Release / Receive / Release / Resist

Someone wrote on FB today:

Let's pretend we're creating your mantra - three words you say to yourself when you need motivation, inspiration, courage or strength. What is YOUR three word mantra?

So I wrote what I've come up with as my approach to breathing, specifically for singing:

Release / Receive / Resist.

Actually, I teach it as Release / Receive / Release / Resist.

Release: The lower abdominal muscles so that you can:
Receive: The air as it enters your body

Release: The exhalation

Resist: The flow of the air

When I work with beginning singers, I ask them to consciously release (blow out) all their air and not inhale again until their body requires it. Not really hold the breath, but don't consciously suck in the air. Let the body take it in when it needs it. They become very aware that our bodies will take in the air naturally when it is needed, without pulling it in, without gasping. The muscles release so that the air can be received. Then, as we sing (exhaling with sound), we focus on finding the point of resistance between the ribs and oblique abdominals to maintain the airflow without restricting it.

Resistance isn't restriction. We aren't restricting or constricting. We are managing the airflow. 

How does this apply to our lives? Pretty much the same thing.

We release our intentions so that we can receive what needs to come. And then we act (release) but we are mindful of what those actions involve and we manage the outcome so that life just doesn't happen to us.

Singing is life. Life is singing. Rinse and repeat. 

(Ooh, that's a good mantra, too. Never mind the other. Just rinse and repeat.)

The Awakening/Staying Woke

I've been thinking a lot about the terms "staying woke" and "awakening."

The Urban Dictionary definition of "stay woke" is "to keep informed of the shitstorm going on around you in times of turmoil and conflict." It is often associated with movements such as Black Lives Matter, but is also being used with the resistance to the current administration.

Right before I left Milwaukee, I sang at the Unity Church in Elm Grove, and I've been back a couple of times since I moved away. (I get to make $100 and, between that and having a couple of lessons with Connie Haas, I can write off the trip as a business expense!) That church begins their service with a piece called "The Awakening." The first words are:

WELCOME - WELCOME -
WELCOME TO YOUR AWAKENING

CHORUS: ANOTHER DAY ANOTHER WAY
I HAVE COME FOR MY AWAKENING
ANOTHER START FOR MY HEART
I HAVE COME FOR MY AWAKENING

Yeah. Corny. But it means something to the congregation, and that's my job, to help them with that journey.

I'm trying to be more present, more mindful, and more aware in my life. Whether that is as a performer, as a teacher, as a director, or just as a puppy mama/person walking this planet.

It seems self-consciously hip (and smacks a bit of cultural appropriation) for me to say "stay woke." But I'm going to try to open my heart, my mind, my eyes, and my ears so that I can stay aware and awake and receive what possibilities still lie ahead for me.

Solemn Joy and Sudden Spark

Energy.

It's really all about energy. That solemn joy and that sudden spark (from the song "Our children" from Ragtime).

Your energy on stage, whether you're acting, singing, dancing, conducting or playing an instrument, has to be palpable. It has to draw in not only the audience but your fellow actors. There needs to be a spark that engages us and makes us want to know what you're going to do next and how we're going to respond to that. Even if we know what happens next in the play, what your next line will be, and what the ending will be. Your energy needs to signal that something is going to happen and it's going to be epic.

If you have the energy, it doesn't matter if you're 5'2" or 5'10", if you're 110 pounds soaking wet or twice that. It doesn't matter if you have a full head of hair or are as bald as an egg (which, for some reason, I called "spoon-headed" when I was little - I guess because shiny?). It doesn't matter if you're as graceful as a gazelle or as awkward as a new puppy. You can be the world's greatest singer or just - eh. It doesn't matter.

This is what I am looking for as an actor, as an audience member, and as a director. Yes, a director hopefully will bring out the best in each of her actors, but there are certain roles that require more to be there in the first place. If you weren't cast in the role, it's because you didn't fit it in some way. If I'm not cast in a role, it's because I didn't fit it in some way. There's another role I will fit. There's another role you will fit. Sometimes they aren't the roles we want.

We have to move on. 

Bloom where you're planted

I have a lot on my mind right now, but this was the thing that spoke to me in my morning meditation (which was on the subject of lobsters, of all things).

Singing Outside the Box (is that a good title?)

