So What - I'm Here

Near Columbus Circle

I had a voice lesson this past week.

As aforementioned, I love voice lessons, but they are a challenge.  Or maybe I love them because they are a challenge?  Either way.

For so long I shied away from singing, convinced I was born with the desire but not the ability.  I was embarrassed to try, scared to be found lacking.  Thirty-plus years of thinking you can't do something results in not-a-little fear when it comes to the doing of that thing.  What I mean is -

There's a fair amount of insecurities to be swallowed, before opening my mouth to sing.

At the lesson, after the requisite vocal warm-ups and exercises, but before the fun stuff (you know, the part where I actually get to sing a song), my teacher interjected a pep talk.

"It's not a level playing field, you know" she said, going on to explain that what is hard for me (i.e. smoothing out the break between my head voice and my chest voice) just comes easier for some of her other students.  Their vocal chords, their mouths, their instruments just do naturally what I have to work hard at.

"But I really admire you," she said, "Because you're just like - 'So what?  I'm here!'"

Huh.  I like that picture of me.  Yes, singing in front of people is scary.  No, the skill set doesn't come naturally, it's not easy.  And yeah - when aiming for certain notes, I'm going to miss a lot more than I succeed.  At least for awhile.  But you know?   So what.  I'm here.

I'm thinking 'bout embroidering that on a pillow and making it my new life motto.

Class Notes

Shepard Hall, City College

My weeknights are filled with extracurricular activities right now.  Here's what kept me busy this past week:

1) Hebrew - We're reading through 2 Kings; this week we got up to King Josiah and his sweeping reforms. Very exciting stuff. If you find biblical history to be exciting. And I do.

After 2 Kings, we'll move to Isaiah.  I'm SO excited to dig into this book: although the Hebrew will be harder to translate (prophecy being filled with idioms & poetic imagery), there are so many familiar, oft-quoted texts in Isaiah.  So many we recently heard or sung during the Christmas season.  Looking forward to reading them in their original context.

At the end of class this week, as my teacher and I were chatting, she started to ask, "So when are you..." - her standard preamble to one of two questions. Always the same two questions, lovingly asked and sometimes preceded with the disclaimer, "Now, I don't want to "Jewish mother" you, but..."   So I readied myself to hear either (a) ...when are you going to Israel? or (b) ...when are you going to seminary?  

It was the latter, this time around. I answered as I always do, "I don't know.  Maybe some day."  Maybe some day.

2) Improv - I've been in an Improv slump lately, of Pauline proportions.  Meaning, when I get on stage, I don't do the things I want to do, and I do do the things I don't want to do.

I can't seem to break old habits (reverting to playing the same types of characters, making the same types of choices in scenes) and though I can picture where I'd like to take things (being bolder, playing freer) I don't see myself making much progress in that direction.  It's frustrating.

I read something somewhere once (I'm not 100% that it was even in relation to Improv) that said when you feel like you're hitting a wall, the answer isn't to quit.  It's: keep butting your head against that wall until you break through it.

I don't think that advice works for every situation, but I'm willing to try it for this current wall, which I suspect is made of fear, and thus worth shattering.  Onwards, again, into the wall...

3) Voice lessons -  We'd been working on Christmas music before the break, so at my first voice lesson of the new year, a new song was in order.  My teacher suggested Stars and the Moon from Jason Robert Brown's "Songs for a New World."  I wasn't familiar with it, but now I kinda love it!  The first chorus actually reminds me of my relationship with God, sometimes: 

"He said..."I'll give you stars and the moon and a soul to guide you
And a promise I'll never go
I'll give you hope to bring out all the life inside you
And the strength that will help you grow.
I'll give you truth and a future that's twenty times better
Than any Hollywood plot."
And I thought, "You know,
I'd rather have a yacht."

I don't want an actual yacht, but my metaphorical yacht is all the dreams I'm clinging to with closed fists, convinced that This. Is. What. I. Really. Want.  Unable to trust that God might have something twenty times better.

Oh, life.  So much to learn.

What's New, Pt. 2


When I signed up for Musical Improv class, I simultaneously signed up for voice lessons. Because why not dive-tackle this super-scary insecurity head on, right? 

Eeeeek. Right.

I scheduled a lesson with a voice teacher who came highly recommended by a friend.  KB teaches out of her home in Astoria, so I snuck out of work a bit early one Friday afternoon, hopped the M-train to Queens, found her house, drummed up all my courage and rang the doorbell.

KB was every bit as friendly and disarming as my friend had promised. We exchanged brief get-to-know-you pleasantries, then KB sat down at her piano and said, "Ok, now I'll have you sing a vocal warm-up."

Sing?  Just like that, she wants me to sing?  I mean - sheesh, buy a girl dinner first, am I right? 

I would have been happy to continue talking about singing for awhile longer, to discuss in detail how I'm not a good singer, and how I have no singing experience, and how singing in front of people rather terrifies me. But apparently KB actually expected me to get down to the business of it.  So I reluctantly, fearfully, hesitatingly sang a scale.  And then KB said the sweetest words to me:

"You're not tone deaf."

Phew!  Huge sigh of relief.  Huge.  The lesson proceeded and I learned about proper breathing techniques.  And practiced projecting.  And then, towards the end of the hour, I got to sing an actual song! (!!!)

KB asked if I knew "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" (sure do), so we sang through that a few times.  "A kiss on the hand may be quite continental..."

My Improv coach has been wanting me to work on accents for awhile (my best attempts all end up sounding Israeli, so I usually just avoid accents entirely in scenework).  I mentioned this to KB, so she had me sing through "Diamonds" while practicing various accents.

"A kiss may be grand, but it won't pay the rental..."

"Now do Southern Hick."

"On yer humble flat, or help ya at the autahmat..."

"Now Brooklyn."

"Men grow cold, as goyls grow old..."

"Mary Poppins!"

"And we awll lose our chahms in the end..."

"Eliza Doolittle!"

"Bu' square-cu' oh pear-shape, d'ese rocks won' lose d'eir shape!"

"Marilyn Monroe!"

"Dihhhmonds are a girhhl's best frehhnd!"

Super fun.  I like voice lessons. :)

What's New, Pt 1

Central Park, in its spring-a-ding-ding finery

I started a new Improv class a couple of weeks ago.  I usually get nervous when starting new classes, but I was extra apprehensive about this one.  

Why?  It's a MUSICAL Improv class.

Meaning I have to sing.

In front of people.

Zoinks.

I've long been insecure about my singing voice.  Super insecure.  And I've also considered it one of the great ironies of my life that my mind works to easily memorize lyrics to thousands of songs, but my throat doesn't work to sing them.  It keeeeels me.

I'm a girl with a song in her heart, but that song rarely gets air time. Unless I'm alone in my apartment. Then I put on show-choir concerts for the cockroaches.

Given my fear of singing in front of actual people, I initially didn't give Musical Improv much thought, beyond "Not for me."  But... But. I kept hearing such glowingly positive things about it. 

I knew the teacher (from a prior class) and knew her to be lovely, glittery, supportive.  Friends said her class filled them with "life-affirming joy." (really!)  And I'd seen roughly a gazillion Musical Improv shows that all looked like so much stinkin' fun.

I decided that I wanted a piece of that fun-pie.  Voice insecurities notwithstanding.

So I signed up.  And showed up.  And you know what?  So much fun.

The voice insecurities are still there (more on that later) but the fun overshadows that.  The fun wins.