A War of Wills

Hello Chirruns.

I know I promised a twofer last time, and I began on the second post, only to have it whither and die as I fell asleep. Do not despair- here's another in its stead.

So, I'm on vocal rest. For those not in the know, that means I'm not allowed to utter a sound for the duration of the rest. Ideally, I'd like to take a month off from speaking, but in the real world, I have possible auditions scheduled for mid-November. Add to that a wedding which Maven and I are attending together, and I'll be flying by the seat of my pants, vocally, but, whatever. More on the vocal side of this issue later. But now...

Have y'all ever lost your voice, or been on vocal rest before? There's a weird phenomenon whereby in interactions with speech-abled folk, they will stop using their own voice without realizing it. It's unnecessary, unhelpful, and hilarious. For instance, I had to go to the Post Office today to mail off yet another application. I came prepared with a Stickie pad, and pen, ready to communicate my ass off with my PO clerks. I had already prepared a stock-greeting note, explaining that I was without voice, and would be writing instead. (I also had to go to the bank, but the prospect of passing a note to the teller made me reconsider. I went to the ATM instead.) When I arrived at the Post Office, there was actually a clerk there with larngitis, and I kind of hoped she would be the one to help me, so we could giggle at the coincidence. It didn't work out that way, though, so I went to available clerk, and showed her the note. Immediately, she resorted to lip synching and oversized gestures while gathering information from me and processing my transaction. I'm pretty sure my eyes rolled involuntarily. When she was almost finished, she paused and said, "Wait- why am I whispering?" and laughed at herself. I would have laughed, but I'm on vocal rest, so I nodded instead. Fun times at the PO.

So this morning, there was an incident that will forever live in humorous infamy in my heart. On school days, I help my brother and SIL get the kids ready for school, as they both start work pretty early. Poe is twelve, and self-sufficient, as long as I wake her lazy ass up. Every morning is the same with her. I knock gently on the door- no answer. I knock louder- no answer. I call her name- no answer. I go in the room and bounce the bed- no answer. I turn on the lights- LEAVE ME ALOOOOOOOOONE!!!!!!! I immediately crack up, because she has this high-pitched cat/baby voice that she uses when she's exasperated, and it delights me to no end.

Anyway, I digest. (I totally stole that from someone else.) Pappy is really the one who needs a bit more guidance in the morning. He showers and dresses himself, with frequent reminders of all the steps involved in a real shower. He usually makes himself breakfast, too, if it's something that can be safely accomplished. His specialty is a cheese quesadilla prepared in the toaster oven. The kid lives for those things. Anyway, Pappy's bus comes late enough in the morning that usually we have anywhere from a half hour to an hour to burn. Left to his own devices, Pappy would play Spore on the computer, or watch TV, but SIL puts the kabosh on that, with a quickness. So instead, I have him read to me, or we practice math until the bus comes. Good times.

So this morning, Pappy comes down after showering and dressing. He enters the kitchen and spies a granola bar sitting on the counter- one of those tiny Quaker ones, filled with chocolate and marshmallows.

"Can I have this for breakfast?"

I wave my finger "no".

"But I want it!"

More finger waving.

"But why?"

I pull out the pad and pen, and write something like, "Because that's a snack, not breakfast. Eat a quesadilla."

"There's no tortillas. I'll make toast instead."

Mission accomplished.

So it's peanut butter toast with grapes on top. I think I kind of rocked his world when he first witnessed me putting fruit on my peanut butter toast. However, I stick with the usual suspects- bananas and apples. Who knows- maybe grapes on peanut butter toast are righteous?

After breakfast, Pappy came to me and asked, " Can I watch TV now?"

Finger waving.

I then made the universal sign for 'book'- you know you hold your palms together and then unfold them all booklike. He caught it, but wanted to argue, as usual. I gave him my oft-used "Yourassisdangerouslyclosetotimeout" Look, and he wandered off to find a book, I assumed. My assumption was proved wrong. This stubborn kid sat down and was about to start playing video games. Nuh-uh. Poundpapi ain't having it! I pulled out the pad and wrote in my best loud script:


I was pretty sure I had gotten my point across, so I returned to fiddling with the printer so I could finish printing another application while he selected the morning's reading material.

Pappy returns a couple minutes later and hands me the following note:



My spine lost all rigidity at that moment, my torso splayed across the desk in complete surrender to the hilarity of the moment. I mean, how many different ways are there to laugh about this?

1. This kid wants a fuckin snack, pronto!!!
2. This kid does NOT want to read!!!
3. He felt the need to write it to me, instead of talking. Maybe he figured the written word would carry more weight?
4. Once the granola bar was classified as a 'snack' he was only too happy to stick with that nomenclature.
5. This note reminds me of that Chick-Fil-A ad campaign where cows paint billboards urging people to "Eat Mor Chiken". Not that Pappy misspelled anything, but his script has always been cow-like, I guess, lolz.

