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And I am reminded why I married this man…

So I’ve been depressed for a while now.  I haven’t been able to nail it down until lately and now I realize it is because of my lack of writing.

I used to write at the least every other day.  I used to have notebooks filled with many different stories that I would add to on a regular basis.  It was the way that I stayed sane.  In addition I also kept a diary and filled it with all my daily activities and concerns.

I haven’t done that in a very long time.   It’s not something I consciously stopped doing.  It just sort of petered off…I didn’t think much about it at the time.  It was such a small thing in my usual routine and something that I did so regularly that I guess it just became obsolete.

There is a quote that I once read from Stephen King(if you know me, you know he is like, my idol as far as writing goes.) that I can’t find currently but it says something to the effect that: a writer writes, not because he can…but because it is suicide not to.

That is sooo true to me.  Writing clears my mind. It makes me happier in my every day life no matter what I am writing about…even if it is something as stupid as fan fiction(which by the way, didn’t have a name when I was 15 and writing about my successful marriage to the lead singer of Europe, Joey Tempest!) or something as serious as abuse.

I haven’t been able to write for a while.  I’ve been sort of inwardly freaking about this.  I didn’t say anything to anyone because, well, I never mentioned it to anyone when I used to write so why would anyone be concerned now that I can’t.

It came up in a conversation tonight with my husband and without blinking an eye he told me the reason why I haven’t been able to write.  And it so makes sense.

I’ve never had another creative outlet.  I honestly haven’t, other than pretending to sing to an audience in my living room when I was a kid.

In the last year that I have been acting, I have been lacking the writing bug.  I’ve just had no interest.  All my creative energy has been put into singing or acting in a play and I have no regrets on that.  It just seems to have left all my writing  juices depleted.

It sounds so simple but it makes me feel so relieved to know that it isn’t gone.  I’m just channeling it into a different area and it will be back when I chose to take it back.

I’m not done with writing as I had feared…I’m just expanding my creativity and I’m actually quite pleased about that.

It's a long road but I can walk it.

A friend of mine has taken an interest as of late in trying to make me see things more positively. At first I scoffed at the idea. I’m a positive person. I like to see the good in things.

And then I realized that is true, when it comes to other people. When it comes to myself…not so much.

We all know that we are our own worst critics. I’ve said before that I would be mortified to think of speaking to someone else the way I speak to myself. I guess I just never fully comprehended how hard I was on myself until he pointed it out.

The problem is that I’m not sure how to turn it around. Reprogramming 37 years of negativity is no small task.

I’ve decided to take it one step at a time. For starters I really need to think about just how far I have come.

It tends to not feel like I’ve come a long way because I feel like I have been holding steady at the same weight for many years, but the truth is that I have been losing. Extremely slowly, but still.

But if I step back and look at the giant picture it really is impressive, if I do say so myself. 🙂

I was once so large that I couldn’t tie my own shoes. All footwear had to be slip ons because I was too embarrassed to ask my husband to tie my shoes for me.

I couldn’t walk a half a block without my lower back seizing up and feeling like I was going to die. I remember walking the dog one night in Arizona and almost crying because I thought I was going to have to ask my husband to go get the car a half a block away and come get pick me up.

Last December I paid good money to walk/run 13 miles for FUN and I’m doing it again this year.

All my life I’ve wanted to be a sing and act. When I was a kid/teenager I would hold “concerts” in my living room and act out movies to an imaginary audience when I was home alone. It was all I ever wanted to do but I would never dare actually let anyone see me do it. I was far to painfully shy and the thought of someone watching me “act” or hearing me sing was mortifying! I would rather the world open up and swallow me than face what I’m sure would have been harsh criticism for my stupidity.

In the last year I have acted in three plays, two of which I sang in, and am gearing up for another one next month. And I LOVE EVERY SECOND of it

Recently, I have taken some steps to reconcile relationships with family members that I thought would never be fixed. The fact that I am willing to find forgiveness and even admit that I may have been wrong about some things tells me how much I have grown as a person over the years.

I may still have a long way to go with a lot of things in my life, but I can’t get there without pausing to look back at how far I have come.

 

RENT Audition

Today was a huge day in my life. Today I conquered one of my biggest fears and not only sang in public for strangers but danced as well…

Today was the RENT audition.

Before I go tell today’s tale, however, let me cover another topic that kinda ties in.