As a classically trained singer, I have been trained in the International Phonetic Alphabet so that I can sing in a myriad of other languages, some of which were required of me academically, others contractually, and some just because I wanted to. I have sung in

1. Italian - multiple operas, art songs, etc.
2. French - same
3. German - lieder, operas
4. Chinese - The Savage Land, Washington Opera (all I remember is a phrase that meant "go to hell through 18 layers of soil)
5. Russian (although NOT as a soloist) - operas, ballet chorus, choral music
6. Hebrew 
7. Latin
8. Ladino - kind of a Hebrew/Spanish
9. Estonian - mother's native language
10. Slovenian - father's native language

There may be other languages in which I've sung that I don't recall. But I've never sung solo repertoire in Spanish, Portuguese, or Russian. The latter is because of my parents' virulent anti-Communist bent, where I was discouraged from doing anything even remotely Russian. My father asked me if I was a Communist because I wanted a red plaid jumper. My response was that I was only 6.

My plan is that I am going to prepare a recital of repertoire in languages in which I have not sung. I'm thinking either Spanish or Portuguese, Russian, and ... Irish Gaelic. I have three poems in Irish Gaelic that I have had for years. I need to commission a composer to set them (currently working on getting pronunciation recorded by a native Irish speaker - surprisingly (or not) not an easy task). I thought I had someone lined up but she hasn't seen fit to respond to my emails, so I need to move on to someone who is actually interested in the project.

I'm not sure what to call this program - right now it's Outside the Box, but that's not resonating with me at this point.

The nobility of PERFORMING

Last year I went to the NATS Chicago conference and bemoaned the fact that I had taken an unintentional hiatus from performing for nearly 10 years. Specifically, I posted on Facebook:

Something that makes me a little sad is that, although my voice is still working just FINE, thankyouverymuch, I missed out on performance opportunities because I focused so much on my teaching. Which was in part because I wasn't getting a chance to perform. And while I love teaching and feel like I've made a difference to students (past, present, and future), what more could I have done as a performer??

It's interesting to see the comments that were made. They mainly run the gamut from "I know what you mean" to "It's never too late." But there was one comment that was made that took me aback a bit, because I think it reveals the perspective that people have about performing as being less noble than teaching. And that comment was:

As a performer, you touched the present. Teachers touch the future.

My immediate response to that was then as it is now.

I don't think it's just the present we [as performers] touch. I don't think of it as ephemeral. 

I have seen so many performances that touched me deeply, that made a difference in my life. Performances that were authentic, that told the truth, and that were noble. That doesn't mean they were serious, necessarily, They could have been just as easily musicals or comedies as they were dramas. If Gilligan's Island touched you back when you were a kid (and I bring this up because when Carmen was on the radio Saturday, my husband began singing "Never a borrower nor a lender be!" along with the Toreador Song, so clearly, there's an example of leaving an impression), does that mean it was pointless?

Perhaps that's not the best example, but it was the first one that popped into my head.

There is still more work to do, as a teacher, a director, and a performer, and as a person. I'm not just one or the other, and one is not better than another. And I want to touch the past, present, and the future. 

Some reflections ( a year late) on NATS 2016

I am having the best summer. The weather is perfect, I'm teaching at home, I closed a show in May (Little Women, as both Marmee and director, debut for both), wrote and put on a cabaret show in less than 4 weeks after that, and am getting into the best physical shape I've been in since I moved out here in 2013. I'm picking up church gigs and so far haven't had to tap into my summer fund, which is usually how I live through the summer.

And last year I had a good summer, as well, but I didn't write anything about it. I tweeted things that caught my fancy, particularly at the NATS2016 conference in Chicago, but I didn't really say anything about how this affected me.

So, from last year's FB posts/tweets, showing up in my On This Day on Facebook:

• "Share who you are. It's not enough to just stand and sing well." -Renée Fleming #NATSinChicago.
  This is all about vulnerability. It is not enough to sing pretty. Lots of people sing pretty. It's about being brave enough to share yourself with people, people who might not like you or what you have to say. The singer who goes to the next level is vulnerable. And vulnerability is not weakness (there's a previous entry on this).
  
  
• "We don't have an art form if we don't have new works. We don't have a relevant art form. We have a historical art form" @reneesmusings #NATSinChicago
  
  Opera - or ballet, or theater - is not stagnant. It is not enough to perform the same piece over and over as a museum piece. It must evolve. There must be new works. And when there are old works, they must be looked at with new eyes. That doesn't necessarily mean they should be updated or turned on their heads. I saw Midsummer Night's Dream last night at Baltimore Shakespeare Factory. Excellent production, relatively traditional - but it was done with such a fresh spin that I got things out of it that I haven't gotten before. Lines that I'd not noticed before were especially funny or touching.
  
  
• W. Stephen Smith on the importance of double consonants in Italian: "if you say 'quindici anni,' you're saying 15 years. If you say 'quindici ani,' you're saying 15 assholes." #VeryDifferent #NATSinChicago
  
  Pay attention!! Details matter!! (And I think we've all met at least quindici ani in our lives by this point, haven't we?)