Vocal Porn, or How Reading an Article about Body Image Gave Me an Insight

I feel somewhat guilty not writing about Oklahoma, on the other hand as I don't know anyone who lives there, it hasn't hit me on a gut level (am I empathy challenged?) other than that the fact that their senator has refused aid unless Congress cuts the budget somewhere else has elicited major anger and disgust.

What I do feel like writing about is how reading an article about women's obsession with their bodies gave me an insight into some of the angst I keep going through about singing.

If anyone's interested, this is the article I am referencing. It's mostly about the difference between a weight at which one feels fit, energized, and alive, and a number on the scale that one obsesses over.  True, there is some tangential connection between weight and health (although it may be more related to     what one eats than what one weighs, and the jury is still out as to whether there is any connection at all, except among the morbidly obese).

For some reason, I was thinking about the connection between how various women obsess about that last ten (or twenty) pounds, and about how their life will be different if they lose it, and how they lose it and regain it and lose it again, and how I feel about those last few notes in my singing range.

I realized the other day that I really don't enjoy singing anything that goes above a G or at most a G sharp (fast coloratura excepted).  It makes me too nervous.  I try this, and I try that, and on a good day it sounds great, but if I'm even the teensiest bit tired, or anxious, or if I've been talking too much, the phrase in question turns into a train wreck.  And once there's been a train wreck, the phrase is doomed forever, like a fence that a horse balks at.  So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I panic, I turn to a block of wood, I don't breathe, my larynx rises, I blow it, then I get nervous again.  I can't enjoy, for example, how gloriously I can sing Charlotte's "Letter Scene" because I see that page with the high A that you have to hold for 5 counts looming ahead.

Do I need a different teacher?  I don't think it would make that much difference.  Over the years between my current teacher (who is extremely eclectic) and others, not to mention things I've read in vocal technique blogs, I have tried this and tried that, and these things work for a little while and then they don't.  This does not mean I have not made progress.  Within my comfortable range, which probably means up to a G for sustained singing and up to an A for fast singing, my voice continues to sound better and better (other people have told me this), I have more stamina, a nicer line, and less of a break in my lower passagio.  But really, each successive note above a G gets harder and harder.  I can sing the A like gangbusters if I can take my own setup time and don't have to hold it more than 2 counts (e.g. at the end of Amneris's "Judgment Scene") but not if I have to keep singing and singing and singing and breathe on the fly beforehand (or hold it for more than 2 or 3 counts).  I can sing a decent B flat if I sing another note first and to do that I must have plenty of rest and setup time (like in the aria from Sapho.)  I can sing the B in an arpeggio and hit the note squarely on pitch but can only hold it for one count, and the C is basically touch and go.

One theory that intrigued me was the one mentioned here. I may have too much "armor". Certainly the idea that the problems don't seem to budge with "technique" but manifest as physical limitations, is worth exploring.

If anyone's titillated, the reason why I used the word "porn" in the title of this article, is that I think the obsession with certain  notes is not that different from porn's obsession with body parts, or women's obsessions about being able to see a certain (often unrealistic) number on the scale.

The thing that struck me about the weight acceptance article was it asked the question What am I wasting time NOT thinking about that's more important? 

Yes, chasing after those last few notes is a challenge I can't resist, but what is it really going to get me? I doubt that having the perfect high B would get me cast in a leading role in a community opera production.  I'm obviously over 45 and have, in essence, nothing on my resume.

If what I seem to yearn for most is to "star" in a production, I can star in my own pocket oratorio, the way I did with the Verdi Requiem.  I have quite fallen in love with Elijah; the alto soloist is a great role, with all the drama of opera without the scary notes.  Knowing that in a few weeks I will be singing "O Rest in the Lord" as a companion to the choir singing "He Watches Over Israel" has lifted my spirits as much as if I were singing an aria with high notes somewhere, and I don't have the jitters and the sweats.

And if my biggest worry is that I will leave this earth without having made a mark on it by doing something creative, there are many many things I can do that are creative, exhibitionistic, flamboyant, and imaginative that I can do with the voice that I comfortably have.