We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.

It's the first day of the semester at the music school where I moonlight as a receptionist (ordinary receptionist by day...ordinary receptionist by night!), and as such, somebody has brought in bags and bags of candy. I am unfortunately put in mind of last Halloween--me, an all-but-empty building, an enormous bowl of delicious goodies...danger, Will Robinson.

Last year on the first day of school, we offered Smarties. The students complained, but I was happy as a clam because, you see, I don't like Smarties. Which meant it was easy for me to sit at the desk with a big bowl of candy in front of me. But apparently the other campus puts out chocolate all year round, and this year, to curry favor with the student body, we have followed suit. And so I'm sitting here, methodically unwrapping one of each kind of candy...or two, in the case of Krackels and Reeses peanut butter cups, of which I'm particularly fond.

This variety has gotten me thinking about singers, naturally. All of them are chocolate. Most of them have some kind of delicious filling--peanut butter, caramel, peanuts, rice krispies, whatever kind of crispy goodness is in Crunch bars. I love them all. So what makes one of them better than another? For that matter, is one better than another? And can you really even compare a Reeses peanut butter cup to a Special Dark Hershey bar (oooh, that's one I haven't had yet!)?

Last summer, I went to a three-week training program for singers. My grandparents lived not far away and they would drive up for every concert. When they drove me to the airport after the program was over, they asked me who the best soprano was. I had no answer. For three weeks, I had listened to the same arias over and over--countless renditions of "Donde lieta," "Si, mi chiamano Mimi," "Io son l'umile ancella," "Deh vieni, non tardar" and The Presentation of the Rose, among many, many others.

(At this point, I interrupt the cosmic flow of my writing to lock the bag of candy in my boss' office. It's much safer there.)

Anyway, my point is that no two renditions of these arias was exactly the same. No two voices were exactly the same. I'm a light lyric/soubrette, for the moment, and I sang "Che soave zeffiretto" with a Countess who also sang "Io son l'umile ancella" and Song to the Moon. And we both had "Piangero la sorte mia" in our repertoire. A person might prefer one rendition to the other, or a larger-voiced Cleopatra to a smaller-voiced one, but in essentials, there is no tangible gauge of which voice is better.

And even among singers who are closer in fach than the two of us were, there can be a world of difference between one and the next. There were three wonderful sopranos in this program who performed The Presentation of the Rose from Der Rosenkavalier. They had similar repertoire, similar sounds, similar ranges, and yet three completely different presentations of the aria. And I'd be hard-pressed to tell you which one I liked best.

Nor is it easy for me to explain why I like certain singers. If somebody were to ask me why I like Krackels, my answer would be along the lines of, "Because they're delicious!" Not very subtle or nuanced, I know, but hey, it's chocolate (although as Julia Child pointed out, chocolate is much more complicated than anyone suspects). Similarly, I find it difficult to explain why I prefer Mirella Freni to Renata Tebaldi singing the exact same repertoire. I just do. Ask me why the mezzo-soprano on my recording of Beatrice et Benedict , Enkelejda Skhosa, edges out Susan Graham, and my answer will be something like, "I don't know...there's just something about her that I like better!" Why do I prefer Nicolai Gedda's "Che gelida manina" to Pavarotti's? Who knows!

And sometimes I think the first recordings of opera we hear color the whole rest of our operatic experience. When I had to learn Susanna in scenes from Le Nozze di Figaro, the recording I found at the library had Patrizia Ciofi as Susanna, Veronique Gens as the Countess, and Simon Keenlyside as the Count. Those are the voices in my head, and sometimes when I hear other renditions, they aren't quite the same and so I don't like them as much. My first "Sempre libera" experience was Beverly Sills. She's not my favorite singer, but now when I hear other version of the aria, they don't quite live up to the first one. That said, I love every recording of "Chi il bel sogno di Doretta" that I have--I can't choose a clear favorite, though it might be a toss-up between Anna Moffo and Leontyne Price (and again, I couldn't quite explain to you why).

