Singing distinctively

 

Nadia was off sick last week so today was my first singing lesson in a fortnight.  I wasn’t at all sure how it was going to go;  I tend to slide farther and farther off the beam without my weekly reset and it can get pretty ugly.*  I also told her about Ms OTP**, not only because Nadia’s become a friend and all singing teachers become involuntary psychologists***, but because I did some rather cathartic singing right after that interesting experience happened and while the noise I was making was not particularly beautiful it was real in a way I don’t manage to access very often and I was hoping it might have left a trail of breadcrumbs so I might find where real lives and visit it more often. †

I didn’t locate real but I did find a few suggestive breadcrumbs.  I also made a much stupider mess of Arne’s Blow Blow Thou Winter Wind than I was expecting by the simple fact of Nadia’s playing the accompaniment arrrrrrgh and basso continuo (I think that’s what I mean) floors me every time.  I remember this from Purcell’s Evening Hymn.  I also whacked poor old Frellingsgrrrrr around some more, sulkily said I wanted to sing some more Italian and was told to reapply myself to Voi che sapete.  Yaaaaaaay.

But the thing that was really cheering . . . I’m used to hearing Nadia sing, and when I’m making an unholy ruin of something she’ll sing along to give me something to flail at.  Sigh.  I’ve even got used to her singing a new exercise for me to copy, and then having to open my mouth and listen to my voice after hers.  If I were ever going to throw it in and take up the violin or clog dancing it would be at one of those moments.  I can deal with the fact that she has a professional-level voice and I don’t and never will;  what is really demoralising is that my voice has no character.  It just sounds like random weedy colourless soprano meh.  It’s the characterlessness that is so discouraging.

Every now and then, however, when I sing after Nadia, I don’t sound quite as colourless meh.  I sound like . . . another soprano, singing.  I don’t sound very good, and I sound rough and inadequate and defective after Nadia, but I also sound . . . well, you know, almost real.  I’d go quietly [sic] about rough, inadequate and defective if I could have distinctive and un-meh too.

I had a couple of un-meh moments today.

* * *

* Also at the commissioning service^ last night I was standing next to a very large man who sang very flat.

^ AAAAAAAAAAAUGH.  I can’t remember if I’ve told you that Maxine and I are going to do a form of job-sharing.  She has her kids every other week—changing off with her ex-partner—by a custody ruling that doesn’t match up very well with the SP once-a-month schedule of ‘every first Friday’, ‘every second Saturday’ and so on .  So on the months it doesn’t work, we’ll swap.  Which is a little additionally complicated for Llewellyn doing the designating, and the team leaders involved.  Today Maxine and I got a couple of emails about it and I’m like WILL YOU PLEASE JUST ASSIGN US AND GET IT OVER WITH.

I did take all of my, and the bits she’d forgotten of Maxine’s, paperwork in to be scrutinised today, on my way to Nadia.  We’re getting away with it.  They’ve somehow missed the outstanding Interpol warrants and passed us.

And no I don’t (yet) know what they do about the occasional fifth something in a month.

For knitting on airplanes, laughing at politicians, and eating the last cookie on the plate.

** ExStock

I have enormous sympathy . . . on the attack from Ms. Off the Planet. Okay, well, I don’t know any of your details, so the situations may not match up at all, but I’m definitely reminded of my own current mess. . . .

 …and I’m trying SO hard to forgive her. . . .

 So, I’ve been praying a lot about it, about the fact that I’m determined to find a way to forgive her but it’s hard work. . . .

Zerlina

The thing with forgiveness is it takes time. Just because you forgive someone doesn’t mean you have to talk to them again. Sometimes it’s better for you not to.

Well, chance would be a fine thing.  The problem is that most worlds are small worlds, one way or another, and generally speaking you only make proper enemies from the relatively small group of people who know you well enough for you to get on their nerves (and vice versa).  These are also people who know you well enough to know where to stick the knife in.  And it’s usually awkward if not downright impossible to excise them neatly from your life.  So you need a plan for the next time (for example) someone emails you, hey, how’s [Ms OTP] doing?  Do you suppose she’d like to do a project for me?  —Since setting fire to your computer is probably not your best option.^

I also just want to mention that for anyone who hasn’t tried it, while prayer is amazing and makes all the difference between sitting in a corner and going bleeg bleeg bleeg bleeg^^ and getting on with your life with hope for the future and most of your brain still intact, it’s not an easy option, or anyway it isn’t for me.  You also find yourself sometimes in some rather strange postures, folded up on your zafu with your prayer-list in front of you:  [Ms OTP] IS BRLGKKGGUGGNNXXXX*&^%$£!!!! . . . but I know God loves her.  Hold that (latter) thought.

^ One of the things that frelling bites me is if she wanted to work fewer hours why didn’t she SAY SO?  I assume that every time a freelancer says ‘yes’ to an offer of work she wants the ratblasted work and I have this now-proved-idiotic idea that us freelancers need to stick together.  Cue hollow laughter.

I have a similar feeling about my ex dog minder.  I was so determined NOT to make the same mistake I’d made with the previous one.  SIIIIIIGH.  The rich, redolent irony is that I may start having cash-flow problems soon, which is to say that barring something unexpectedly fabulous in the financial line, I’m going to run out of the money from SHADOWS before I get PEG II turned in.  I’d have been glad to cut back on both Ms OTP’s and Ex Dog Minder’s hours.  Ha ha etc.  Very very too late now.

 Peter says I’m allowed to put it on the blog that the reason he doesn’t—and I don’t ask him to—step in the dog-minding breach is because he’s terminally absent-minded.

^^ Not to mention hurt feelings.  I was talking to someone who had had something very similar happen to him, and one of the things he said is that aside from truth and justice and the not-only-American Way it simply hurts to have someone think ill of you.  Yes.

*** I suspect most one-on-one teachers of anything become involuntary shrinks, but I guess singing teachers must have it particularly bad because of the frelling misbegotten ‘your body is your instrument’ thing.

† If I did the whole sordid imbroglio might almost be worth it.  Almost.  ONLY ALMOST.