Category Archives: sing

by

safe enough to have a fence and roses

A friend said that he observed me for a long time before we got to know each other a little.

I asked what he observed. He said, “Thoughtful, deliberate and shy.”

I started laughing and said I am not shy. But….that is not true. I am guarded all the time with people. Even with him, still.

So what am I guarding and what is shy?

I have a little girl self that is very very shy. Hidden for a very long time. Now I have felt safe enough that she can play. I see her as playing in a wild place. Sun and a forest and a stream and a field. Sometimes it rains. She plays alone in the sun with rocks by the stream or runs in the field or climbs the trees.

I think many people have a small child hurt and hidden. I think it’s common. I think sometimes it’s so well hidden they can’t even reach it.

At any rate, my small child can’t be reached by any sort of force or intimidation. She could only be reached by gentleness. Another small child with daisies and even then, trust would take a long time. At first she would run away and hide. And I don’t think it will happen and I have given up, but I can still love her and protect her. And she is happy in her wild place, lonely sometimes, but happy.

Every time I see the pink soft romantic roses in my front yard I laugh, because those roses are for that little girl part, shy and romantic. She feels safe enough to have a fence and roses.

the photo is from my front yard and the rose is Betty Boop

by

what I miss

what I miss after 8 years of divorce and 14 years of marriage is sleeping with a warm body not you but anyone after you fill the U-Haul and are surprised because you think that I am the packrat and all the stuff is mine but you have a piano and bicyles and a motorcycle and clothes and music and books and really you are one too, it’s just that I am worse and you drive away and I can’t sleep though really it did start before then we did over a year of couselling and I slept alone some and then kick you out and sleep alone more our daughter moves into the room across the hall up from the basement when you leave and in the middle of the night she comes up with me because you are gone to Colorado and now 6 years later she asks about it and I say you came in with me and she says she didn’t know that and would wonder why I would steal her in the middle of the night and I say I didn’t but as she is older and moves back two flights down to have that distance that one needs from a parent when one is in puberty and growing up and away and I wake at four am and now that same sex marriages are legal I wonder about buying an asian bride and then I would have a body a warm body to sleep with but it wouldn’t work and yes I miss sex too but not in the same way it’s the warm breath and heartbeat and movements and I am the monkey longing for a mother to cling to and I too make do with a pillow I could make a scarecrow for my bed a body not an inflatable too cold but something warm and I could put a watch in its chest an old one that ticked it doesn’t actually help to be in love because I am not sleeping with my love and that makes it all the worse I long for a warm body really no I long for my warm love this particular body and breath and heartbeat and I wake often longing for my warm love

the picture is my sister, who died in 2012 of breast cancer. I made her stuffed animals and puppets for years starting when we were little. I made the red eared puppet and bought her the puppet with legs that year….

by

Fourthful of hearts

Ronovan’s weekly haiku challenge words five and thrive bring Walt Kelly’s poem to my mind:

Many Harry Returns

Once you were two,
Dear birthday friend,
In spite of purple weather.
But now you are three
And near the end
As we grewsome together.

How fourthful thou,
Forsooth for you,
For soon you will be more!
But – ‘fore
One can be three be two,
Before be five, be four!

My version is

Fourthful of hearts

thrive has six letters
five has four and six has three
words alive you see

The moths were in my garden one morning. They ignored my cat and me completely. They were busy. It appears that the moth supply will be replenished.

http://pnwmoths.biol.wwu.edu/browse/family-erebidae/subfamily-arctiinae/

Great Tiger Moth

by

Feast

I took this photo yesterday because I am visiting friends in Texas. We had a memorial on Saturday and on Sunday we had a feast. I have perhaps tasted a single crayfish in jambalaya before, but I have never been to meal like this! Many thanks to the hosts and apologies to the crayfish: I am not a vegetarian…. So this is for Clare and Dean’s photo of the week! . I also am submitting it in response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Fresh.” Fresh with claws…..

“I weep for you,’ the walrus said, “I deeply sympathize.”

With sobs and tears he sorted out those of the largest size

Holding his pocket hand-kerchief before his streaming eyes…

From Lewis Carroll’s The Walrus and the Carpenter

by

Voice lesson 2

I joined the Gospel Class of the 2014 Centrum Blues Festival. You can join just for the Gospel Choir and it gets you the lessons, performance and into one concert.

