One of those days

As summer has officially started here in New England and all of my students are out of school and on their way to camps and vacation, I am now figuring out what to do with all my free time. As a teenager I never left for the entire summer or even half. Our vacations were to Buttermilk campground in Island Park. One time we went over near Jackson Hole and on to Yellowstone, but all of those places are within a two hour drive of my childhood home, and we usually only camped for a week. It really was the best! Now as an adult attempting to put some roots down, its hard to really break away from the world and go on vacation, especially when funds are low and all extra funds go toward traveling across the country to see family... (the number of trips to someplace exotic we could have taken makes me a little melancholy) sigh. 

However this post is not supposed to be about vacationing. No, this post has to do with my voice. To fill my new found free time I have been working on putting together a recital, and I am quite excited about it. I have selected a few pieces from one of my favorite composers Edvard Grieg. Op. 48, which I discovered after inheriting boxes of music from my Grandma Doggett and her sisters, it has some very beautiful gems. I also decided to invest some time in a little Ernest Chausson Op. 2, mainly because I have never sung anything by him and I find the melodies quite charming. I have also decided to perform a little redo of Benjamin Britten's "On this Island." This took some time to realize, and when I say time, I mean a few years. 

It has come to my attention, that as much as we would like to think that we are invincible and happy creatures all the time, tragedy still happens and we NEED to acknowledge that. This piece of work symbolizes a time in my life when tragedy came at an untimely place. I sang this as part my master's recital five years ago, only days after a close friend's younger brother took his life, he also happened to be one of my twin younger brothers' dear friends. Many of the pieces on my recital made reference to death, and I was spent. I cried hard between each set, and even while on stage, although no one was close enough to see that. People remarked later that I seemed distant and un-engaged. If only they knew. And that wasn't everything, earlier that semester, my heart was broken by a guy I thought I would marry. I had a ridiculous amount of music to memorize for the opera, and an awesome workload from my final semester of school. With all of that being said, I have come to understand something about myself. I was scarred from that experience. Singing has not been the same since then. I have felt closed off and almost forced in my musical intentions. Thus I have decided to make amends with that music that left me wanting. 

There is more to my human tragedy story that I may possibly share at a later time, but today I want to focus on the issue at hand. My voice is still unstable. My sister in law just had vocal surgery and when I asked her about how she knew she had a problem, she described some symptoms that sounded similar to my situation, but not entirely the same. So yesterday I began researching again the affects of thyroid problems on the voice, only this time I was more specifically asking about singing. It was sad to see the number of unanswered people who had already asked such questions on the various medical related websites. The best answer that anyone gave was that they noticed a significant change once they began a medication that included T3 which, for some strange reason, doctors don't normally prescribe. I also wonder if this has something to do with the fact that every time I exercise it takes a week to recuperate my energy. 

I miss the freedom of sitting at a piano and trusting that the sound that comes out of me will be easy.

I miss the body I once had that could work hard day after day without exhaust.

I miss the optimistic person that I now have to fight to still be. 

Still Here and Singing

I almost forgot about this blog. But I am still around and finally able to enjoy New England since I recently quit my management position at Marmalade in Belmont. I won't lie, it has put Elijah and I in more financially difficult circumstances than I would like to admit, but I am happy and I think he is too. I've been able to manage the thyroid and other hormonal issues to the point where I feel more like myself, and I think that is in large part because I got rid of unnecessary stress. There has also been a shift in the way I think about myself, and the way I eat. It is important to remember that one of the greatest teachers out there is our own body, and I have spent the past four years learning from it.

Eli now works at a bank during the day, and sings in a group called "Genesis"  every couple of months. Plus he still substitutes at various churches in the Boston area. I still teach private voice lessons and am trying to get back into the swing of singing myself, At one point in time singing was a piece of really delicious cake that I got to eat every day, and I didn't realize how easy I had it. Now, it takes a lot of brain power to get past the trauma of having an unstable voice for three years. It was like one day I was a Mezzo and the next a Soprano. It was never consistent because my hormones were out of wack. Plus I picked up a lot of bad technical things, trying to overcompensate for what I thought I was hearing. But like I said, I am feeling more like myself and still believe that I have it in me to do this. I have always had the desire and the talent, now I just need to trust myself. When I named this blog years ago, I had no idea how much the subtitle would become a motivation. Thanks to Mama Jones who came up with it. I really hope that this experience has made me more sensitive to the struggles that other singers may go through.

Story of a year gone by

So it has been nearly a year since last I wrote, mainly because who would really want to read this without some pictures to go along? But the truth is that this could be a great opportunity to get some journal writing in.

Since my last post, I have gotten engaged, moved out of my apartment, gotten married, found out I have some awesome health issues, was made manager at work, had our car break down, got robbed on our honeymoon, and moved into our first real apartment! Whew!! too much time to cover entirely in one sitting.

So to start with Part One: Getting Engaged.

Eli and I went to his cousin Andrew's house for Thanksgiving. The two of us took a little break from everyone and sat down on the couch in the kids play room. We began talking about life and such when Eli said something along the line of, "why don't we get married?" I said something to the effect of, "because you haven't asked me." And that was that, we decided that there really wasn't any use in waiting for the inevitable, I loved him, and he loved me. Quite frankly I could not imagine loving anyone as much as I love him. We set the date for June 1, 2013 which to the folks we live around out here, that was a really quick engagement, but to the people back home, they thought that was a long engagement. It is so funny to me sometimes how even though we are all living in the same country, there are so many different cultures within.
Back to the tale.
So the actually proposal happened on a freezing cold night in January, he took me on a scavenger hunt, that lead to an amazing restaurant called Harvest, in Harvard Square, we enjoyed the food and each other. At the end of the dinner, he told me there was one more clue, it led us to the Charles River where he got down on one knee and proposed. It was so cold I couldn't cry, but I felt it. The weather was painfully cold but my spirit was so warm I didn't care. Now looking back, it was so surreal, it almost felt like a dream, and so goes the next six months.