Singing revisited

 

It is much too hot.  Much too hot.  The hellhounds agree.*  Hellhounds say, Fie! Thou insultest us with food?  We spurn both thee and it.**

Sigh.  It’s not enough to be hot*** and cranky and stupid, I have to worry extra about the frelling hellhounds.†

I’m starting this post way too late—it’s well past midnight.††  Our visitors took us out to dinner and then I went back with them to Third House so I could hear Percival sing.  Gah.  Why am I BOTHERING with voice lessons?  He offered not to sing Linden Lea because I’m singing it for Nadia right now . . . but I love Linden Lea:  of course I want to hear someone who can sing sing it.†††  The rooms in Third House are rather small.  He just about pins your hair back even when he’s not trying to project.  SIIIIIIIIIGH.

So why am I bothering?  Because I love singing.  Sue me.  But every time the hellhounds Produce Another Inappropriate Behaviour‡ my dingleblatting throat closes up again or further, so during a week that has included heat, geysering and non-eating—plus, this week, an insane pollen count which has given me a fairly insane headache and a sore throat that keeps moving around like it’s looking for something—I can go through my exercises all I like, singing is not happening.  I half-tried to cancel my lesson today:  I emailed Nadia yesterday saying that I had a sore throat, no voice and a nasty attitude, and that if she’d like the end of the afternoon off—I’m her last student—she could cancel me.  Well, she didn’t.  So, secretly glad, I got there early enough to sit in a patch of shade with my knitting‡‡ and listen to her almost-pro-baritone-who-decided-to-be-a-doctor-instead and thinking, okay, I’m bothering because Nadia has two kiddies she’s going to have to put through college and she needs the money.‡‡‡

It was a surprisingly good lesson, after all of that.§  Mainly it’s teacher magic—my wretched throat was so startled it forgot to cough.  But as will not amaze regular readers I have a little problem with relaxation and Nadia finally leaped to her feet muttering, I have a book . . . and brought back something with gruesome anatomical pictures of people’s noise-making apparatus.  I should know a lot more of this than I do;  I studied anatomy in homeopathy college and have a fabulous, if extremely lurid, anatomy book of my very own.  But I mostly didn’t get above the thyroid, and while I know what vocal folds and the larynx look like, the tongue was a revelation.  I know, theoretically, it’s bigger than you think it is, but it’s HUGE.  It fills that whole vast area of your lower jaw.  There’s a lot of it to relax.  Or not, as the case may be.  But I feel quite inspired about having another important tool I can deploy at home:  relax that blasted tongue.  Now.§§

Percival finished tonight by singing Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes which tickled me extremely, since it’s one of my oldest favouritest favourites—and I wouldn’t have thought anyone under the age of ninety would be learning it voluntarily.  I came home singing it, probably to the dismay of the neighbours.§§§  And I’m presently listening to a CD by The Choir of New College Oxford, called Early One Morning and of the twenty songs on it I sing seventeen of them (including Early One Morning§§§) and not singing Sumer is Icumen in doesn’t really count because I only know it as a round which means you need someone to sing it with.  But.  Hey.  I may not sound like much but I’m developing repertoire.

* * *

* The hellterror says, Hot, schmot, where’s my next meal?

** Hellterror says, Risk of food wastage?  Not to worry.  I can handle it.^

^ There’s probably a superhero(ine) possibility here.  I just have to figure out how to package it.  Supereater Dog! doesn’t have the vibrancy somehow.  But consider how convenient a critter that will eat ANYTHING will be the next time your army/group of adventurers is trapped on the wrong side of a mountain range in bad weather.  Barring a tame horla, a picked troop of hellterrors will totally do the job.^

^ Think how differently the second book of THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING would have turned out if they had had some hellterrors with them.

*** I am well aware that what the south of England is withstanding doesn’t even register with anyone who is living in, say, New Mexico or Texas . . . but it counts as hot here.  It’s just as well that seventeen-year-old Wolfgang doesn’t have aircon, or hellcritters and I would be spending a lot of time driving nowhere in particular.

† Superfluously-frelling Chaos had one of those nights when the hellgoddess didn’t get any sleep, Saturday.  I’ve got another phone call in to the Detox Man.  I assume Chaos is manifesting another layer that needs clearing.  I am looking forward to bedrock.

†† Eh.  It’s too hot to sleep.  I’m not missing anything.

††† Singing The Roadside Fire doesn’t stop me listening to Bryn Terfel sing it.^  Singing Dido’s Lament doesn’t stop me listening to Janet Baker and 1,000,000 superb mezzos singing it.

^ Percival says he’s going to learn it, he just hasn’t got round to it yet.  It’s on the list.

‡ Chaos has actually eaten dinner.  Having rejected lunch unilaterally.  Darkness, being as one with his brother on the subject of lunch, hasn’t eaten dinner either, and I’m starting to breathe rather hard, since the bottom line with these guys has always been if they stop eating they don’t start again.  They consider hunger a character flaw and they weary of humouring me on this topic.

‡‡ I’ve decided that knitting wool in tragic heat is good for morale.  It reminds you that it will get cold again.

‡‡‡ Although I think she has a waiting list.  And maybe the next person on it sounds like Percival. . . . No, I’m not going there.

§ It’s also surprisingly encouraging to hear a really good singer make mistakes.  Hey.  They make mistakes.  You don’t hear the professionals on the concert platform doing anything but the final shiny performance.

§§ Yeah, that’ll work.  Uh-huh.  Sure.

§§§ Including Linden Lea.  Not Drink to Me Only however.