Now before you go getting ideas, I'm not moving to Colorado. About a week ago, I got an email from a singer at NEC who studies with my teacher. She was emailing me to ask about teachers at IU because Dr. J is leaving NEC. First of all, I was still battling jet lag from crossing nine time zones back from Germany and waking up at 5 and 6am so I read this email at some obscenely early hour and wasn't really able to process what I had read until about 9am after two cups of tea and at least three episodes of Saved by the Bell. Second, I had no idea that Dr. J was leaving, so it came as a complete shock and I found myself in a strange state of deja-vu. I wrote her back and spoke plainly about some teachers at IU - if she chooses to take my advice then fine but if not then it's her choice. No one can really tell anyone else what a voice teacher is like - for me it's like asking someone else to try on shoes for you. Only you really know if they fit AND if they suit your taste. And then I took a few minutes to sip my tea and let it sink in.
We've been in Boston for three years now, a move that was precipitated by a phone call in late April of 2005. Husband and I had been engaged for all of three weeks and I had just returned from a choir concert in Indy, singing amazing music with some of my favorite people in the music world. I had some crazy voicemails that all kept saying, "You have to call Dr. J. You have to call him NOW." I missed the group discussion/announcement at the studio party, not even contemplating that missing the studio party would mean anything more than missing Ruth Ann's hilarious jokes after she's had a glass of wine. One very emotional phone call later, I started writing frantic emails to teachers at IU, seeing who might take on a now-studioless DMA student. DMA students are high-maintenance (don't tell me anything I don't know, right?) and a long-term commitment. We need advisement on research topics. We need protection from other faculty members who think that singers are dumb or that 75 pages isn't nearly enough for a topic proposal. We need people to show up and listen to us talk about subjects that would put most academics into a catatonic state, and we need them to do it for a few years until we're finished jumping through those flaming hoops. Needless to say, no one bit and I ended up doing what I wanted to do all along - move to Boston to stay with the old man (that's Dr. J, not my husband, in case you're wondering). So that's what we did. Hubby (then fiancee) and I packed the U-Haul with a colleague and his fiancee and threw the dog in the car and drove to Boston.
The rest, as they say, is history. We got married in Boston, bought a car in Boston, joined churches and got jobs and auditioned and drank beer and rooted for the Red Sox (only a few days until baseball season starts again!) and formed a life. Somewhere in that life, I feel that I really learned how to sing and started to shed my old skin of being an academic, bound up in my own preconceptions about being a singer. For the last three years, my surrogate parents have been Dr. J and Annie. They watched me lose my shit and sob my eyes out and fight with my husband and worry about my dog and worry about my career and get auditions and rejection letters and multiple recitals and concerts and operas and church services and birthdays and anniversaries later, they're like family. And while it hurts that they're leaving Boston, I know it's time for them. I'm trying really hard to wish them well even though I know it means that I'll have to fly to Colorado to get the set of ears that knows my voice best to listen to me ("are you sure it doesn't sound like crap? because it sounds like crap to me." "well emily, I'm older than you so my vote counts more. it doesn't sound like crap.") and also that, when I'm having a hard day and I need some no-bullshit advice, Annie won't be just down in Brookline Village.
But if there's one thing that these people have fostered in me, it's the ability to step away from a teacher and still have the tools to troubleshoot your own technique. I'm not saying I have all the answers, I'm not even saying that I'm always qualified to listen to myself. But I am saying that I have a place to start. Which leads me to the first part of this title post - Germany.
I was in Stuttgart for a week singing a Handel oratorio - his last one, in fact - Jephtha. You know, fun subject matter about someone who makes a really silly promise to sacrifice something and that something turns out to be WHOOPS his daughter. But then, an Angel descends from on high (that would be me) and no one dies but someone has to get themselves to a convent. Or something like that. Anyway, I flew over nine times zones in the longest, most terrible trans-Atlantic journey I have ever made and suffered the worst case of jet-lag. It's certainly not my first time flying to Germany, but I'd never had this much trouble adjusting before. I went to my first rehearsal on four hours of fitful sleep, eternally thankful that Helmuth Rilling is so nice for not remarking on how incredibly tired I looked and sounded, and also for the fact that Klaus is a kickass continuo player. A few days of rest and some serious Hefeweizen later, I managed to fall asleep and sleep a full night. Weizen does wonders. The next morning, the day of the dress rehearsal, I get up and eat breakfast. I warm up steadily throughout the day, practicing in my room and then wandering over to the Bachakademie and I'm feeling pretty good. And then my worst nightmare comes true. I get up to sing my aria (which comes at the VERY END of this VERY LONG oratorio and it's only about six minutes of singing altogether so it had better be good) and the runs aren't working. I'm calm, I tell myself that my breath is probably all hopped up, which it is, and that I just need to remember that nice high place from whence it all descends. Like a slinky, I tell myself. And I try it again. No dice. And this isn't just the normal kind of self-deprecating-oh-shit-I'm-singing-for-Helmuth-Rilling no dice. This is the I-recorded-the-rehearsal-and-listened-to-it-later kind of no dice. I'm truly beginning to panic because this is Friday and the performances are Saturday and Sunday and I have really got to get on the ball here. So I lock myself in the practice room with my bag of tricks. First I try the "think the notes clearly, you know where they are, now just trust as you descend." That doesn't work. Then I try the "be sure you're singing through the run, not allowing it to come off the breath" and then the "okay, maybe you just need to be a little more aggressive" and the "oh fuck this, just shove it all into place and see what happens."