I don’t believe I’ve written about it here in this blog but if you know me(and if you didn’t why the hell are you reading my blog???) chances are pretty good you know about the tango I do with a finger infection every few years.

Well I woke up on Wednesday of this week with a sore fingertip. Not on the finger I always get my infection on but the ring finger right next to it. Odd but I didn’t think too much about it. By the end of the day it was swollen and I could see where this was leading so I called my doc and made an appt for the next morning at eleven.

The next morning it was even more swollen and now the tip had turned blue, like there was a large blood blister or something.

Went to the doctor and told her the only thing I could figure was that in trying to grow out my acrylics I had been cutting them really short and something happened from that. She agreed it must have been some trauma to the nail-bed when I cut it recently and said the blue was blood pooled underneath the skin. She didn’t seem all that concerned even though the red line of infection was already creeping down my hand. She gave me some antibiotics and sent me on my way.

After finally getting my prescription filled I headed back to work but my finger was in some serious pain and pretty much all I could do was cry. I went home early.

That was Thursday. Yesterday I called in sick again and kept waiting for the meds to take effect.
Last night rob and I had a long talk since the line of infection was up passed my elbow and I had some small pain in my armpit. We decided that if it had gotten worse by one in the morning when I had to take my next round of meds he would take me to the ER.

That is the back story.

So when I woke up this morning the infection was no better but no worse.  I had a choice to make.  Go to the ER or go to the audition.  Or as I actually phrased it to myself; go to the audition or take full advantage of this infection as an opportunity to chicken out legitimitely from the thing that was scaring me to death.  Let’s face it, if I skipped the auditions in lue of taking care of my finger, there wasn’t a single person that could blame me.  It was like the universe was offering me the perfect excuse to blow off everything I had worked for the last couple of months. 

It was a very hard decision for me, but in the end I knew I would never forgive myself if I didn’t at least try to audition. 

Today I did what I never thought in a million years that I would do even though I have always wanted to.  I auditioned for a play.  That means I voluntarily sang and danced in front of people whose whole purpose was to judge me harshly .  I conquered a lifelong fear and it was pretty awesome.

Since it was my first time auditioning for anything I did my research.  I picked Eva’s brain because she has been through this kinda stuff before and I also emailed the director of the play.  I’m glad I did because it made me aware of just how short of a window we were going to have to sing…I was able to fix my song accordingly for maximum belting capacity.

Of course I was the first one there, I didn’t realize that meant I would be the first one to sing but I’m kinda glad now.  It was sort of like ripping off the band aid, nice and clean.  No time to sit around and worry about forgetting lyrics or being in the wrong key.

The singing took place in front of two people.  I thought it would be more but this was fine with me.  The room we were in had tiered seating.  The director was at the top, me at the bottom with the piano player.  I gave the Piano player my sheet music and told him where I would like to begin and off I went.  I did the first chorus just like I had rehearsed it.  The piano guy went a little bit faster than the background track I had been using but I think I did an okay job at keeping up.  When I was done the director said: “I want you to sing this like your heart is being ripped right out of your chest.  This isn’t about pretty, I don’t want pretty.” 

So I ran through the same chorus singing as best a person can with a vital organ being torn from their body and when I was done the director asked the piano player if he wanted to go over my range.

He said sure and then asked what my range was.  I honestly answered that I didn’t know and that this was my first audition.  We ran through some lalala’s with the piano and he said that I was an alto and something or other and gave my key range which I wish I remembered.  After that the director thanked me and as I was walking up the tiers to leave asked: “This is your first audition?”  I said yes and he mumbled, “Odd choice.”  I just smiled and said: “Well, RENT is my passion.” and thanked him before walking out the door.

The dance part was next.  There were to be two kinds of dancing.  One that was choreographed and one that was improvised.  The thought of either made me break out into a cold sweat, but I figured I can take direction fairly well so maybe I’d do better on the first one.  To tell you the truth that is when I started to tell myself that I had only come to sing and that I didn’t even care if I got the part so why should I have to go through the dance part right?  I mean, I had done what I had gone there to do and hey, who wants to spend so much of their summer rehearsing all the time anyway?

I almost had myself convinced but I couldn’t do it.  I had to finish this thing till the end, even if that meant making an even bigger fool of myself in front of a large number of people. 

There were about 20 of us in the dance group so it was pretty easy to blend into the back when learning the routine…and I use the word “learning” loosely as I never fully got it, but then she broke us up into groups.  Curses!