It was taught by Dr. Ethel Caffie-Austin and Delnora Roberts.

Dr. Ethel Caffie-Austin is described as West Virginia’s First Lady of Gospel Music and Denora Roberts is from Maryland. Both are black. Their gospel choir for Centrum was nearly exclusively white, though there were a few asian people. I went to high school in Alexandria, Virginia. I thought, oh, goody, these women will yell. At some point, they will raise their voices at us.

This class taught me the best voice production of anything I have ever done. I have not focused on voice, being a rural doctor, but I have sung folk songs since I was tiny. In college I joined the university community chorus at the University of Wisconsin, where we did Carmina Burana. I took some private lessons. When I moved here in 2000, I joined Rainshadow for the William Byrd Mass that they were going to sing for my mother’s memorial after she died of ovarian cancer. My father had helped start it in 1997. I asked to stay in it after the memorial and they let me. I have been in it ever since.

And still, these ladies from the east, did the best voice training I’ve ever had.

First they had us sing and they divided us into Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass. They did it by ear in groups. That in itself was impressive. They could hear everything.

Here is what they told us:
1. Sit in a chair. Take as deep a breath as you can, then inhale three more small breaths. Hold it. You should be able to hold it for five minutes. I can’t yet. But I am doing better. Let the breath out.
2. Do six fast inhalations and exhalations, as deep as you can and sticking your tongue out on the exhalation. You will look like a Maori warrior — that is the face you want. It may make you light-headed. That is because you have blown out your store of CO2 and your body is adjusting.
3. Nasal wash every day. Neti pot or Neilwash or a Sinugator. Ok, the last one sounds like it would bite your nose. I chose the Neilwash because neti pots look too much like teapots.
4. Stretch your range. Both of these woman could sing all four parts: down to bass, up to high soprano.
5. Drink enough water. Drink water all through class. Drink water all day.

Then they taught us. No paper at all. They would sing a part, have us sing it back, and then teach the next part. In four days they taught us four part harmony to 8 gospel songs. We would get confused and start singing each others’ parts. They would stop. “A tenor is singing the alto part. Who is it?” They would have the tenors sing and could pick out the culprit.

Towards the end of the first 3 hour lesson, Dr. Caffe-Austin looked at the Sopranos and yelled full voice: “Sing louder. With soul.” Everyone jumped and I started laughing. The other Sopranos gave me evil looks. Dr. CA didn’t sound angry or anything except loud. Full voice for her filled the chapel we were in.

On Friday we did a lunch concert outside. Dr. Caffe-Austin really messed with us then. “What is the order?” People asked. She just smiled. Out there she would just start a song and we’d better pull it out of our memories. And…. she threw in three we had not done. By the third, we’d gotten it: call and response, we’d better sing.

On Saturday we were first in the lineup for the four hour Blues Concert in the balloon hanger (it is an old fort, remember? Fort Worden, and it was an intelligence dirigible hanger.) This time we were ready and responded to whatever she threw at us. It was so much fun and all oral tradition: no written words, no written music and we learned it.

Hope I can do it again this year. Hope they are back: no listing yet for the Gospel class at the 2015 Centrum Acoustic Blues Festival.

The picture is from July 2005 from the Centrum Fiddletunes Festival outside the balloon hanger.

by

Voice lesson

The picture is my father in 2009. We went sailing on his friend Paul’s boat. My father loved to sail and loved to sing. He taught me to sing from when I was tiny….

I had five voice lessons in the spring. The teacher is a woman who comes into town to see her mother, from New York. When she comes, she teaches many of the best soloists in town, including people I’ve taken lessons from. One of our soprano soloists gave her my name.

She started by asking my singing history. I explained that my family had sung folk songs since I was tiny and that I’d been in a chorus for the last 14 years. That my father had been in the chorus and that he had recently died. We are working on the Faure Requiem and the Rutter Requiem. Our director asked me to work on the Pie Jesu in the latter and I was having trouble with the high notes. She asked about my father’s voice. I said that he was a very fine bass, who had died from cigarretes. In the last few years he couldn’t sustain, but his entrances kept the bass section on track.

