Merry Christmas to all. The day is here. We all cheer the snow that may not be here, especially those of us who view our computer screens in Miami or San Diego. Three cheers that the snow is up north somewhere! If we have it, I lend my voice to the cheering. I really love snow. It has become my vision of clean. In the North Country where space is ample and forest hides most everything, we Rock Eaters tend to pile up junk in our back yards among the non-functioning vehicles we are just not ready to send to the junk yard, the fishing shanties that need repair, the fishing boats that leak and the burning barrels that the State of New York used to let us use to keep the piles of junk a little shorter. When I was a little shaver those shanties, unmoving cars that should be pulling the leaky boats, burning barrels and junk piles just didn’t register on my thinker when I looked at them. It was the effect of the first Big Snow every year that made me take notice of all that stuff because the undulating blanket of snow just so beautifully took them out of sight. Now I can’t tell you when I began to think of our back yard as an unpleasant sight, but in a year I can’t name I did begin to suspect there might be a better way to decorate the dirt out back, but I never questioned my developing opinion that the yard, back and front, could never look better than when enough snow fell to redecorate everything. My word for that special beauty that only snow can give the eye is “clean”.
Clean is also a wonderful word to ponder at Christmas. It is exactly the goal each of us Christians wanted to attain, and it is one of the gifts that we are blessed to have from that Wonderful and Marvelous Savior whose birth is the reason this holiday is legally recognized by the State of New York….. You know, those guys and gals in Albany who stole our Rock Eater rights to pollute the air with our burning barrels whenever we want to, no matter who complains about it. At least they haven’t gotten around to Christmas….yet. Anyway, I always have clean in mind when I celebrate the birth of Jesus and even just a little bit of snow dresses up the day in a way no other decoration can achieve for this old man of song.
The word clean always bubbles to the top of my vocabulary as I try to coax voice students toward discovering the gift they have received. My studio is populated with students who suffer various vocal realities that seem, in my mind’s eye, to look a lot like my childhood back yard. Admittedly, the elements are completely different. What would a fishing shanty missing a sled blade have to do with a singers way of phonating? The fact is that the once useful items that populated that old back yard represent, for me, parallels with the ever useful vocal tools that each of my students employ in totally inappropriate ways. The more I am able to dissuade them from these practices the cleaner their voices become.
My Christmas message to all singers and those who wish they were singers is this. You already own a vocal instrument that was gifted to you at conception within your DNA. Except you be mute, you make a noise with it. If the noise your gift produces happens to be a beautiful sound then you have been given a rare gift. No voice teacher is going to give you that. A voice teacher can only guide you, and the best guidance is to do a metaphorical handshake with your gift. Everything your voice can do and will do for the rest of your life rests on the DNA coded structure that started forming when egg and sperm first met. Who do you think you have to thank for the exact configuration of that code donated 50/50 by your mom and dad? Not Professor Gotchaby Thethroat. Not me. Not mom and dad. Especially not yourself. Think of this Christmas as a great opportunity to celebrate the fact that the word “gifted“, if applicable to you, contains no reference to human agency. There is no room for even you to be proud.
I think you can work it out for yourself.
PS. If you’re a tenor, come back later and I will….. Better yet, use the “Please write” page.