Tickled pink this morning to discover a new fan, and a nice new blog too, at least new to me, in Australia: A Beautiful Theme, here. Nice to be compared, in a roundabout kind of way, to the Labeque sisters and Hildegard of Bingen, but there the resemblance ends (to Hildegard, anyway!).
On a different and less beautiful theme, does anybody out there understand the workings of Le Loi de Sod? Why is it that whenever I have to give a talk, the day before it I come down with a throaty/chesty thing that goes directly to the voicebox?! I LIKE giving talks. I never get nervous for them - nothing scares me except playing the piano, in fact - and positively look forward to every instance. But here we go, tomorrow is my first Kingston Readers' Festival event this year. And guess what. Along comes the bug. All you singers out there, depending on your voices for your livelihoods, do you have this problem too?
2 comments:
The first thing to do is start noticing things you do in preparation for your talks. As in "keep a giving talks" journal. Seriously.
Keeping a little journal may help uncover something you do routinely but perhaps unconsciously that sets off this little but troubling reaction.
Do you clean the house? Do you do research in a big old library? Do you treat yourself to some spa/mani/pedi hour? Pick up freshly drycleaned clothes? (Dust! Chemicals! More dust! More and more chemicals!) Eat something special? It could be something very small but that you only do before talks.
I had a voice teacher once who literally almost completely lost her voice every time she gave a big recital. As in "croaking". Turns out she lavished her perfectly relaxed, rehearsed, dressed, coiffed self in her favorite expensive PERFUME. It made her feel "special" before the recital but it turns out she was allergic to it, suddenly. She eliminated that one thing and had only happy recitals thereafter.
Hairspray? Fumes from traffic? Neighbors pets? I suspect something of the sort. Try the journal.
Hmmm...I've come to the sad conclusion that it's one of two things: allergy to Solti; or talking too much. Quite possibly both!
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