You know, I kind of miss getting on here and spilling it once in awhile. I mean sure, I write on Tuesdays and Fridays and try to make it all organized and thought out and profound and stuff. But that's only so I can get it published in our local news journal. I mean, ya gotta be dignified in a news journal, right?
But I miss just jawing with ya'll. Especially since when I announced that I was having to cut back due to health issues–which continue to be entertaining and are forcing me to enjoy life at a much slower pace–most of my readers bade me sayonara. It was a tragic day for me. I have a friend who blogs just to blog, just to write, just for practice. Psh. Not me. I want to be FAMOUS, man! I want to be the next Pioneer Woman! Except without the ranch and stuff. I want people flocking to read my words!
Since the Great Life In Bits Reader Exodus, however, I have realized that I'm a bit delusional. But I've also figured out that I can still get on my blog any day of the week and blather to my heart's content. People can read it, or people can not. Either way is cool. I just miss talking with y'all. So, like my friend, I'm going to not worry about it and do it as inspiration strikes. Like now.
'Kay, so I am preparing for some Christmas concerts in Seattle, and I just got the music today, and OY PELLOY! I can tell I'm working with real musicians. Because clearly they cannot relate to those of us who are not real musicians, and think they can throw 48 metric tons of new and funkily arranged music at us, and we'll just adapt. ACK! Baby, if I can't find it on YouTube and memorize it from there, I CAN'T SING IT. I'm a singer, not a musician. There's a difference, you know.
Singing is sustained talking. And if you can hear it you can learn it. All those little black dots and lines and squiggles on the page? Those are for the musicians. The accompanists. The composer and arranger. All I need to have is some lipstick, a little black dress, and warmed-up vocal chords, and I can blast it. That's it. I don't need to do this whole Get A Degree In Freaking Music Theory And Then Learn To Sight Read Anything bizniz. That ain't in my skill set. I don't have to worry about it.
Until now. My brain has Hashimoto's and Adrenal Fatigue. All those lines and notes and words and repeats and codas and D.S. al Codas and fermatas and half notes and half shells and rest homes are muddling my thinking to death. And I'm worried that I won't know what the fortissimo I am doing when it comes time to perform.
Sigh.
I guess we'll all survive. I mean, I've done it before and no one died. Case in point: my brother was a missionary in Vienna, and I joined him over there when he was done so we could go see our little village in Germany, do a little touring, then come home together. We went to one of the churches where he had worked and he asked me to sing a duet with him for the congregation. Okay, fine. He showed me the music and it was a song I had been singing since I was three years old. No problemo. We didn't have time to run through it but I wasn't worried.
Well, we stood up, opened our mouths, and out came music glorious to the ears. We harmonized, blended, created loveliness of epic proportion. Then something happened. I don't know what. Our voices crashed, slashed, and created painful vibrations that rendered the dear Austrians in front of us completely stunned. Truly, it was horrifying. Cacophonous. And I had no idea why.
Until my little bro looked at me quizzically for a while and then said, "You don't read music, do you?" Ummmm. no. Apparently my little childhood song had changed keys right in the middle without warning. And I never noticed. Until the car-crash-horrible noises issued from the two of us. To this day I tell myself that our audience just assumed it was some funky new avante garde American concoction. I have to, or I'll die of terminal embarrassment.
I'm praying the same thing doesn't happen in Seattle this year. I don't think I can pull off the old "I Did That On Purpose" dodge. If nothing else it could be wildly entertaining. It doesn't really matter though, because I do have a wicked awesome dress and some fabu new lipstick. It'll work out.
(pray)
I don’t read music very well either. That whole solfeggio thing goes right over my head. I do have relative pitch, though, so that helps if I’m doing harmony [and is why I almost exclusively stick to harmony], but there’s no way under heaven that if someone gave me a piece of music and said, “sing this” that it would turn out the way it was intended. No. Way. At All. Plus, I don’t have a little black dress.