Another year another voice lesson

 

Okay, we’re carrying over all the aaaaaaugh and angst from yesterday, okay?  Etc etc etc etc.  Why didn’t I grow up to be a fireperson or a vet?*  Why did I grow up to be a WRITER?**

Meanwhile . . . I had my first post-holiday voice lesson today.  Now a sane, responsible, grown-up sort of person would have cancelled it due to Stress of Bill-Paying-Job*** Deadline, right?  Nobody out there would mistake me for a sane, responsible, grown-up sort of person, would they?†  No, of course I didn’t cancel.

I did go in ASSUMING IT WAS GOING TO BE A DISASTER HOWEVER.  Me?  Bad attitude?  I can’t imagine where you’ve got that idea.  But I’d been both singing and practising every day up till about five days ago when two things happened:  first, it suddenly occurred to me that I was not keeping to a working schedule that was going to allow me to meet my thrice-blasted deadline and second, the frelling Muddlehamptons are threatening to change the concert date due to conflict with another piffling third-rate amateur group performance . . . to another of my opera days.  ARRRRRRGH.  Also, I’m sorry, but while generally speaking I can use some repertoire, any repertoire, I would not be spending time learning this INCREDIBLY anodyne John Rutter rubbish if it I weren’t planning to sing it in my choir’s frelling concert.  And then I was late to Nadia today when my posh neighbour who thinks that foreign peons with ancient (filthy) decrepit vehicles don’t count managed to block me both in AND out of my parking space at the cottage, and fury makes all of my voice except the very high and very low notes close down.

So, late and squeaking/bellowing, I went panting in and told Nadia that as a result of listening to myself sound really horrible on that recording before Christmas and realising that I was letting myself down because there was actually enough voice there to do something with and I WASN’T doing it or I wouldn’t sound so HORRIBLE (and therefore also letting my voice teacher down, since she’s the one created this monster out of even less plausible bits and scraps than Dr Frankenstein used) and she said, hey Robin, that’s really great, you’ve found ANOTHER stick to beat yourself with!  Did you find it behind the Christmas tree?

Oh.

But I’ve got like three whole pages of notes from today’s lesson and came away all charged up to SING because it’s FUN.  Which, as Nadia pointed out, only gently holding the bridge of her nose while she closed her eyes and spoke in calm, gentle one- and two-syllable words, that’s what I’m taking voice lessons FOR. Because singing is FUN.

. . . And now, enough of that, back to work.

* * *

* Possibly because I’m terrified of fire and hopeless at science, an awful lot of which you need to get into med school.  Not to mention the way most of your clients hate you and you probably wanted to be a vet because you love animals.

** I don’t even like sitting around in my dressing-gown all day.  And remember LAURA, where the icky journalist guy writes in the BATH?  Ewwwwwww.  Not to mention the hot-water bills.

*** Have I mentioned I need a new REFRIGERATOR?  The old one has stopped being, you know, cold.  Tra la la.  I presently have a large white refrigerator-shaped object covered in refrigerator magnets taking up SPACE^ in my kitchen and I’m keeping everything that needs to stay cold on the window-box shelf outside the kitchen door, attractively arranged among the geraniums.  Arrrgh.  I’ll go price refrigerators AFTER I get the book turned in.

^ Actually it’s a tiny under-counter-sized refrigerator, because it’s part of the Block of Dwarf Appliances under the stairs, which is what I’ve got room for in this kitchen at all.  But I noticed that it grew as soon as it stopped working.

† Thank you, by the way, for all the kind comments about my mini-skirted presentation the other night.  I wanted to say that of course it’s vanity, that not all of us were simply born with good legs (and note that unless it’s 110/43° in the shade and NOTHING ELSE MATTERS I do have to wear tights) and furthermore that I’m a little too willing to turn almost^ anything into a blog post. . . . But as I’ve said to several of you individually there’s also a certain sense of holding the line.  Western first-world society is awfully preoccupied with youth and celebrity and there’s quite a lot of life left after thirty or forty or fifty . . . or sixty . . . even if you’re not the Queen or Judi Dench.  Some of us hold the line by getting third PhDs or adopting at-risk children.  Some of us learn method bell ringing, take voice lessons and wear miniskirts.^^

^ almost

^^ and bring home frelling hellterror puppies