Remember the "Pure Imagination" sequence in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when the kids and their parents are let loose in the chocolate room, and everything there is eatable--edible--I mean, you can EAT almost everything! It's hilariously low-budget, but who doesn't want to be in the presence of so many different KINDS of candy? (This phenomenon can also be witnessed in the opening "Candyman" sequence when the kids run around kind of ransacking the candy store.) There are gummy bears, candy canes, a tree that shakes down what look like M&Ms, enormous Pull-n-Peels, a whipped cream toadstool, and the unforgettable edible teacup and saucer. As singers, I think we need exactly that kind of variety and to hear a wide range of styles, timbres and interpretations in order to develop our own sound. The danger of listening to one singer to the exclusion of others is that we unconsciously adopt the mannerisms of that singer. A teacher told a friend of mine recently that she was singing "I Want Magic" from Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire like Renee Fleming; my friend replied that it was hard not to, when the only person you've ever heard sing it is La Renee. And I certainly don't agree that we should listen only to singers with voices similar to ours--when I discovered Eileen Farrell junior year of college, my coach said, laughingly, "You'll never sound like that!" (this, by the way, is absolutely true--the woman's instrument was like a Mack Truck). But that never stopped me from listening and loving.

Now that I've gone well and truly off-topic, I'm going to go have one of those Special Dark Hershey bars--the only kind I still haven't had tonight. :)

Though I spends me time in the ashes and smoke, in this whole wide world there's no happier bloke!

I've been revisiting a lot of old favorite movies lately, whether on TV or from the discount DVD rack at CVS. And I've come to the conclusion that I have two role models for job satisfaction: Caractacus Potts from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Fairchild from Sabrina (the new one, although the character isn't materially different in the original).

I'll start with the former. Played by Dick Van Dyke, Caractacus (as in, "and tell you every detail of Caractacus' uniform") is an inventor whose inventions, by and large, don't work. He does manage to come up with Toot Sweets, but purely by accident, and they turn out to be better for dogs than for humans. There's that "vacuum" that sucks up the whole rug, and the haircut machine that makes a guy at the carnival look like a Treasure Troll, and my personal favorite, the breakfast machine that makes eggs and sausage--Jeremy and Jemima get their breakfast, but Grandpa gets a raw egg. Oops.

What I admire about Caractacus' life is that he loves his work (I've just realized that I could write this same post about Bert from Mary Poppins, except it would be more about having a variety of interests). He wouldn't do anything else just to make money, even though he has no money and only makes enough money to buy Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by singing and dancing "Me Old Bamboo" at the carnival, in true Dick Van Dyke style. Most of all, he believes in his inventions. When Truly Scrumptious comes into his workshop and laughs at his gadgets and gizmos aplenty, he defends them passionately. What he, Jeremy, Jemima and Grandpa may lack in worldly possessions, they make up for in imagination. One of my favorite moments in the film is when Caractacus goes up to tuck in his children, and they suggest that he sell their "treasures" to raise the money to buy the car. Things like a seashell, a rusty ring, a piece of coral...and he has to tell them that he thinks most people wouldn't consider these treasures, and wouldn't pay for them.

Sabrina is a movie that most people remember for the basic storyline. The chauffeur's daughter is in love with David Larrabee. She goes to France to find herself and comes back a glamorous, beautiful creature, and David, who is engaged to somebody else (and the somebody else's father is planning a merger with the Larrabee company), finds her irresistible. So Linus, the serious, workaholic older brother, is called upon to distract Sabrina from David. In the process, Linus falls in love with Sabrina, and finally follows her to Paris, where he had sent her to get her out of the way.

But it's the chauffeur who interests me for the purposes of this post. Recently I was looking through the original play, Sabrina Fair by Samuel Taylor, and I came across something that Sabrina says to her father that I thought was just brilliant. The scene is recreated in the remake of the movie.



Not that being a chauffeur is an entirely undesirable profession, but wanting to have time to read seems like a funny reason to choose it. And yet I completely understand his viewpoint. I'm currently working a job that I leave at the office when I go home. It's much different from school, where after class there was homework to do and papers to write. If I so choose, I can come home from work and read all evening. I can sing to my heart's content without worrying about saving my voice for the next day's singing. I don't have to think about work until I get there in the morning, and I don't have to think about it after I leave.

Given the nature of my work (and my mode of transportation), I've had a lot of time to observe people in jobs that I would never want for the long haul. I work in a more or less clerical position in the scintillating world of finance, and yet the people I work with deliberately went to school to be able to do what they do for a living. And then there are bus drivers, as I've already noted. Do people ever become bus drivers because they want to drive a bus? Because they're passionate about it? Did Fairchild become a chauffeur only because it would afford him time to read, or did part of him just love cars and driving? And is it worth it to work in an unfulfilling job if you can come home and do what you love to do?