And such is life with Pappy.

P.S. Do you understand how hard it is to watch The Office without phonating?!?!?! UGH!!!!

I saw something nasty in the woodshed!

Ahhh. This blog title comes from "Cold Comfort Farm" and it is appropriate for a couple of reasons:

1. I think we need to start a meme in which we list things introduced to us by friends which we now love. I'll begin the meme with my next post- today will be a twofer.

2. On Tuesday, I have an appointment with a hypnotist/past-life regression therapist. Thus begins the bulk of this present post:

I spoke to BCSM yesterday on the phone, and he mentioned that I hadn't been blogging lately.

"Yeah," I said. "Just too much gloom and doom. Nobody wants to read that shit."

However, gloom and doom seem to have lifted, and for the strangest reason ever: yesterday I was diagnosed with vocal nodes. Yup- the singer's nightmare. Little callouses preventing the vocal cords from closing fully, the way that healthy cords should.

Remember in my last post how I was bemoaning my inability to sound good? Yeah, that would be the node-thing. A week or two after I wrote that post, I thought to myself, "Okay, Dom. Maybe you're not a complete idiot. You know how to sing, so there's probably something physiologically wrong with your instrument. Go get it checked out."

Check. After crying to the ENT sexcretary (I swear, everytime I speak to an ENT sexcretary, I have to resort to tears to explain how urgent the sitch is) I was able to get an appointment many days away, as opposed to many weeks. Score! Yesterday, sitting in the examination room, looking at all the computers, scopes and gadgets, a palpable calm came over me, as I knew that an answer was right on the horizon.

The first ENT (a resident) didn't see anything wrong with the little mirror he stuck down my throat. He kept marveling at my lack of a gag reflex. I felt slightly ashamed, as if he were calling me a slut, but whatever. I'ma do me, boo. He managed to gag me once with his Extend-o-Mirroir, and we both burst into laughter because the sound was hilarious. Anyway, since I was so specific in describing my symptoms and communicating the severity of my problems, he had the attending ENT stroboscope me, whereupon they found the offending lumpy callouses.

I doubt that they've ever encountered someone so relieved to be diagnosed with nodes, as I felt vindicated knowing that I wasn't just imagining things, or making up problems. Actually, scratch that last thing: nodes can be an indication that you are making up problems, in a vocal sense. In my case, I've just been way too focused on getting all of my shit in a pile so that I can jump on the next opera train heading out. In addition, I was scheduled to sing in two concerts at the end of this month, and the stuff I was to have sung is among the hardest stuff in the repertoire to sing. Add that pressure to the pressures of my living/social/employment circumstances, and it's a recipe for a disaster omelette all up in the Thoat. (That's how you say 'throat' in the Dirty Dirty.)

A week ago, conversating with my voice teacher, after going over all the technical stuff that could be causing my problems, he ended the conversation by saying that above all, I needed to allow myself the pleasure of singing that comes from being musically engaged, as opposed to constant technical engagement. While I had unkowingly abandoned this aspect of my practice in favor of trying to refine technique, learn notes and get jobs, it seemed so obvious to me that that was a huge part of why I was fucking up so much. The pressure of being good enough to accomplish XY and Z transferred into pressure on the cords, which are Not Having It.

Anyway, the whole thing boils down to this: my cords are shot for a little bit. Some rest and careful retraining should take care of the problem. In the meantime, I've had to cancel everything I had planned for this month. This is where the happiness comes in. I'm not sure if I had ever felt so much pressure in my life over these two concerts in MN later this month. Between the rep, the financial burden and the timing, I was probably pretty close to having a nervous breakdown. Now that I have nothing to do this month but get better, I feel like a new man. I even feel mostly at peace with the prospect of canceling auditions this year. Of course, I'd rather not, having already invested hundreds of dollars into it, but if my voice won't co-operate with me, there's nothing I can do. Sometimes being helpless is the best way to be.

Anyway, this whole thing started with me seeing something nasty in the woodshed. For those of you unlucky enough to have seen Cold Comfort Farm, the first thing you should do is ask Maven to borrow it. Or Netflix it. Or whatever. There is a character in the movie whose entire existence revolves around a "traumatic" childhood incident- to humorous effect, I should add. As for me, I'm not sure I have a woodshed incident, although I've been interested for quite a while in exploring the whole past-life regression thing. I'm not even sure I believe in it, but at the very least, maybe some hypnosis will help me to be more calm in the face of mounting pressure. Of coruse, if anything interesting comes of the past-life session I'll be sure to holler at y'all about it.