Spoiler Alert: Birdie has been working on a Christmas album as gifts for the relatives this year. She can do this because shortly after we moved here (uhhhhh.... we moved to a town about 20-30 miles north of where we had been living) I found her a voice coach. I like this "coach" because her approach is purely practical. First she finds out what the student is interested in learning or wants help with, and then she jumps right in and coaches from that angle. Yes, she assigns vocal conditioning a scales and the like... but the serious focus is the style and songs that the student is interested in developing. In late summer we attended a recital of her students and while at least half of her kids tend toward the Taylor Swift, Katy Perry or Sara Bariellas thing ... a goodly chunk of the rest had a range from spiritual to Broadway musical. Along with preparing her students to perform, she has a little recording booth/closet in her studio, and this lady wields Garageband like a boss. So... she has sent me three of the four songs Birdie has cut so far... and when I listen to the tracks when no one else can see me, I weep. It is so beautiful. It amazes me. I am stunned. Not by her voice exactly. Her voice is amazing, and she has really worked hard to get the skills and abilities she has developed...but her voice is also simple at it's very heart. Her voice is very similar to mine. Confession: I have always admired the amazing singers... the Aretha's, the Alicia Keys' and the women with powerful and stunning voices that make the walls shake and blow my mind. I have grieved the fact that I do not have such a voice and no matter how much effort or training, could never have such a voice. Seriously. Grieved. I weep when I hear my daughter's voice because I now understand so much better, the love that our Father has for us. There is nothing small or deficient about her voice, which sounds, in it's simplified version, so much like my own. The sound that comes out of her mouth is glorious and captivating and touching. I have misunderstood. I have always been enough. We are enough. If I am cool, I will post the Christmas songs after she is all done.... but here is this one.
What do you say on your abandoned blog, when you finally realize that you are falling to the bits and the pieces because you feel like you have no voice. No voice, and you have abandoned one of the few places that helped you feel like you were not voiceless. Hi! Bloggy! Don't know, but I think I'll begin with a nice... "Y'all, I am as angsty as a teenager these days." ...and more than a little OCD. Well. Maybe it's not exactly OCD, but it's not exactly not OCD. I don't know what it is, a syndrome of some sort I suppose, but I don't dare go googling around on the Internet for the accurate name for it. Because google is the delivery system for my insanity. The viral packaging that my personal brand of freakout gets delivered in. That, and the old FecesBook. I just want to go see who is doing what, and check any messages or events, but then I run up against this, that or the other political whats-it, and BAM! I am sucked into a link festival of horror. Like the fact that.... Whups! almost left you a link to the kind of crap that is eating my joy. News about Executive orders and statistics and civil rights and oohhhh.... Done. No more. I will do you the kindness I cannot seem to do for myself, and refrain from exposing you to information that will make your brain bleed and keep you up at night. And yes, I vet the heck out of everything, so it's the real deal info, and not the crack pot crap. But that also means that I wade through a ton of alarmist crap and nut-job BS.... and that does not help to take the edge off. The fact I end up with stuff that is straight up hard news that still sounds like whack-job conspiracy theory crap makes it worse. Let's just say that the older I get, the more Libertarian I lean. A stymied and ineffectual Congress is a good Congress in my book. Less legislation equals public good. It does not help that it is a generally held belief by most sane people, that as an American Citizen of the voting age, I should be well informed. I am coming to the conclusion that my mental health would be improved if I spent more time trolling Netflix for rom/coms, or seeking out the best the internet has to offer in terms of grumpy cat memes. Or... y'know, walking away from the computer. I had been doing better for almost two weeks, and then I relapsed yesterday. I won't get into the details, not that I don't think you, if you are an American who can vote, shouldn't know, but it will send me back into the spiral of link-and-find which leads inevitably to quiet panic. ...and the last thing I can afford to do it get into some sort of "discussion" in the comments of this post.