She took me through the lesson. There were five things that she had me work on. It was hard to keep them all in my head at once, since they were all a change.

1. To breathe in so that the back of my throat felt cold, like the feeling you get in icy air. This opens it.

2. To think of the breath as circling along my jaw when I sustained a note or phrase. This made the notes feel alive and stay alive. Richer.

3. As I went into the passagio, to think of the sound going out the top of my head and then directly out through the back of my skull.

4. On the very high notes, to press down more with my lower ribs in my back. This increases support.

5. To open my mouth dropping my jaw, but keeping it narrow. This changes the quality of the vowels tremendously.

The lesson was so helpful that I scheduled a second one two days later and had the sense to tape it. I can practice it with my tape. She will come back within a year and I hope that I’ve improved in all five.

first published on everything2 April 2014

by

The introverted thinkers and the fox

The fox went out on a chase one night
He bayed to the moon to give him light
He had many a mile to go that night
Before he reached the town-o, town-o, town-o
Many a mile to go that night before he reached the town-o

My daughter and my father and I are all introverted thinkers by preference.

When my daughter was in Kindergarten, she had a week where she was the child in focus. During that week she was to bring in a poster about her family and the child could choose activities.

We chose “The Fox”.

My father crossed from my house to the school two blocks away. I noticed that he was short of breath on the flat just carrying his guitar. Fifty five years of unfiltered Camels, two packs a day, will do that. I wished he was not short of breath.

We had a poster with photographs of Camille and her parents and her brother and friends and cousins and grandparents. We also had a poster with the words of “The Fox.” We introduced the song to the class and my father played guitar while we sang it. The words were on the poster. I’ve had it memorized for as long as I can remember….

He ran til he came to a great big pen
Where the ducks and the geese were kept therein
“A couple of you gonna grease my chin
Before I leave this town-o, town-o, town-o
A couple of you gonna grease my chin before I leave this town-o

My sister said that when she was little, she thought that a town-o was one of the brass ashtrays that my parents had. The ashtray was completely round on the bottom and would rock at a touch. She pictured the fox riding down a hill in the brass ashtray.

He grabbed a grey goose by the neck
Throwed a duck across his back
Didn’t a mind the quack quack quack
Or the legs all dangling down-o, down-o, down-o
Didn’t mind the quack quack quack or the legs all dangling down-o

I remember not knowing what “grease my chin” meant and also wondering whose side I should be on. The fox’s side? The goose and duck’s? Old Mother Flipperflopper?

Old Mother Flipperflopper jumped out of bed
And out of the window she stuck her head
Crying “John, John, the grey goose is gone
and the fox is on the town-o, town-o, town-o
John, John, the grey goose is gone and the fox is on the town-o

And there is that town-o again.

Johnny ran to the top of the hill
He blew his horn both loud and shrill
The fox he said “I better flee with my kill
Because they’ll soon be on my trail-o, trail-o, trail-o
I better flee with my kill  ’cause they’ll soon be on my trail-o”

Every day my father and Camille and I sang the song with the class. By Friday the whole Kindergarten class had joined in and could sing the song or at least part of it.
Camille had not been sure that the song was a good idea, but the class liked it.

The fox he ran to his cozy den
There were the little ones, eight, nine, ten
Saying, “Daddy, daddy, better go back again
‘Cause it must be a mighty fine town-o, town-o, town-o
Daddy, daddy, better go back again, ’cause it must be a mighty fine town-o”

At the end of the year, they had a Kindergarten graduation ceremony, with little white hats, at Chetzemoka Park. The teacher and the principal were there and parents and grandparents. The class had a surprise for all of us: they sang “The Fox” again.

The fox and his wife, without any strife
Cut up the goose with a fork and knife
They never had such a supper in their life
And the little ones chewed on the bones-o, bones-o, bones-o
They never had such a supper in their life and the little ones chewed on the bones-o

We didn’t discuss the ethics of the song. The fox is hunting for his family. He is stealing from people and he kills a goose and a duck. The people try to hunt him. His children think town-o must be wonderful, but it is dangerous for a fox to earn a living. And the little ones are fed. I think it is a teaching song.