C'Mon Get Happy!

Well, the  "happy" trick seems to be continuing to work for the ending of "Acerba Volutta".  I suppose I can use it for anything:  Ulrica can be happy because she sees her little Devil friend. Whatevah.

I remember seeing Beverly Sills in the last act of Traviata (I have always been a huge Sills fan) and not liking it because, well, she just looked too happy.  No matter what emotion she was conveying with her acting and the color of her voice, "Bubbles" was always there somewhere.

Well, being happy (or tricking myself into pretending I am) seems to have a great one-on-one correlation with proper vocal technique.  It raises the ribcage, makes the abdominal muscles buoyant, and lifts the palate.  High notes, even for me, who has struggled with them for a lifetime, are easier.  This also explains why the hardest thing for me to do it to "sit" on a note for a long time.  I can do it in my middle register, even in my upper middle register if I sing the note pianissimo (like in a choir piece) but singing a note full voice and hanging onto it seems to foster tension.  That may be why I sing things like "Rejoice Greatly" and "Et Exsultavit" so well.  They are "happy" pieces and the fact that the notes move fast prevents me from building up tension.  For example, I notice that the hardest thing in "Re" is that last G that I have to hold onto.  It is marked fortissimo, and by the time I get to the end of it, everything is rigid and I have lost the buoyancy.  But I am moving in the right direction.

I also have discovered - something that no one ever told me - "lips together teeth apart" (I think that was the name of a play).  If I make a conscious effort not to close my teeth together, just when I'm sitting for hours at my laptop working, I have less tension when I'm singing.

Now the $64,000 question is can I replicate this "happy" physiology when I'm not feeling happy?

I have actually been feeling happy for the past week, which I rarely feel.  My partner is being taken care of, which takes a big burden off me, I have singing engagements to look forward to, my partner is not giving me flak about them, and I am getting out of the house more.

One thing I can easily fall prey to is what is known as exogenous depression which is different from endogenous depression, a nonspecific feeling that life is meaningless or hopeless, which usually has a biological basis.

Exogenous depression can be caused by an upsetting event in one's life (thinking my partner was going to die) or, for me, spending too much time doing dull repetitive work (interestingly, I got just as depressed doing this in an office as doing it at home alone, probably more) and taking care of my partner in her (messy) apartment.  Then when I would combine this with looking at Facebook and reading singer blogs and seeing how other people lived (some of these people seem to be doing something different every minute of every day and interact with hundreds of people on a weekly basis), I would feel like I was a failure, which would translate into a physical feeling that I was trying to move through mud.  And of course this would affect my singing - I wouldn't be able to get my abdominal muscles working properly.

I remember someone saying it's important to unpack what certain dreams mean "I want to sing at the Met" for example.  What is it that you want??  Not everyone can sing at the Met.  So I was thinking what I seem to want is to be in the middle of some kind of activity where I feel close to the center, someone attractive and important, however small the activity or arena is.  Which is why I would rather be a mezzo soloist in a home grown concert of excerpts from the Verdi Requiem than one of 100 choristers in a production at Avery Fisher Hall.