I think the trick would be to combine Caractacus Potts and Thomas Fairchild. The ideal job, to my way of thinking, would be one that I'm passionate about, that I love to do, but that leaves me time for myself at the end of the day (or whenever the hours happen to be). If I ever get to be a professional opera singer, I will thank my lucky stars for my good fortune--to be making a living doing something I love. But I think that if traveling for gigs, rehearsals, shows, whatever, cuts into my "me" time, I might very well think about chucking the whole thing. And that's when it would be good to be Bert. Throughout the movie, he works four low-paying jobs--one-man band, screever (the guy who draws the pictures on the sidewalk), chimney sweep and kite-seller (he also mentions selling hot chestnuts). Like Caractacus, he has little money, but he seems to always be thrilled to be doing what he's doing--"Chim chiminee, chim chiminee, chim chim cheroo, / I do what I likes and I likes what I do!" None of these jobs are a back-up plans--he's equally passionate about all of them. I hate the idea of a back-up plan, because it's inherently something that isn't as good as what you originally wanted to do. Otherwise, why wouldn't you have done it in the first place?

My undergraduate experience was the ideal combination of these two characters. I started out in a five-year program because I didn't think that after working so hard in high school, I could possibly drop the liberal arts. But then I realized that I'd never have time to take the fun interesting classes if I had to squeeze a second degree into my schedule--so I dropped that BA like it was hot. And then when I was singlemindedly pursuing my passion, I discovered musicology, which I also love. So now I have a back-up plan that I can be passionate about, in case I find when I'm in the thick of an operatic career that the "posh, posh traveling life" isn't for me.

And if neither of those things work out, I think I could be content to live in a house with an egg-and-sausage machine, or to do something mindless so that I have time for myself.

Did you guys ever even WATCH the show?

This entry is for my mother, who believes that I can connect any subject to singing in some way or another. And her subject of choice, because it was playing on TBS on Sunday, is the movie Galaxy Quest.

This movie comes highly recommended from my whole family. It's about the cast of a once-popular science fiction television show, now somewhat washed up and at loose ends. Tim Allen plays Jason Nesmith, who plays Captain Taggart on the show and always upstages his castmates when they make appearances together. Sigourney Weaver is leggy blonde Gwen DeMarco, Jason's one-time girlfriend whose only job on the ship was to repeat the computer ("I have one job on this lousy ship, and it's stupid, but I'm gonna do it!"); Alan Rickman is Alexander Dane, the classically-trained actor who plays Dr. Lazarus, an alien scientist with hilarious headgear. The crew also includes Daryl Mitchell as Tommy Webber, a former child star who drives the ship, and Tony Shalhoub as Fred Kwan, who plays Tech Sergeant Chen.

And then there's Guy, played by Sam Rockwell. Guy's only claim to fame is that he was an extra in Episode 81. He was the unnamed character who got killed to show how dangerous the situation was going to be (this is a paraphrase of his own description). He somehow manages to tag along with the actors when they get transported to an exact replica of their ship, the Enterprise, manned by the Thermians, an alien species on the brink of extinction, led by Mathesar.

Mathesar and his fellow Thermians believe that the old episodes of the show they've been watching are "historical documents"--they re-created the Enterprise solely from watching the fake ship on television. One of the most heartbreaking scenes in the movie is when Jason has to explain to Mathesar that they don't actually know how to crew a spaceship because the whole thing is a lie.

Despite all the years that Jason and his fellow castmates played their roles on Galaxy Quest, they have no idea how the "galaxy" works. Except for Guy. Here's a snippet of dialogue from one of my favorite parts of the movie. The cast has landed on a desert planet to get a reserve Beryllium Sphere (apparently to fuel the ship), and they're watching from behind a rock as a number of adorable little creatures do...well, whatever it is they're doing.

GUY: I don't like this. I don't like this at all.

GWEN: They are so cute.

GUY: Sure, they're cute now. but in a second they're gonna get mean, they're gonna get ugly somehow and there's gonna be a million more of them.

GWEN: (making a move to approach the creatures) Oh, hey there, little guy!

GUY: (pulling her back abruptly) Did you guys ever even watch the show?

Being so wrapped up in how something is done can often obscure what is being done. Gwen could probably have told Guy what she was directed to do, she might have remembered how hot it was on the set the day they filmed a certain episode, but she wouldn't have experienced the terror of this situation. Just like Guy and the Thermians, we refer to our favorite television shows as if what we see is real. We experience it linearly, whereas actors would experience it in the order that they filmed it, or based on what techniques they had to use. The same thing happens with opera and theater. When people would comment on the Northwestern production of The Merry Widow in a similar way, I would counter, "Oh, you mean that part when my voice was about to give out?" or "Oh, yeah, that dance took us hours and hours to learn." We focus so much in how we've put it together that we forget to look at the big picture.

