There are five weeks between me and Torino. That span of time is short, but ripe for work. As our calendars click off significant slices of time, every click hands us a question: What’s next? I keep struggling with that interrogative, and, to be perfectly honest, I never really know to which of a thousand and one (1001) possible projects I am going to commit my next chunk of time. The struggle doesn’t get easier with increased maturity. Even a tenor knows that time past is gone and future time is shorter. So the struggle actually gets harder, but I know the day to act is always today and that my time to work is now.
A certain pristine yesterday the USPS delivered me an easy answer to that “What’s next?” question. Donald V. Paschke sent it.
Dr. Donald V. Paschke
He sent back a stack of “A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing: Part One” proofs to the Blake compound all marked up and ready for me to correct. You know – the typos and formatting errors that were in the printout that I sent Dr. Paschke a short time ago.
Now that the USPS did its work to carry Donald’s answer to my priority problem, I can see that it’s high time to dedicate myself to getting this book ready for the printers, but I just can’t forget that Torino project scheduled for March.
I know there are already a few singers signed up to participate in Torino, but I would like to have more. So here I am adding an invitation to this stream of tenor thoughts. Please come and let me do my best to help you with your singing. Getting you to sing well is now one of the most important parts of my life’s work. My Garcia project is also important, but only as a support for the after-Opera-life I always saw coming when I finally arrived at being an unemployed tenor. I sang in the business for quite long enough for me to learn what it was all about and to collect the demanding fans who insisted that I teach others how to take the stage when I finally quit singing.
Garcia made his life all about that “Get them ready to be great Opera Artists” thing, and I stand small before his legacy calling for anyone and everyone to follow his lead. With maturity (OLD AGE) and retirement I have had enough contemplating time to fully absorb Garcia and study in greater depth the many “problems” of singing which I suffered and the few that passed me by. I am diligently trying to lay a foundation for sharing Garcia and the content of my tiny tenor mind. The first floor of this edifice may one day have many rooms, but the venue that Armando Caruso gives me at Accademia della Voce del Piemonte I already number as 101. I’ll be there on March 14 and hope you will join me.
My dearest Debbie sometimes comes at me with statements like “You’ve got to write something about……….” Many times it’s about a local political or economic (TAX) thing, and we collaborate to shine some light on something resident power broker types would like to see pass unnoticed. But we kind of like people to know what’s going on. It is a sad fact that power brokers in every category of activity and every geographic expanse are able to hide from the apathetic, but Debbie and I care deeply about many things. Big deal!!! Two people, two votes, two opinionated citizens of the World who care about what’s going on???!!!! Well, if there were more of us, there would be a lot less political dirty doings going on. I’m fortunate that Debbie also cares about what is happening to singing almost as much as I do…. To return to perfect honesty; she may care even more than I do, but who am I to judge? Anyway, she came at me with “You’ve got to do a blog about that “Don’t listen to your voice!” thing you keep telling me about.” Not that I haven’t written something (click here), but students keep quoting that hissing serpent in our lessons. I just can’t keep myself from sssssshhhhhharing with Debbie the ssssssssssssstupidities I hear students repeat. They’re phrases they have heard in pre-Blake voice lessons, and they carry them around like “gems of wisdom”. I get really hot under the collar, do my best to keep from punishing my student with a rant, and often let my bubble of anger burst when Debbie asks after the progress of a student. So, now, even she has heard enough, and it will be a future project.
I’m off to,,,,uh,, oh yes, I forgot, the dentist first, and then the editing desk. Garcia’s “Part One” is almost back in print.