Shades of "è"

The learning of singing continues, and the results are sometimes good, sometimes ok, sometimes to be forgotten. In each lesson, I find the same requirements differently explained, the same exercises uniquely reconstructed. We explore my sickly grave register, atrophied by many years of oblivion. My trebles are tempered, which, like naughty capitalists, want to take over all the seats in the audience.

I swallow my pride and clumsily control my emotions. I often choke, not because of a lack of technique, but because of excessive feelings. I will not be told that learning to sing is not catharsis. Very high passages that I have to sing with difficulty in the choir, I sing them, after an hour with my teacher, if not correctly, at least comfortably. "Don’t hesitate to take your place, Guy," Vincent tells me, and just to be told that, my throat gets tight.

Anyway, I learn to sing by rediscovering my aphasic body. Vincent reminds me that an aphasic is usually expressed only in a more or less monochrome palette of the vowel "è" (in French. In English, that is the sound of "e" in "set," "bed"). This is what the body can emit when the brain fails to make it pronounce the other vowels.

In the cave of this "è" who seems so bastard, all the fearful vowels are hidden. No wonder, during diction classes, you get a pencil in your mouth. Let’s open our mouth laterally, let’s not try to pronounce so much, let’s the sound vibrate inside the cave of the upper cheek. In short, vowels are bats hanging from the ceiling of the palace. A little bit, a breeze, irritates them, excites them. Little by little, I will be able to sing blissfully.

For the moment, I’m forcing myself to smile stupidly, but without forcing anything, that goes without saying. How difficult it is to come to yourself, to remain vigilant at the same time, to reconnect with your body, to let it "speak" while gently stroking your neck. Good little doggy goes!