Nothing. Nada. NICHTS.
And all I can think of it "I'm going to suck. I'm going to suck in front of Helmuth and in front of my friends in the Gaechinger and my new cousins who've only known me for about six hours but they're going to hear me suck. suck suck suck sucks suck suck suck suck suck suck sucksucksucksucksucksucksucksucksucksucksucksucksucksucksucksucksucksucksucksucksuck
It's not pretty when I get good and worked up.
So it's Saturday night now and Hollie has given his pre-concert lecture, complete with cardboard cutouts and disembodied heads and wings (oh yes, there are photos, don't you worry) and Nicole has come and put my hair into this very elegant coif on top of my head and my eyeliner is just great if only the ground would open up and swallow me because this is going to be awful. I eat a piece of marzipan and read some Harry Potter and try to relax. Before I know it, I realize that I've fallen asleep in the dressing room and that horrible gonging sounds says that it's intermission and I only have an hour left before the guillotine, I mean aria.
I try, just one more time, to figure out what is running amok with these two stupid bars and then, out of nowhere, this little voice in my head says "emily, you just have to think the vowel clearly on every pitch. the color will match and the voice will adjust itself for placement. you know how to do this, you just have to trust." So I take off my pointy shoes and plunk out the A on the piano and see if this little experiment works. And it does. About four tries later, all successful, I determine that this is not just a fluke and that I am not going to suck. This works out well, because then Mattias comes to my door and tells me it's time to go up to the Chorbuehne. So there I am, up waaaaaaay up at the top of the Liederhalle with my sparkly earrings, semi-lit with my music and the string quartet and Klaus, gingerly making his way to the harpsichord because the floors are sooooooo slick. And then the lights shift and the whole room goes dark and the lights come up on me and I'm really worried that I'm about to pass out or something but then I realize this is some theatre effect that no one told me about and, oh yeah, you're supposed to sing now. And then I blink and it's over. And it was fun, and let's review - I didn't suck!
Hours later, after celebrating and washing off the eyeliner and what seemed like a zillion curtain calls, it occurs to me that this little voice in my head had a personality. And don't go getting all philosophical on me, it wasn't the voice of God in my head telling me how to sing correctly.
It was the voice of the old man. And even in that moment, I could hear him chuckling at me and shaking his head because after three and a half years, I still freak myself out for no good reason.
What will I do without him and his socks and sandals? His patterned sport shirts buttoned all the way to the top? And Annie, putting pepper flakes on her pizza and telling him to fuck off for laughing at her when she's trying to say something damn it Jim don't you dare laugh at me she says, shaking the salad tongs at him. Him, forwarding dirty email jokes to my husband because he knows that I just roll my eyes and so many hours during the first of two very hot summers in Vermont, desperately trying to string together phrases in German to describe how much I couldn't stand that stupid snooty pianist who wouldn't slow down long enough for me to put together six words about Amor and then in the second summer, giggling my way through Zerbinetta and actually having in-depth conversations with Annie about marriage and careers and children and making a life, wondering if there's anyone I've ever met who is as honest as she is.
I shouldn't be so dramatic about it, I'm sure. They're not dying, they're just moving to Colorado. And, as he told me on the telephone when I talked to him last week, I'm doing just fine in this career track and they're always just a phone call away. I've been so lucky in my academic career to have found really good mentors. People like the Divine Dr. L, for whom this blog was named, and the former Dean Maureen, the biggest badass in the Honors College back at Southern Miss, and Dana Rags who got tipsy with me at the Hog and told stories about telling her professors to shove it because they were just wrong. People who really shaped who I am not only as a musician but as an individual, people who encouraged me to speak up for myself and try to make a difference in the way academia is run, people who taught me how to pick my battles, when to do it myself and when to ask for help, when to stay and fight and when to let it go. I haven't lived at home in years. I can't even remember what it was like to see my parents every day, let alone every week. We talk pretty frequently now, see each other maybe once a year. I'm trying to talk them into coming to Tanglewood for the summer, we'll see. It's like I'm leaving home all over again. That safety net is moving and I didn't even know how much I relied on them until they tell me they're picking up and going to Colorado.
Dr. J doesn't care much for pop music and probably even less for folk, but this is one of my favorite songs. Now that we've made a home in Boston, it makes me cheerful to think that I'll be sitting at Tanglewood this summer, listening to James Taylor sing this song about a place that I've really come to love. But I can't help thinking - I'm almost 28 and I feel that the distance between 23 and 28 seems just as long as the distance between 1 and 23, if not longer.
And even though I'm almost positive the old man doesn't like James Taylor, I think he would appreciate the sentiment.
Now the First of December was covered with snow
And so was the Turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston
Lord, the Berkshires seemed dream-like on account of that frosting
With ten miles behind me and ten thousand more to go
Theres a song that they sing when they take to the highway
A song that they sing when they take to the sea
A song that they sing of their home in the sky
Maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep
But singing works just fine for me
