The idea of "Boot Camp" was one I encountered in my pseudonymous blogging community. It was there that I met "real" singers, meaning working singers. They didn't necessarily earn their entire living from singing, but when they sang they got paid and when they auditioned somewhere people took them seriously. Not to mention that when they wrote about singing people respected them. This was a huge wake-up call to me, because it put my past as a singer in perspective (a very tiny perspective). Having sung the role of Laura in La Gioconda at 30 in an opera house the size of a postage stamp with a piano, sets that were falling down, and a costume that didn't fit was my idea of stardom but in that company (meaning the company of the real singers in the blogging community) it wasn't. So I ended up feeling very very very very small. There were the singers coming to New York for auditions, knowing that I lived two blocks from Lincoln Center and never acknowledging me when I gave them a shout out, for starters. Some of them I "unfriended", one "unfriended" me when I wrote something peevish. In any event, one of the pseudonymous bloggers has set up a well-respected blog under her own name, and even though it is primarily about weight loss, she is a "real" singer, so I can get vicarious pleasure from reading it. In any event, she reintroduced the subject of "boot camp"(mainly a way for working opera singers to focus on diet and fitness with a nod to a few other things)so as I am now a bone fide commenter (in this blogging community and hers people can't be friended and unfriended) I decided to sign on.
This is what I committed to:
To continue seriously working to fulfill my dream of being part of a quartet of serious amateur opera singers over 50 and book engagements for us.
1. Spend five hours a week (one hour a day five days a week) working on the scenes from Aida and Trovatore that I'm singing in our first concert.
2. Find a way to overcome the unGodly terror I have always had of singing above A natural (use any and all tricks, images, techniques, etc.)
3. (This one I got from you) Write down an affirmation and read it before I start practicing.
4. Have a plan for our next project ready when the concert is over. (Maybe the long dreamed-of abridged Verdi Requiem during next year's Lent at the church where I'm a soloist).
5. Follow up on the offer I got from several people to subsidize my making a CD to sell at the church.
6. Ignore all flak I get at home about these projects. Don't argue, just be calm and assertive.
Things have not been going as well as I had hoped. Yesterday I didn't sing at all because I had two long meetings with social workers and by the time I got home I had work to catch up on and by the time I was done with that it was 7:30 and I knew I would just be too tired to sing properly.
Last night I had a good night's sleep, woke up and worked from 9 to 4:30, as I'd promised myself, then hit the bathroom, my practice room, where I dampen the sound by running the water (ducks flying objects thrown by environmentalists). Vocalizing went well. I seem now to be able to sing long arpeggios up to a high C (of course like everything else to do with my extreme upper register, this has been touch and go for six years) but "Condotta" didn't go so well. I sang some decent B flats if I started in the middle, but not when I started at the beginning. I just don't know how to ground myself between the word "brucciato" on the high A, and what comes next, which can either be an A sliding to a B flat or a B flat. I gulp for air, gasp for breath, panic, don't breathe, turn into a wooden plank, etc. etc. Why I don't have that problem when I start in the middle I have no idea.
Well, I broke my first promise to myself in that I didn't practice for an hour. After singing that section about seven times, I decided my voice needed a rest. Then I had dinner (I ate rice with lunch and dinner....did that sap my energy?) and hoped to at least get to the Aida trio (in a comfortable middle register) but felt it was more important to do some more work. (I have spent so much time talking to social workers this week I have not worked the hours I need to to pay my bills.)
I did read my affirmation. I thought I had lost it, but found it taped inside my score of Samson et Dalila (another opera I sang really well with a B flat that gave me the cold sweats for months although I managed it in the performance).
Here's what it says, for what it's worth.
I have everything I need to succeed.
I deserve success.
I am at my best when I am calm.
I am poised and powerful, centered and secure, confident and in control.
I am graceful under pressure.
I have what it takes!
So what's the matter with me!!! I know all these things are true but they're not there when I need them. Or maybe they will be, if I can take the week off before my concert. Not off from my livelihood - that's nice and quiet and calm. But off from the stress of my partner's endless emergencies. I'm just waiting for her to have one that week. She's probably saving one up.
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