I have spent the last four years becoming intimately and technically acquainted with the art of singing. And because of this, I have also unfortunately become cynical. I'm highly critical, both of myself and of other people, because I know what good singing is supposed to sound like. Not because I always achieve it myself, but because I've been taught what not to do. I can ruin a whole performance for myself by finding one little thing to dislike--the tenor's high notes sound strained and strident, the soprano's diction is weird, yada yada yada. It's awful.

Sometimes when I watch a movie or an opera or a musical, I say to myself, I'd like to live in that world. That's how I think I would have felt about The Merry Widow if it hadn't been so rough on my voice, if I hadn't been constantly worrying about tripping on my train, or forgetting the steps of the can-can. I think one of the hardest things for singers is to stay in the moment and to believe in the action ourselves. We have so many technical things to think about, coordinating stage movement and acting added to all the stuff we have to remember about singing when we get up onstage. But if we could let ourselves get caught up in the action and believe that it's real, even for a few minutes, we'll make the experience more fulfilling not only for the audience, but for ourselves too.

In Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild (yes, S-T-R-E-A-T-F-E-I-L-D), Pauline Fossil and her friend Winnifred are both auditioning for Alice in Wonderland; Pauline, who has never been in a play before, says that she would love to be Alice so that she could meet the March Hare and the Queen of Hearts and the Caterpillar. Winnifred needs the money. Jason, Gwen, Alexander, Tommy and Fred continue to keep up their Galaxy Quest personae to make a living, but the Thermians look to them as real-life role models. As the cast members realize that they're really in danger and that it's up to them to save the Thermians from the evil Sarris, they begin to shed the bitterness and cynicism born of years of D-list celebrity status. If they're going to win the day, they have to believe in the reality of the Enterprise and of Galaxy Quest as much as the Thermians do. In order to make opera (with its outlandish plots and unexplainable singing) believable to the unitiated, we, the initiated and trained, have to put ourselves in their shoes. We have to create a world that is so real that the audience forgets that the characters are singing and just sees people and relationships and stories. And to do all of that, we have to believe in it. We have to want to live in that world, however ridiculous it is, because it is important to so many people.

I'm hopeful that eventually I'll stop freaking out about my technique in the middle of a show and let myself just be in the moment. And someday, I'll train myself to just enjoy performances, without criticizing. I think there's hope--when I saw Opera New Jersey's Lucia di Lammermoor, I could find nothing negative to say about Lisette Oropesa's glorious singing and acting. It was perfect.

It's an uphill battle, but the struggle is towards a very important goal, for all of us. And always remember the motto of the ship Enterprise: Never give up. Never surrender.

When I have sung my songs to you, I'll sing no more.

I'm sitting at work on a prematurely-autumnal Sunday morning, and as my job entails practically nothing, I thought I'd write. I have a couple of clever ideas for blog entries up my sleeve, but I'm trying to save them so I don't post all the good stuff at once. So this entry is going to be pure self-indulgence. I'm going to talk about my art song obsession.

To come right to the point, I love almost every art song (and aria, for that matter) I've ever heard. Maybe love isn't quite the right word...it's probably more accurate to say that I can't think of a single song that I can't stand. Most people have one or two--my voice teacher can't stand "Laurie's Song," for instance. I used to find "Vergebliches Staendchen" (oh, work computer, where is thy umlaut?) pretty cloying, but somehow even that has grown on me. I'm a sucker for the sentimental--I prefer Brahms to Wolf, for example, even though Wolf's choice of poetry is perhaps more inspired. But come on, can anybody really resist a great baritone singing "Wie bist du, meine Koenigin?" I don't think so. (And if you're reading this and haven't heard that song, or "O wuesst ich doch," or "Unbewegte laue Luft," especially Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's recording, you probably should get on that, like yesterday.)

I realized just now that I can trace my love affair with the classical voice repertoire back to the summer before my senior year of high school, when I spent a week at Oberlin Conservatory, in their Vocal Academy for High School Students. It was an eye-opening week. We each had to bring eight art songs, and at that point I knew virtually no art songs, except what my teacher had given me to prepare for this program. So this was my list: Sebben crudele, Se tu m'ami, Per la gloria, When I Bring to You Coloured Toys, Will There Really be a Morning (Ricky Ian Gordon), The Lass With the Delicate Air, and, hilariously enough, Plum Pudding from Bernstein's La Bonne Cuisine (at its fastest, 45 seconds of breakneck French). There was an eighth song too, but I can't put my finger on it.

That was the week that I fell madly in love with repertoire, and also the week I realized I needed to go to music school (not just major in music at a liberal arts college, or major in English and take voice lessons for fun). All of a sudden, this became my life. It was such a heady feeling. And the people I spent that week with are my friends to this day.

