesson. Which for anyone who has tried to learn to ring may sound pretty good. But in the first place the two of us learners^ were told to come half an hour before proper practise started, so we were the only ones ringing—most beginners have to put up with the scrum of the general practise—in the second place we had a very good teacher, and in the third place . . . I caught up with the being stupid part as soon as I tried to learn to ring inside.
^ The other one, a bloke, dropped out after the first few weeks. He wasn’t getting over being afraid of the bells. It happens.
††† That would come later, with the arrival of the ME.
‡ I don’t know if most of the rest of the adult world negotiated the ‘growing up’ thing better than I did, but I still arbitrate the responsibility/fun boundary with much angst and second-guessing. I’m not sure I ever quite regained the ‘fun’ of bell-ringing that first time, much as I loved it, but some of that was my stupid health getting stealthily worse while I tried to ignore the whole situation.^ But that was also the first time I’d tried to learn a wildly, spectacularly, visibly brand-new thing in a lot of years. I’d started learning gardening when I moved over here and married a gardener but gardening happens a lot more slowly, you’re much less likely to be ruining five or seven other people’s day and the tower’s local reputation if you screw up, and generally speaking you can whip your failures out and fling them on the compost heap before anyone else (but your husband) notices. I was ready for the something-to-lose phase when I started ringing again this second time at New Arcadia—and in fact almost didn’t notice, because I was so busy panicking about the approaching learning-to-ring-inside phase.
I was thinking about this today, ringing Grandsire doubles and bob minor for service and lurching successfully through both the Evil Long Thirds Grandsire Single and the Dreaded Three Four Down Bob Minor Single^^ despite being half awake at best. I’m a mediocre ringer but . . . I am a mediocre ringer. I’m not a beginner or a drop-out or someone who only turns up when she has nothing better on. I aspire to being the same kind of mediocre singer . . . which is where I came in.
^ Speaking of responsibility. But I’ve told you, haven’t I, that I started bell ringing the first time during the two-year period before the ME floored me, when I had Regularly Recurring Glandular Fever+ and had had to give up riding horses (again) because of stamina and reliability, neither of which I possessed. Bells don’t need regular exercise.++ And if you can’t come some week because you’re horizontal, someone else will fill in.+++
+ Mononucleosis
++ Actually, they do. Which is why we keep grimly ringing at Old Eden.
+++ Theoretically. We need more ringers. I’d like to start with a band for Old Eden. And another one for Ditherington. And a third for Madhatterington. Sigh.
^^ Which is just the luck of what bell you’re on and what touch your conductor is calling, but it still feels very unfair.
‡‡ See all the above footnotes
‡‡‡ One of the things I’m whacking myself around about presently is my having ADMITTED TO YOU that if I’m really unhappy with a doodle I’ll do it over. This has roused my perfectionism to a shrieking hysterical froth. I can’t redo every doodle I’m not 150% delighted with, because if I did I would still be redrawing the first one for the 1,000,000,000th time. The ones in books are especially traumatic because they’re in BOOOOOOKS. BOOKS are SERIOUS. Also expensive, if I really have to do one over because I spilled tea on it or something.
Have I mentioned that the doodle-icious books are VERY LABOUR INTENSIVE? Yes. Very. This is the something-to-lose thing with great toxic Lovecraftian knobs on: on the short list of practical definitions of pure fun, one of them is getting to DRAW in your own books. How fabulous is that? And I’m busy trying to ruin it for myself. ARRRRGH.
§ Handel. Rodelinda.
§§ I’ve also wasted a certain amount of time riffling through the rest of the book, which is on loan from Nadia, and I have to give it back. But hey. This counts, right? It’s Familiarising Myself with the Repertoire.^
^ Like hell. It’s reading THE THIRTEENTH CHILD in the bath instead of ALGEBRA I FOR DUMMIES.
§§§ Where I’ve been bolstering Se Tu M’Ami with a lot of Cecilia Bartoli. Funny the way she agrees with Nadia.
# After I finished lying on the floor and sobbing, however, I found a student recital performance that I really liked: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhTEvKX–xc It’s not perfect—there are a few rogue moments with the tune—but she’s got a gorgeous voice and she’s so obviously into it. I can’t aspire to the voice, but I can aspire to the into-it-ness. And the idea that you can not be perfect. Which assists in putting aside the desolation of not being Marilyn Horne. Or Janet Baker. Or Cecilia Bartoli. Or . . .
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