Month: March 2018

2018, the year of the voice

Illuminated musical manuscript
Illuminated musical manuscript

At the turn of the new year, I did my usual wrapping up of the year just gone and goal setting for the year to come. My word for the year, I discovered, was ‘organise’ (that’s a post for another day).

But it isn’t, apparently. What has become abundantly apparent is that this year is ALL about singing.

For a few years I’ve been on on-again, off-again member of a local choir, where I sing tenor with the blokes (there’s always a lack of tenors). At the end of the last year, I decided I want to take up singing lessons again with a teacher I had some years prior, briefly. Just for the hell of it.

That has changed everything.

Firstly, it means recovering my contralto voice. Constantly singing tenor has done me no favours at all, and now it is work to get my voice back. But it is a joy, too … “I’m THRILLED with what is happening with your voice,” my teacher said at the end of last week’s lesson, as she hugged me.

Currently I’m working on Bois Epais, a simple 17th century piece by Jean-Baptiste Lully. It’s hard enough getting used to singing contralto again, but to it in FRENCH? Mon dieu! I was always useless at French. My pronunciation is disgraceful. I have no idea. And this is such a simple song.

When I started having lessons again, my teacher promptly asked me to join her Monday Madrigals choir singing, guess what, madrigals. Joy! I love that stuff. At first I thought it would be difficult as I struggle to get out to rehearsal with my first choir once a week, let alone two. But it turns out that’s only once a month, so it’s doable.

The first choir is joining with two other local choirs to sing as a big massed choir for our two-yearly winter festival this year. We are singing the Schubert Mass in G and Vivaldi’s Gloria, among other things. Now, this first choir is flat chat getting ready for our annual concert to be held in April. The massed choir event is in June. The other two choirs who will be joining us have been working on these pieces … we haven’t. We are going to be woefully unprepared. It’s a lot of work.

So I decided I will have to join one of the other choirs as well (the one my singing teacher just happens to be the musical director of) so I can actually learn and rehearse these pieces. That means a second night out during each week.

First choir musical director is not happy I have requested to be moved back to alto.

C’est la vie.

Meditating at Black Head Beach, and new beginnings

Black Head Surf Club
Our view, meditating inside the Black Head Surf Club

Yes, I am making another attempt at reprising my poor neglected blog. I have exciting changes to make to it in the very near future, but until then …

I have a friend (I know, shocking, right?!) We’ll call her Bee. Bee has been hounding me to start blogging again. To get the words out there. To think creatively and to just plonk down my thoughts. I’ve been resisting … the last thing I want to do, I thought, after a day at work sitting at the computer writing stories to go on our mastheads’ websites, is to come home, sit down at the computer and do more writing to go online.

Last week I decided I might want to get back to it after doing my end-of-month goal check-in and reading something I wrote at the beginning of the year about creativity. I had that urge, again, to start reading the collection of ‘creativity’ books I have (mostly unread, the others partly read, none of them finished) and blog about working through them. I felt a frisson of excitement, thinking about doing it once again.

External discipline leads to internal freedom.

Yesterday I decided to do it NOW, after a day spent with Bee at a one day meditation retreat spent in noble silence and doing guerilla walking meditation at Black Head Beach (along with a lot of formal practice). During the day, our teacher, Sharn Rocco of Mindful Works,  talked about The Artists Way, by Julia Cameron – an old classic that nearly everyone has picked up or heard of at some time. I’ve picked it up many times. And I’ve never finished it. She talked about incorporating artists dates and morning pages into mindfulness practice. What a brilliant idea, I thought.

So hence my thoughts coalescing into an actual action. I may or may not pick up and read and work through all of these creativity books I have. I do hope to, though. I will also share thoughts and experiences about meditation and mindfulness practice (or the battle to establish one, which has been taking many years). I’ll also talk about singing a lot, I’m predicting, as this year has unintentionally turned out to be ALL about that.

So … hello again, interwebs.

May all of my non-existent readers be happy.

Namaste.