What I want to do, just for a fun time-waster of a challenge, is list all of the songs that were sung in the final concert that week. So here's that list, if I can remember everything, complete with brief comments on some of my favorites. In no particular order, just as I come up with them.

Nymphs and Shepherds (stole it and sang it for college auditions)

Angels, ever bright and fair

O, had I Jubal's lyre (still trying to make this one work for me...)

Per la gloria d'adorarvi

Danza, danza, fanciulla gentile (STILL hard for me!)

Alma nel core

O cessate di piagarmi

Frondi temere...Ombra mai fu

Vedrai carino (see Nymphs and Shepherds)

Batti, batti, o bel Masetto

Vaghissima sembianza

Have You Seen But a White Lillie Grow?

Un moto di gioia

Silent Noon

The Bird, John Duke (I'd love to pick this one up again now that I can sing pianissimo!)

The Vagabond

Down Among the Dead Men (down, down, down, down...)

The Singer, Michael Head (glorious! I sang this for the SAI recital last spring and loved it)

En priere (see Vedrai carino)

Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee

Lydia (still my favorite song by Faure, even though I've never sung it...it's kind of a guy song)

Die Forelle

Vergebliches Staendchen

The Lass from the Low Countree

Come Ready and See Me (oh my God, I could listen to this song on repeat and never get tired of it...if I'm ever in a position to make a commercial recording, this will be on it.)

Come to the Fair (hi, ho, come to the fair!)

The Daisies (awwwww)

Der Neugierige (JAAAAA heisst das eine Woertchen...)

Widmung (I sang this in Schumann class back in January, and it's a delightful sing)

The Little Irish Girl (had such a crush on the guy who sang this, and the song still makes me laugh)

Miranda, Richard Hundley (Do yooooou remember an inn?)

La pastorella al prato

The Roadside Fire

Vinto sono (I remember thinking that those melismas were the longest I'd ever heard...)

An Silvia (I now have two recordings of this song--the Bryn Terfel one I bought when I got home from Oberlin, and the John Mark Ainsley one that I bought last year. The song has staying power!)

Panis Angelicus

Will There Really Be a Morning? (this was me, and I have a recording on my computer to prove it!

I think that might be all of them. Interesting thing--recently, my friend Daniel and I tried to list all of the people in our graduating class. It took a long time, and we found that we were forgetting people we'd had classes with for years, people with whom we'd been friends and since fallen out of touch. But I can remember the sound of the voices from this program as if it were yesterday, even though I've only seen three of these people since then ("Un moto di gioia," "Batti, batti" and "Alma nel core"). I'm Facebook friends with a lot of them, but certainly not all. Musical memory is very powerful. I can remember the music I listened to in various situations (at camp, in college, at Oberlin, in Colorado) more clearly than I can remember names and faces.

I took a musicology class on American Art Song this past year, and one of our papers was a group project where we analyzed a popular song as if it were an art song. My group chose "Beauty and the Beast," and I begged to be allowed to write the paragraph on nostalgia (did I mention I was a musicology minor?). I pointed out that although "Beauty and the Beast" is specifically constructed to harken back to an earlier musical period, any art songs can also become pieces of nostalgia if you have certain memories associated with them. For the students in our group, the sound of "Beauty and the Beast" made us nostalgic for our childhoods. Many of the songs on the above list make me remember fondly the dawning of my obsession with classical voice, even if they're not intended to be nostalgic.

This is the picture of my friends from Oberlin that was on my senior yearbook page. What a week!

My New Locker

On Thursday night, I watched Project Runway on the elliptical machine at the gym. I went to the locker room afterwards to get my purse and umbrella out of the locker, and it took me two tries to get it open. It should be easy enough: you turn it to the left for the first number, then to the right PAST the first number for the second, then back to the left for the third number. But then, combination locks, and the lockers they guard, have never been my strong suit.

I haven't thought about the sixth grade locker room at my middle school in years, but now I find that I can picture it as clearly as if it were only yesterday. Locker assignments were alphabetized, so I was in the left-hand corner right next to my friend Jen. I'm sure she doesn't read this, but I don't believe I ever properly thanked her for opening my locker every morning for the better part of a year. In seventh and eighth grade, I had a locker in the hall, and I must have managed to open it by myself, because I have no memory to suggest otherwise. I do remember decorating the inside of my locker with pictures and magnets, and of getting a wrapping paper-and-candy display on my locker for my birthday.

