All I have to remember is I can always get more toast!

This may seem like an incongruous way to start a blog that is meant to be about my vocal journey. A little background: The Birdcage has always been one of my favorite movies, and I’ve been quoting this scene for years. And yet today, something about it struck me.

ALBERT: I pierced the toast!

ARMAND: So what? The important thing to remember is not to go to pieces when something like that happens. You have to react like a man, calmly. You have to say to yourself, “Albert, you pierced the toast. So what?” It’s not the end of your life. Try another one.

ALBERT: “Albert, you pierced the toast. So what?!” Ahh, you’re right! There’s no need to get hysterical. All I have to remember is I can always get more toast!

I suddenly recognized the revelation that you can “always get more toast” as something that I need to keep in mind as I begin my journey towards a career in classical voice. If I have a bad practice one day, I need to put it behind me—I can always try again tomorrow. If I screw up an audition, there will always be the next one. And if this isn’t the career for me, in the end, it needn’t be the end of the world. I can always find another path and get another piece of toast.

Basically, I’m going to use this blog to keep myself sane, and to record my thoughts regarding this profession. I’m a soprano (which means naturally inclined to insanity and histrionics), and I’m taking a year off after finishing my undergrad in June. I also had surgery to remove nodes from my vocal cords this past May, the results of which I’m still discovering and learning to understand. This will be the first year in the last sixteen that I haven’t been in school, and as I’m hoping to apply to grad school this fall, I need to keep my voice in shape. I’m hoping to motivate myself to sing daily by forcing myself to write about it, and if I don’t sing, I won’t have anything to write about.

And I hope that these thoughts will be of use to other singers someday, especially those who are facing vocal difficulties or doubts about their vocation as I have so often.

Anne