I shall survive.

I sit in front of you to stand behind you to tell you that my head hurts and I�m feeling so blue (sing it, Elgan baby!). I ended up having that postponed rehearsal this morning with the accompanist, who has washed all the product out of her hair and it looks fine, and we went over some of the 16th-note runs to make sure that I wasn�t dragging the tempo and technical stuff like that.

In Latin class we got one paragraph translated, mine this time, and I�m starting to feel a definite urgency to acquire some reading glasses. This getting older thing is a real pain in the ass. We spent more time talking about the politics of ancient Rome and the fact that Cicer0 had more speech-writing ability in his little finger than do present day political leaders, especially You Know Who. I sometimes wish we would do more actual Latin, but this is interesting too.

All by myself, I luncheoned at the Greek Captain�s on vegetarian soupe tonkinoise. The wait was epochal as they were extremely busy with only one waitress tending to everyone�s needs. Being alone, without a book or other amusement, I found it extremely tedious, and Mr. Phuc, the owner of the establishment, brought me my meal himself, apologizing profusely for the slowness of service. The pho was definitely worth the wait, though. Amazing how a little hole in the wall can serve up heaven in a bowl.

What depressed me a little bit (hence the �blue� reference above) was the first lesson I taught one of my new students this afternoon. There are kids who come here with absolutely no training whatsoever, like the second girl who had never had a singing lesson in her life, although she had sung in choirs a fair bit. I generally like those best because I feel I have the most to offer them. I can start them from scratch, see that they avoid getting into bad vocal habits, and mould them in my own image, as it were. In truth, I try to avoid churning out mini-Elgans. But they do tend to end up sounding like me just because of the technique and my insistence on pronunciation. I don�t try to make them sound like me, if you know what I mean.

The first girl this afternoon, though, has already had a couple of very good singing teachers and has a pretty good grasp of certain technical things. But singers tend to develop the human version of brand loyalty, in that once they change instructors, for whatever reason, they are resistant to what that new teacher has to say, especially if it negates something they�ve already learned, or if they already know it and feel they�re so good they don�t need to be reminded. This girl is a bit like that. I fear that if I try to be too technical with her, she will completely turn off, and yet she has some serious vocal problems that need fixing. I think I will just take it easy, let her sing without hindrance, drop a few suggestions here and there, mostly musical, then get her to �try this here� where she needs to fix something. She�s never sung fioratura before, so I gave her �Rej0ice GreatIy� from HandeI�s Messiah.

But knowing that she was probably not ecstatic leaving her first lesson with me has made me a little sad. As she left, I said to her, �It�ll get better; we�ll get more used to each other.�

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