By high school, I had taken to carting all of my books around with me in an enormous backpack, because my locker was on an out-of-the-way hallway where I rarely had reason to be. It's a miracle that I didn't develop hideous back problems. At my new high school in Phoenix, I claimed a bench in front of my locker (which I used for about a month, then abandoned). We used to joke that I should put a plaque on the bench, because for three years it played host to my books, purse and various other accoutrements.

Now, if my vocal technique were like that bench, my life would be easy. It would just be there, and then I could dump all of my interpretation, diction and style on top of it. But unfortunately, vocal technique is more like learning to use a combination lock. It should be simple, self-explanatory--it's a combination of a few components that, when correct, open the door to a great sound. A few weeks ago, when my teacher was on vacation, I took a lesson with one of her colleagues. She told me that much of vocal instruction these days has become about what you're supposed to do when you sing, and a lot of young singers, myself very much included, tend to get in their own way by doing too much to create the sound. I am an inveterate larynx-squeezer. I tend to articulate with my jaw. I breathe loudly, feeling for the coldness of the breath on my hard palate.

There should actually be a lot fewer steps to creating sound than we think there are, she pointed out to me. Three, actually, which makes singing a lot like opening a locker. #1--breathe. #2--create a resonant space for the sound. #3--phonate. Once we've opened that locker, we can put things in it--text, rhythm, performance practice, dramatic interpretation. And eventually, the steps should become second nature. After a few years of practice, most people can open their lockers without pausing to figure it out. But I'm not at that point yet, just like I've never been able to open a combination lock without thinking, "Okay, now, which direction do I turn it first?" I still have to think to myself, breathe silently, don't engage your throat, open the pharyngeal space. Most of the time, I get it wrong.

Before surgery, my voice was like a jammed locker (I know, the similes are getting out of control). Even when I had the combination right and turned the knob the right direction in the right order, the locker wouldn't open. So I pushed and pulled and sometimes kicked it in frustration. Vocally, I was doing everything I could to improve my technique, but my instrument stood in my way. So I compensated. I squeezed my larynx and led from my throat and didn't connect the breath, because when the breath initiated the sound, the flaws in my instrument were obvious. I was faking it.

It's the beginning of a new year. I took all of my books and decorations out of my old locker, and they've assigned me a new locker. Except this one isn't jammed. It's one of the ones that were installed brand-new this year, say, and it's well-oiled and clean of any rust or dirt. It will open, exactly as it should. But I still use extra force to open it, because I'm so used to that old locker that would obstinately remain closed despite my best efforts.

I don't have nodes anymore, which means that my voice will do what I want it to do, if I can only get out of my own way. If I can initiate the sound from the breath, create the right resonating space for the sound, and muscle things less, I can control my vibrato and my whole range, not to mention discover a wide variety of dynamics and stylistic ideas that were unavailable before. It's just a matter of unlearning old habits and learning new, healthy ones.

Having a new clean locker was one of the thrills of starting a new school year, and having a newly healthy voice is no less exciting.. Now I just have to learn how to unlock it.

The Prayer Bus

This morning on the second leg of my bus ride to work, I witnessed something extraordinary.

What's great about riding the bus (and there are precious few things that I can think of) is that you get familiar with the faces and the drivers, and after a while you start to call it "my bus." "On my bus this morning, I witnessed something extraordinary." You all commiserate when the bus is late, or slow, you exchange pleasantries with the driver. You may even have a favorite bus driver. I have two. The first drives my early-morning bus a few days a week. He has sparse white hair and an Eastern-European accent that I can't identify, and for the first week or so that I rode the bus, I would forget what he looked like between rides. The fourth time I climbed on board and asked, "Are you going to Old Orchard Mall?", he laughed and said, "I've driven you at least four times already!" After that, he would start honking the horn at me when he drove through my station. "I know, I know," I'd reply in mock exasperation. "I was getting out my Chicago Card!" (in case anybody reading this doesn't know me and where I live, there it is.)

My second favorite bus driver was driving the bus when the Extraordinary Thing happened. He's a middle-aged black man who compliments me as I get off the bus, perhaps knowing that I could really use a self-esteem boost to get me through a mind-numbing day of clerical work. He talks to everybody as if he's known them forever, and he especially talks to the delightful Jamaican woman who rides the bus with me every morning. Actually, this particular bus is a veritable cornucopia of nationalities--there are the two Russian ladies, a few Latinas, a very tall Asian woman, me (a white Jewish American), and our Jamaican friend.

This morning I got on the bus at the mall with the Jamaican woman and two Hispanic women who appeared to be friends. The Jamaican woman was talking jovially with the bus driver before one of the Hispanic women beckoned her to sit down with them. After they exchanged delighted greetings, she explained to the Jamaican woman that her friend's husband was sick, and she was very worried about him. And indeed, her friend had barely even smiled when the Jamaican woman had sat down; even I, sitting across from them, could tell that she was preoccupied and upset.

