This is the coolest graffito ever.



Thank you for your comments, Erik! You're right about my judgment of the Wagner aria--I did screw up one of the rests, but it sounds pretty good so I'm not complaining too much... As for your comparison with pop singers: last year in Florida one of the other apprentices reminded us all that we could all have been successful pop singers, particularly since we're such good mimics, but that we chose this much more difficult route. The reason it seems like we have to "age" is because we do, literally. That and yes, there's a hell of a lot more work involved.

And speaking of singing, I had a pretty good lesson yesterday. My teacher has given me a new mantra: You have no technical problems except tension. And it's actually true. I immediately said, "Well, yeah, except for my breath control...", and she interrupted me to repeat the mantra. If I have trouble with my breath control, it's usually because I'm clenching with my neck. (I've had a particularly yucky time with my neck and back lately.) So the key for me is to somehow learn to relax my neck mid-phrase; I've learned how to relax my shoulders while I'm singing, but the neck is a different story. How did it get so bad? Who knows...

So I have an audition for a company in the western part of the state on Saturday. It's a general audition, but the artistic director heard me at the Met competition in January--hopefully he will have some vague memory of the experience. After speaking with my teacher and some other singer friends, I'm going to start presenting myself as a switch-hitter--that I'm definitely a big Puccini-Verdi-Wagner soprano, but that I'm quite comfortable singing character mezzo roles. And I am--and I can actually be heard over an orchestra singing them, actually. Plus they're almost always comedic, which is a blast after singing about living in a cave or being forced to have sex with the police chief to save my lover (like in my other rep). I do worry about being typecast as a mezzo, but at this point in my career I'm less concerned about that. The main thing is, I'm marketable in character roles, and I can make money doing it, and the size of my ass is not at all a problem (bonus!). So I'm going to start with my one halfway-mezzo aria tomorrow, and hopefully the audition will add up to something somewhere along the road. We're also going to be visiting with Mark's relatives who live on a blueberry farm--fun!