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It’s 6:30 AM (a time that only happens to other people as far as I’m concerned) and I am sitting at my computer writing a blog entry… Has the world gone mad?!
Dan had to get up at 5:15 this morning to get to an early morning school gig. Now I was under the impression that 5:15 was one of those “imaginary numbers” that physicists like to bandy about to make us all feel stupid. I now have empirical evidence that an alarm clock set to 5:15 Will go off! Amazing!
Even more amazing is the fact that although I fully intended to roll over and go to sleep again, try as I might and despite Dan being as quiet as a mouse, I could not manage to regain the blissful state of slumberland. Instead I tossed and turned, my mind busy telling and retelling the following story, which I now will tell to you:
Once upon a time, a long time ago (yesterday at 3:45) in a land far, far away (Chatham County) I arrived at school for the first of the KMI sessions mentioned in the last installment of this blog. I was excited and nervous as I met my therapist at the door. He was obviously a bit excited and nervous too. A very nice young guy, bursting at the seams with the desire to do a good job and impress his teacher. We talked for a minute about my goals and then went inside to find my familiar classroom full of oddly short massage tables and people I did not know talking quietly in observational groups or working through various stages of their sessions.
I disrobed down to my underwear, was photographed in my underwear (my “before” shots), met Tom Myers (in my underwear!), and began the assessment process, which they called a “launch.” And here is where my story really begins.
I stood there calmly, trying to be a good piece of meat, as Tom and my young therapist discussed what they saw in my body. They bandied about a lot of language I don’t really remember and didn’t really understand anyway but I think the gist was that my hips and rib cage are thrust forward a bit more than they should be. In the middle of this my therapist mentioned that my breath did not move into my chest when I breathed… I couldn’t help but try to interject that this is because I am a singer and singers don’t breath with their chests! (We breathe from the diaphragm into the belly and back. A rising chest is a sign of a young, inexperienced, tense and gasping singer.) I was turned to the side so I couldn’t see his face but Tom’s reaction to this response was such a dismissive “yup” that I was mortified for saying anything. It wasn’t my place to say anything! I was just the Meat! I bit my lip, shut up, and tried to be as completely apologetic looking a piece of meat as possible.
And then they finished their physical analysis of me and Tom turned to me and very kindly asked what kind of singing I had done. I said that I had sung opera for years. “Was I singing now?” “Well, that’s a long story but, ‘No.’” And then he turned to my therapist and told him my life story: “It’s the same thing with all musicians. They practice alone for years and years with dreams of being a soloist but only a very thin slice actually make it because the competition is so fierce and then they end up in the orchestra trying to blend in and only noticed when they make a mistake. Now I want Lee to close her ears because I have a larger goal for you. I want you to help Lee find her voice again. It’s possible that Lee would be happy without singing but I don’t think so and she has a beautiful voice so we need to help her find a way to use it.”
I am not kidding or exaggerating. I might have forgotten a phrase or two and changed a word or two but that is what he said and it’s all true! I suppose it’s a rather common story. He must have heard it before. But I was astonished to hear it from someone who knows so little about me! Not to mention that I have recently come to the same conclusion myself, that I could not be a good therapist or a completely happy person with this part of myself locked away. That I needed to heal my relationship with my voice. But I had no idea how to go about it! And here was someone saying that they could help me do that very thing…
So my young therapist got excited with this new mission and we started our session while I tried to get over my shock. I think that perhaps it's not fair to ask a student to help me “find my voice again.” He is overwhelmed by just trying to remember what he’s supposed to do in each session and I don’t blame him at all because that’s Exactly how I feel right now in my training. Also completely changing my life is a lot to ask of anyone especially when I don’t know what it would take myself. But I will say that even after my first session I feel a change. I’ve been experiencing discomfort and tightness when I breathe deeply for years now. I always assume it has to do with just needing to warm up, one reason I hate warming up. But I got off the table at the end of the session and felt a lot more ease in my breath. My student therapist didn’t understand the significance when I told him but that’s okay. I know what it means even if he does not. It’s the first baby step toward him achieving the goal his teacher gave him. And mine too.
Thanksgiving is This week?! But I was just wearing a T-shirt outside Last week! How can that be?! 
This fall has been absolutely Gorgeous down here in North Carolina. I imagine the trees are actually just as pretty in Chicago, but there are so many More of them down here! My drive to school on the back roads is so stunning I have literally become a hazard to myself and others as I gape at the tongues of flaming reds and oranges and yellows licking out from between the evergreens. You can’t help but be thankful when surrounded by beauty like that.