And the Jamaican woman started to pray. Out loud. In the middle of the bus driving up Skokie Boulevard. Her voice was beautiful to listen to with its lilting accent. "Dear Lord," she prayed (and here I'm paraphrasing, since nothing could quite capture this woman's prayer and I really can't remember her exact words, which were wonderfully colorful), "look down upon this woman's husband, who is sick, and help him to feel better. And Jesus, in thy name, in thy only name, keep this woman and her husband in thy sight." And then, addressing the woman, "Keep faith in Jesus, the son of God, He will help you through this time and make your husband feel better." On it went. The other Hispanic woman was translating the prayer for her friend into rapid-fire Spanish. Periodically, the bus driver would cry, "Amen!" or "Hallelujah!"

Normally, this kind of thing would make me uncomfortable. Like those times in high school volleyball when we'd go to a Christian school for a game and they would pray before the game. I'd always wonder why they couldn't just pray in the locker room beforehand. But not this time. I was so astonished by the amazing selflessness of the Jamaican woman. Judging from appearances she barely knew the woman with the sick husband, and yet when she learned of her predicament, she immediately set about praying for her and helping her to bolster her own faith in God. Extraordinary--and something we don't see often enough.

You can't forge a career in opera without "the kindness of strangers." Of course, by the time they've guided you to operatic success (hopefully), they won't be strangers anymore. But don't we all at some point have to put ourselves and our voices in the care of somebody we don't yet know--a teacher, a coach, a director, a speech therapist, a surgeon--and hope that it works out? The Hispanic woman on the bus accepted the prayers and the good faith of the Jamaican woman to help get her through and to strengthen her belief that her husband would get well. At times, we have to believe that those in whom we place our trust have the same kind of faith in us. Faith in our untapped potential, in our unknown future.

And those aren't the only strangers. I have been doing some kind of blogging since I was thirteen or fourteen years old, connecting with people all over the world on OpenDiary, which became Free OpenDiary, and then I followed all of my friends over to Livejournal where we have settled. I've been posting on a forum for fans of Stephen Sondheim almost as long as I've been sending thoughts out into the cybervoid. They've watched me grow up, and sometimes when I'm having vocal troubles and feeling discouraged, I'll go post on "The Cold Stone Bench" for some sympathy and advice. And more recently, I discovered the New Forum for Classical Singers, where if you ask for it, you can get feedback and help from incredibly well-educated and seasoned performers and teachers. It's amazing to me sometimes that people who don't know me, who may never meet me (depending on the forum), are so willing to share what they've learned with me. Sometimes on Livejournal I'll "friend" someone because we have one or two shared interests--we both love The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, or Jane Austen, for example--only to find that there is so much to learn from this anonymous person (well, not quite anonymous anymore, with the advent of Facebook). When I posted in various places about my impending surgery, the reaction I got was overwhelming. Virtual hugs, offers to talk about it any time, inspirational words of wisdom. And all from people who, in all honesty, don't know me from Adam.

But sometimes we need that kind of support. Sometimes when I'm feeling really down about my voice, I don't want to talk to anyone close to me in real life. It feels too personal, too raw, too vulnerable to confess my fears about my vocal cords to someone in person. Sometimes I'm afraid it will make me cry, or I won't like the response I get. So I send my anguish out into the void. It's comforting to know that all over the world, virtual strangers have faith in me. Isn't that bizarre?

That woman with the sick husband may never see the praying Jamaican woman again. Her husband may get better; he may not. But I don't think she'll ever forget that random act of kindness. The Jamaican woman got off the bus at the next stop, after having been on the bus for about five minutes altogether. I thought about those five minutes all day, and I'm still in awe of the selflessness and faith of that stranger.

You could have been killed--or, worse, expelled!

Sometimes I wish I had a Time Turner.

For anyone who may have been living under a rock for the last ten or eleven years, a Time Turner is a device that looks like a tiny hourglass, and true to its name, it turns back time. Hermione Granger gets special permission to have one in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban so that she can take every possible class, even the ones that overlap. Study of Ancient Runes, Charms, Potions, Transfiguration, Arithmancy (did we ever even find out what that was?), and even Muggle Studies, which Ron points out is redundant since she's Muggle-born. Throughout the book, everybody wonders why she's so snappish and tired all the time, and then finally, when Dumbledore suggests using the Time Turner to save Sirius and Buckbeak the Hippogriff, the truth comes out. Hermione has, in effect, been adding hours to the day so that she can get more done and keep her reputation as the best student at Hogwarts.

