Nobody knows the trouble I�ve seen, nobody knows but Vishnu.
10:05 p.m.
We just got home from a couple of half-recitals: a jazz saxophonist preceeded by Ed, the singer in my daughter�s band. It was a pleasant evening. Ed did a pretty good job, even though he did walk on and off the stage in a rather funerary fashion. He could have been an undertaker. He served milk and chocolate-chip cookies at the intermission, and afterwards he and the jazzer had a reception of vanilla ice cream complete with toppings, pocky, stuffed vine leaves, and spruce beer. The latter was not a hit. At all.
Before the recital, Little Princess and I gave Ed a gift which I had bought earlier today, a tiny stuffed toy pug dog, and a very funny card, on the cover of which was a man sitting at a desk telling another man: The financial office is down the hall to your left and I�m wearing women�s underwear. It was captioned �The Too-Much-Information Desk�. Inside I wrote, �You�re going to be great!�
This morning it was raining rather heavily, and the rain proceeded to get heavier and heavier until it turned into snow. The ground is now covered with white shit, as are the trees and shrubs, and if it weren�t April, it would be rather pretty. As it is, it�s a sick joke that Mother Nature plays on us Quebeckers every spring.
I met with a choir member today to help her out on �Cell Bl0ck Tang0� as it lies right over the break in the middle of the female voice, and she�s been having a very difficult time with it. I first asked if she had brought it to her teacher, and was told that she had, and her teacher suggested she �sing it higher�, which of course isn�t an option. In other words, she was not helpful at all. So I spent a half-hour with this girl getting her to open her throat, to imagine that her neck is the size of a storm sewer, then to hold that sensation, make more space inside her mouth by loosening her jaw and support the whole thing with more belly tension, and she right away noticed the difference, that she wasn�t whining anymore, the sound wasn�t going into her sinuses, and she wasn�t straining as she flipped between registers. She said, and I quote, �No one ever told me about expanding my throat before!� I ask you, what are these singing teachers teaching? I fear, in this girl�s case, not much.
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