I sang. I rang.

 

Yessssssss.

            I got up this morning convinced I was doing a really dumb, time-wasting-when-I-have-even-less-time-to-waste-than-usual, thing, going to my voice lesson when I'm still totally croaking.*   I told myself that I had to go to Mauncester anyway, to pick up more organic composted farmyard manure for the garden(s) so I might as well tack a voice lesson on the end of it.**  I looked dubiously at my music, which positively has dust *** on it, and decided to take the easy end of it along in case Nadia wanted to recommend this pathetic baby thing rather than that.  And I took my notebook, of course, to write down her pearls, rubies and sapphires of wisdom.

            So I got there and she said blandly, I think it would be a good idea just to attempt to warm your voice up a little—I may be able to advise you about how to work this week.  Croak, I said.  That's fine, she said.  We'll start with the nnnn sound.  We can add an actual pitch in later.

            Nnnn, I said. . . .

            Teacher magic.  It's amazing.  Oh, I still have a throat full of crud † but my larynx isn't made of cement after all and by the end of the hour I was SINGING.  I was not singing well††, but I was indubitably SINGING.  Nadia said (possibly a trifle smugly) that one of the reasons some of the notes just weren't there—open mouth, nothing comes out—isn't about my throat at all, but about the fact that because of all this emotional stuff I've shut down, and specifically I've shut my voice off from my air supply.  And she taught me the Lip Trill, which she says is very good for reconnecting with your air supply because it's so hard to maintain.   All you singers out there will know the Lip Trill.  What it really is is a blowing-horse imitation:  you blow out through your lips so they go Pbpbpbpbpbpbpb†††  It's also supposed to relax the muscles around your mouth.‡  Which probably explains why I can't do it.  So now it's homework.  I have to learn to pbpbpbpbpbpbpb.  She also made me do the opening-curtains thing to make me more positive, and the drinking-a-glass-of-water-on-a-hot-day‡‡ thing, which I hadn't done before, to open my throat.  Why does this stuff work.  It is insane.

            I had already noticed that what notes are available—and they've been creeping home one by one like party-goers after dawn, the last two or three days—are mostly the upper-middle of my register.  I'm not even trying the top end, but my voice starts cutting out again around middle C, and I should have a whole octave below that.  Nadia kept coming back here and I'd go croak and she'd move back up again.  Finally at the very end of the hour something shifted and I began singing in my chest voice—usually, as these things go with me, the gear change into chest voice is not all that big a deal.  Ah, she said, that's what I was hoping for.  And I was thinking chest voice = speaking voice = not speaking up for myself = duuuuuh.  As I had said to her in my email asking to come for a non-singing singing lesson, I even wonder if the appalling revealingness of singing, depressingly unconnected with any excellence of said singing as it is, is the reason my body chose this method of trying to get my frelling attention.

            Nadia said, I was planning on getting you singing today, you know . . .

            I had about an hour between singing lesson and Penelope and Niall picking me up to go ringing at Glaciation.‡‡‡  Whapwhapwhapwhap:   person trying to reorient.  Whap.  Which—ringing—felt totally normal . . . and really, really weird and sad and creepy.  I haven't got a tower any more.  I'm just some random bell ringer who knows some people in this area.  Brrrrr.  But ringing rounds for beginners is always grounding as well as making you feel you're contributing to the community§ and we managed to ring Cambridge even if I then went on to make a pig's ear of an innocent touch of Stedman which I ought to be able to do in my sleep.§§  Slightly in my defense I was ringing on the one remaining bell I don't know for Stedman—the three—and there are always moments of vertigo as you figure out where you are on a new bell in a familiar pattern.  But mostly I just blatfarging botched it.  But they didn't tell me not to come back, so hey. 

            And I have gone around today thrusting my knitting under everyone's noses and saying, Look!  Ribbing!  Real ribbing!  

* * *

* Although there is a little Freelancers Must Stick Together too.  Nadia doesn't charge for legitimately missed lessons, so she's losing money when I don't come.  This preys on my conscience. 

** Going to the local farm shop would have absorbed about forty minutes out of my day.  Plus voice lesson made it about three hours.  Being really, really bad at arithmetic^ has its uses. 

^ Possibly I mean 'logic' here. 

*** And hellhound hair.  But everything in these households has hellhound hair on it, including me, and I am in almost constant use. 

†  ::Grossness alert::  And I was gacking up horrible gunge on the drive home, after having all those secret inner bits stirred up by Nadia's intervention.  MAJOR DISGUSTING EWWWW.  One of the oddities of this illness anyway has been how obsessively focused on my throat it's been so I didn't even know there was all that crudiferousness lurking.  I find myself wondering if I went down a few archaeological layers and was ripping out stuff from some previous occasion when I didn't speak up for myself when I should have.  

†† But then I never sing well.  Sigh.  

††† When in doubt, YouTube.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt7eTRyRKpA 

‡ I don't think there's any of me that DOESN'T need relaxing.  My hair needs relaxing.  My fingernails need relaxing.  Possibly especially a week before the book I'm working on is due.  

‡‡ Beer if I preferred, she said.  No, I said, the way I get into this nonsense of yours, I need to be sober to drive home. 

‡‡‡ My voice lesson got moved later when it got made an hour long, and Colin's practise has had a quarter hour added to the front end because he has a nice fresh growing crop of beginners who need cultivating.  This is not ideal for me.  On a bad ME day I'll have to miss Colin, although give me a shooting stick to lean on and I can probably ring rounds for beginners even if I'm seeing double. 

§ Contributing!  To the [ringing] community!  AAAAAAAUGH! 

§§ Although given how well I'm sleeping lately. . .