When I was in college, I certainly felt like I could use a Time Turner when two classes I wanted to take conflicted--if only I could have turned back time right after that pesky Microeconomics class and gone to Topics in 19th Century Music instead! Or when I had done something stupid, like take Ibuprofen for cramps, then had a coaching and a full music run of The Merry Widow. In retrospect, that's a day I would have liked to do over.

But now that I've graduated, a Time Turner would be even more helpful. With one nearly-full-time job and another part-time job, my time to practice, exercise, clean, do laundry, and have a social life is strictly limited. How does anybody maintain their focus on becoming an opera singer--not to mention apply to grad school and put together a senior recital--with so little time and energy to put into it? What I'd love to do is go to work, then turn my little hourglass seven times and start the day over. First I'd go back to bed. Then I'd go to the gym, or out for a run. And then I'd head to a practice room and sing. I'd probably need a nap after that, but I'd have made money, exercised, and practiced my craft. It would be amazing to be that productive.

Instead, I come home from work, try to practice, find that my cords are still swollen from lunch with a friend and a long practice session on Sunday, go shopping (the Gap, buy-one-get-one-free on shirts), eat dinner, then go to my second job for three hours in the evening (where I am sitting as I type this). By the time I get home, around 9 or 9:30 PM, I won't have accomplished anything I meant to accomplish today. Where is my drive? Where is the spark that keeps me motivated?

Here's what I've concluded--and actually, it's what Hermione concludes too. It's okay not to do everything every day. For me, especially with my sensitive vocal cords three months post-surgery, it's actually imperative that I give myself permission not to sing if it's not feeling great, or if I'm just not feeling the joy that I should be feeling. I need to remind myself, in today's case, that I worked on memorizing some Czech pieces on the bus this morning and some French pieces while waiting for the bus outside Starbucks this afternoon. I was productive in the only way I had the time and energy to be productive. Sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves is take a break. At the end of the book, when Harry, Hermione and Ron are inevitably sitting on the grass and enjoying their post-exams leisure, Hermione tells her friends that she's dropped Muggle Studies and Divination in order to take a normal courseload the next year, and to focus on things she loves, like Arithmancy and Ancient Runes (courses that Rowling seems to have made up for Hermione to take, since there's no textual evidence that anybody else took them).

Last year, Denyce Graves came to my university to give a master class. During the question and answer session, somebody asked her what the biggest challenge of her career had been, and she told a great story that I've often thought about since. While Ms. Graves was finishing her masters degree, she encountered health problems that seriously impaired her singing voice. She eventually recovered her physical health, but her confidence was shattered, and she spent two years working in a hospital in an administrative position. She said that periodically, somebody from the Houston Grand Opera young artist program would call her and invite her to audition, but she had decided against becoming an opera singer. Finally one of her co-workers convinced her to go to the audition. She had barely sung at all in two years, but she said it was the best audition she ever had, and she was accepted into the program. The rest, as they say, is history, and if there's better evidence that breaks are good, I've yet to hear about it.

But most importantly, we need to give ourselves permission not to be perfect. We need to accept that we're going to have off days where not only will we not want to sing, but it will probably be better for our vocal health if we take a breather. Some auditions will be great, some will be not so great, but everything is valuable. If I remember correctly Prisoner of Azkaban is the book where Hermione doesn't get a perfect score on the Defense Againt the Dark Arts exam; in fact, for the first and only time, Harry beats her in an exam. And that's okay. Losing a couple of points didn't make her any less brilliant--she's only human.

I've always thought that after that insane third year, Hermione relaxes a little, at least academically. In Year Four, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, she has a romance with Viktor Krum and goes on a crusade against the exploitation of house elves. We see that she has interests that aren't academic, and we like her a lot better for it because it makes her more like a normal person, more like us. As singers, we need occasionally to find fulfillment in something that isn't singing, or we'll go crazy. One of my closest friends finds it in Hitchcock and cowboy movies, and in cooking for her friends; for me, it's zumba, volleyball and epistolary novels about 18th-century English wizards that read like J.K. Rowling and Jane Austen had a biologically-impossible baby (I'm referring to Sorcery and Cecelia, or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot, by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer--delightful!). And this advice isn't only good for singers, but for anybody pursuing a career in anything at all.

So if you take anything away from yet another long and rambling entry that cleverly combines pop culture with life lessons, let it be this: give your mind and body a break from singing--or Ancient Runes, if that's what you're into--and relax.