Singing on sand
Two and a half years of singing, guided by a teacher, surrounded by life, sometimes sitting at my piano, pushing notes, liberating this chakra or that other one. Fifty-seven years pushing my breathing out of myself, surrounded by humans, machines, progress.
For the past thirty years or so, there had been a tenor who had been sleeping, who had been told not to sing too loudly, that he was breaking through. Twenty years of choir rehearsals had killed a soloist. And then two and a half years later, a teacher told the tenor to reappear. There is so much turmoil sometimes during these classes. The professor patiently seems to know where he’s going. The student, on the other hand, does the right thing, makes mistakes, takes paths that the teacher immediately tells him to abandon. However, these sudden prohibitions do not resemble the old ones. The teacher is a prism or a capacitor.
It is certainly too late for the tenor in me to go on a concert adventure, but that tenor is there in my voice. When I compare myself to my chorister friends, I know that I have evolved. When I’m with real soloists, the comparison is just pointless. I am an honest peasant. They are princes and kings, with crowned voices. I plow my song, they are already reaping the benefits of so many years of effort.
A few days ago, a chorister asked me what I would do with these classes. I shrugged my shoulders and answered, smiling: nothing. I will probably find myself a choir where it is allowed to sing with all the energy I have without fear of burying others. Not that I am forbidden to do so in the current choir, but I still have to constantly hold back, melt to the limit of the exercise and, since I am a tired tenor, my voice is not so wonderful in voices more used to being perched.
Singing requires and does not require hard work. This is apparently contradictory. The best singing comes from a blind trust in his body. The best singing also belongs to those who are gifted at birth. For tomorrow’s concert, we will have a soloist as thin as a reed, with graceful and whispering gestures. When he starts singing, a lion, what do I say, a large volcano throws its Jupiterian voice into the church. Impressive!
For my part, I am still taming my proud ears, which, in collusion with the idealistic brain, are trying to shape my vocal cords, to make them into good savages dressed in clothes that are useless to them.
And yet, we still have to harness the animals, channel their light, their strength, a job of a lifetime. Blessed are those who, like this soloist, a young adult, can dance naturally with wild animals. On my side, I sit in front of my piano, half wise, half mule. I open a score, I try to sing. Chakras, I tell you, doing so liberates chakras and lightens digestion.
These lessons are of course useful to me. They are my meditation, my life. Just like these writings, which are a little more danceable. It is important to remain constantly in this state of grace and of a dancing choreography since we are doomed to go in circles.
Our circle is not eternal. It lasts only one cycle. We are not planets, but seasonal plants. Tomorrow, our song will be sand in a desert that will be trodden by other melodies.