Eventually I didn’t feel like a total klutz even if I didn’t have most of the act down.  The director came in and watched us dance in our smaller groups and then came the improv dancing.  The song they chose was “Today 4 U” from the broadway soundtrack.  The director got all of us on the floor and told us to just go wild as he put the song on.  Instantly the dance floor became a club and everyone just started dancing.  I found myself getting caught up in it and just grooving.  When that was over he had us pair up and come down a line like in the movie Grease and dance at the end of the line until he told us to stop.   And then it was over.  Turns out that was the funnest part for me.  Who knew?

And that was it.  Four hours after I got there it was done and I had only preformed for the director a total of three minutes. 

As I was leaving the music hall and heading for my car I found a huge smile creeping across my face.  “I did it!”  I whispered to myself.  “I really did it!”

I am fully aware I will probably not get a part in this play and I am perfectly okay with that.  I did what I set out to do today and ended up actually having fun.  The hugeness of this day for me is really hard to comprehend.  It is not a day I will ever forget and I’m so glad I went through with it.

Getting There

With the auditions for RENT looming in the immediate future it was time to meet up with Eva again tonight.  When we last met Eva told me that I would need to find a monologue to rehearse and also gave me some tips on my voice.

I’ve been rehearsing the song but more with the original song than with the background track I have.  I’ve discovered this might have not been the best idea…but I have another week to work on that.  I also had been on the hunt via the internet for a monologue to rehearse.  I didn’t like a lot of the ones I found but settled for one that seemed to be fairly simple.  The problem was I just never quite jived with it.  I could do it, but I found it not as easy to memorize as I thought it would be.  I hemmed and hawed for a while.  Trying to memorize it but still trying to find a better one.  Finally two nights ago I found the one I wanted.  It was all about father issues so I could pull from experience.  Bonus, there was a youtube video of someone doing the monologue.  I’ve always been able to memorize better from audio than visual so that helped a lot. 

So tonight, exactly one month later(totally not planned), I headed over there tonight to get her opinion on how I had progressed.   But before I get into that I had another huge step for me happen this afternoon. 

My girls and I headed out to lunch today, which we try to do once a week or so.  On the way back to work the subject of me going to Eva’s tonight came up and so I told them about the monologue I chose and then they asked about the song.  I told them it was an Idina Menzel song and Paula said: “Let’s hear it.” and turned the volume down on the radio.  I didn’t protest.  I thought, how can you go sing in front of a bunch of people you don’t know if you can’t sing in front of your best friends??  With only a second or two of hesitation I launched into the song acapella and sang the first verse and chorus.  This was HUGE for me.  I always say no when someone asks me to sing without preparation and usually WITH preparation. 

As I got back to my desk at work and the shaking subsided I was blessed with the biggest adrenaline high I have had a in a long time.  It was pretty amazing.  I actually found myself thinking:  “I can’t wait to sing for Eva tonight!”  🙂

So I showed up at Deborah and Eva’s a little early.  Eva had just woken up and was in her room.  So Deborah and I played with the dogs and chatted for a little bit.  When Eva came out we talked a bit more and she answered some questions I had about the auditions.  Then it was time to sing.

Last time I sang for them I had to face away from them.  This time I faced them.  I even looked Eva in the eye one or two times.  🙂  When I was done they both told me that they noticed I seemed less nervous and my vibrato was less this time(I’ve been working on that but I wasn’t sure it was working…).  Eva gave me a couple more tips and then she sang the songs she was thinking about auditioning with for me.  That girl is sooo freaking talented!  She has a huge range!  I was impressed.  Then we sang “Take Me or Leave Me” together(girl duet from RENT).  That was fun.

Finally I did my monolouge.  I had to read it as it wasn’t totally memorized but when I was done I was happy when Eva said she that it was good and she had no advice for me on it.  That was really good to hear because, while I sing all the time, I had never done anything like acting before.  It almost made me more nervous than the singing!  🙂

After the hard stuff was out of the way we talked a bit more before I headed home.

Today was a really big day for me.  I did a lot in the way of realizing and calming some of my public speaking/singing fears.  I’m quite proud of myself actually.

One more week until auditions.  Wow.

About Me

 

I am a 50 something married woman living in California.
I enjoy music and traveling, watching crap movies, snuggling with my two adorable dogs and trying to be a good person.

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