That's it, I am committed. I pressed the "new post" button and now there is no turning back. Turn down the brightness on the computer screen, yes, acknowledge that this screen has sucked you in for far too many hours today. You could be dancing!!! what are you doing? came up to eat something and make jewelry. So I'm writing, same difference or perhaps more daunting because there is truly so much to write about. It has taken a blog to make me realize how quickly life in this city moves.
How far back shall I go? The very evening of my last post I had not a single person sign up for class. Determined not to take it personally, I decided that the best thing to do would be to go dance. I called Alex on a whim - maybe he wants to jam? Just so happens there is an event at his loft that night, with the possibility of a jam to follow the lecture. I venture to the loft and leave it without dancing: the lecture is dragging on, my body is heavy. But my coming is fortuitous - Alex has been deserted by a couple of other dancers, needs someone to join him for a performance with an Indian dance company that will take place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in two weeks - would I like? Yes is the answer and so the next day I'm back at the loft. We talk and stretch and talk: my body still heavy, has felt immobilized recently. Finally we begin to dance: there is karma between us, I don't understand it yet but clearly it is there. In fact we've both known it was there since we met, and yet it takes me by surprise. I leave feeling like perhaps I'm not a good enough dancer for this gig?
Never mind the insecurities: it is the body I need to attend to. But training pirouettes is not the answer right now and so I allow myself to resign to the reality that I am not a superstar dancer and start asking my body just what needs attending. I am deep in the waters of subtle adjustments, the kind that can change everything: an hour in the studio today following an hour in bed of feeling my jaw and throat shift like they never have before. This is about singing.
Monday! Monday there was no school because of Rosh Hashanah. I tried my best to plan a dinner for Sunday night but couldn't manage to convince myself that I really wanted to do it the day before the holiday: a holiday can't be a holy day if it's celebrated based on convenience. So I canceled work at the gym for Tuesday night and rescheduled with Katy and Ursula.
It is that same Monday that I spend time in the studio working on voice exercises, and bring myself to tears again. Don't know why, it happens when I start to sing "If I should lose you," and it's not because of the lyrics. My neck hurts, my throat hurts, my voice barely comes out and to make things worse I decide to record myself just to prove to myself that it is truly hopeless, this whole singing venture. I am blocked, the block is huge, ancient, I don't know what to do.
Monday was the day that congress turned down the $700 billion handout to Wall Street, but that was not why I was depressed at the Yippie Museum that night. Andrea sang beautifully at the show Lorenzo curated, Patricia said hello and even tried to converse about the Garden show. I ducked: if we began to talk I'd have to mention how irked I was at her maneuver that day. But when she pointed at me to come up and dance at the jam session, following her little solo, my hips locked and refused to move. Can't sing, can't seem to bring myself to dance, so I joke about politics. Monday night was a beautiful night, the few clouds in the sky seemed to huddle above Wall Street and the air in East Village was unusually fresh.
Tuesday I cried again at my lesson with Andrea. On Monday I had tried to convince Lorenzo that I was convinced that I should stop singing, but did a bad job at convincing either one of us. Lorenzo has way too many ideas about me and my singing and probably I should not consult him on the matter at all, but I always turn to him when trying to make things harder for myself. I'm sure I could have indulged myself in this decadent form of self-destructiveness for much longer, except that there was something in the lesson that I did enjoy and then that all too reasonable voice spoke up and suggested that perhaps I was crying because I was actually getting somewhere. My desire to have Andrea take me seriously inspired me to restrain my tears for eight months but the restraining order lapsed and there was nothing to do but go on and deal. So I'm not a superstar singer either, so what.
I sang at the Rosh Hashanah dinner that night just the same. Andrea and Lorenzo were both next to me. Preparing the meal with Lorenzo was wonderful: we worked peacefully and seamlessly. In three hours we had made chickpeas, sweet roots, couscous, two beet salads, radish and cucumber salad, peeled a bowl of pomegranate seeds, and sweetened sesame seeds. I left it to Lorenzo to prepare the fish that Ursula brought. Andrea, Jane, Dawn and Kenny had all decided to come earlier that day. With Katie, Matt and Ursula we were nine. Katie brought a shofar and Lorenzo did his best to open the skies with it. It was a euphoric celebration, a true holiday.
Today, Thursday, is almost over and I am still in front and inside of this computer screen. But the website for the studio is up: !!! : www.pulsestudio.org, and the blog is updated with old adventures, so on to new ones.
