Having failed to write a post at Christmas as I intended, and then missed the New Year too, I have finally managed to get my fingers tapping again on the keys of my computer. I have my excuses though – we were bereft of two of the wonders of modern life during the holiday period, central heating and the internet! Fortunately on Christmas day with the turkey cooking away in the oven, we managed to keep the house cosy and of course the alcohol and rich food warmed us on the inside but as the days (6 days in all!) wore on and the outside temperature plummeted our activities in the house were restricted to huddling round the gas fire in the lounge, reading or watching films on TV. Anyway, on the 29th December heating and internet were both restored and we gratefully began to resume normal routine only to be overtaken by the flu.
And so, excuses having been made, it’s high time for some of the many thoughts about the voice that I had over the Christmas period to be put into print. This time of the year gives us an opportunity to reflect, hence my title “Digging Up The Past”. Reminiscing about my childhood, I recalled the moment I announced at the age of about eight that I wanted to be an archaeologist when I grew up. Always an avid reader, I had at an early age been introduced to the Greek myths and had been riveted by the Odyssey and the Iliad. Little did I know then that I would go on to read these in the original Greek texts at school. My odyssey through life of course has been the voice but in many ways studying the voice is very much like being an archaeologist; one is constantly digging down through the layers to unearth more knowledge. Many insights which have come to light only recently have turned much of my thinking upside down – in fact my previous post focussed on the fact that sometimes the bit of knowledge we seek is found by taking a totally different path in our thinking.
Digging up my past with regards to posts written in this blog, I was startled to realise that I have changed my stance quite considerably on many issues of vocal technique some of which hark back to flashes of my first naïve attempts at sound making. It is remarkable how close I was to the innate wisdom of the voice and yet I did not know how I did it. I am sure many of you will relate to this and how we can get so bogged down when we go on to seriously study the voice. How difficult it is to make conscious those things that had worked with ease in an unconscious way! A great number of singers have had very successful careers not knowing how they did it but there is a great danger in this – quite a number have lost their natural sound along the way and then their career crashes because they did not know how to get it back. I really admire Renee Fleming in this respect, because she struggled with her technique for a long time. A highly intelligent woman, she was obviously quite determined to figure it out completely. In her book “The Inner Voice”, she writes, ” Among the important realizations I had in my own days in the practice room was that if one route to any one phrase didn’t work after days of trying, then the exact opposite route should at least be explored, as well as every alternative in between, as counterintuitive as that often seemed.” Thank you, Renee! She also sums up the intricacies of the human voice beautifully with this sentence – “Analyzing a voice and discerning why it isn’t functioning freely, beautifully and artistically are like trying to dissect a snowflake. Each instrument is entirely different from all others, because each mind and each body that produce it is entirely different.” So good luck with your own snowflake in 2009! I will be passing on my insights in later posts and don’t be surprised at some major shifts in thinking due to digging up my past!
PS And by the way I will also be writing much more about my esoteric path with the voice this year, so keep reading!
