learning to sing

I sing in choir. Practically my whole life.

It's brought me the most amazingly beautiful, exhilarating, challenging, fun experiences. Met a Best Friend and a Husband. Fortunately I still have the Best Friend.

I love it, and with all this practice and education along the way, I've become a reasonably good singer. It means so much to me that I know I need to improve to keep up up with the rising standard of my current group, Auckland Choral

And therein lies the flaw. I've never had a formal lesson from a singing teacher and I'm terrified to start. All these years I've been hiding in the crowd, gotta have 2 more people or I can't let a sound out.

Why?

• fear that I've never been any good - this is nonsense! all those successful auditions over the years...
• fear of constructive criticism - might have to work a bit, too bad
• fear that it can't get any better - surely must be able to squeeze a few more degrees of beauty
• fear of change... my old dragon, many times slain and reincarnated

so! tonight I'm going to commit to lessons with Ken Cornish, a singer I greatly admire, and see if I can Get Over It

Peak experiences, post-peak experiences

Sometimes you have an experience so wonderful that you know it can never be equalled or bettered. Or, at least, you're pretty sure it's the Best Ever.

What do you do after that?

Especially when you've got a tendency to see the glass half empty. And an overdeveloped talent for harsh comparison.  Do you decide to opt out of repeats because they are guaranteed to disappoint?

I say not. Do it again!

Last year I was privileged to sing in an amazing performance of the Brahms Requiem in Carnegie Hall. This isn't unique - there were nearly 200 of us! But by every measure a chorus singer can use, it was a supreme peak experience.

This year I was also privileged to be invited to sing (almost) the same music with a couple of suburban community choirs. After sorting a few logistics questions, I leapt at the opportunity.

It was not New York. By a wide margin. By turns, that difference was painful, frustrating, funny. I also discovered the difference was also irrelevant. So what, if this time round the experience is not going to be equal or better than last time?

That "can't match the peak" experience had its own unique and valuable qualities. I had a chance to sing again with some old friends, to build some new friendships, to see the challenges of the music resolved in a different way. It was a privilege. I was singing the Brahms Requiem for the 3rd time in 3 years! We never know when these chances will come again

And when we clambered up the scaffolding in one venue, and squeezed into the church pews in another, we were all motivated with the same love of the music, love of the audience, love of the conductor, love of each other as collaborators in creating the beautiful fleeting magic that is live music.

It's ALWAYS a Peak Experience if you do it with passion and joy

Passion vs. maintenance

The word for today was 'maintenance' in the sense of all the things I do, or might do, that are *not* my passion. For example: singing the music of JS Bach is one of my passions, whereas vacuuming the house is not. Stitching an original art quilt? Passion. Cooking dinner, not. And yet, some maintenance must be done. Either I do it myself, or charm/coerce/pay someone else to do it on my behalf. Or decide it need not be done at all.

Yesterday I wrote about the need to make my original art quilts - a passion - my first priority. This is still true. But I wonder how much of my time should be given over to maintenance. How much maintenance did Picasso and O'Keeffe do? Going-to-work is maintenance. So is exercise. Maybe an answer is to do the maintenance with great passion too.