Week In Pictures

Confidential Note to John O

I called you John "T" before by accident. This was not meant to further protect your identity. It was simply a mistake, like many of the others I have come make and others have come to expect.

No offense meant.

Sincerely,
Shannon

Shipwreck Installation Proposal

A proposed proposal for S_______.R__ Gallery
Life-sized shipwreck/fort proposed to be installed in project space.

Voice Lesson 4

The trouble I’m finding with studying voice is two fold. First I’m as lazy and unimaginative as the next guy, so when the novelty of something begins to fade I default to the least of efforts.

Somehow I have had the wherewithal to get myself a voice teacher and to set up sessions, I think, so now I simply need to show up once every one or two weeks to become a phenomenal singer of Rachmaninoff and Giuseppe Giordani…

The second problem, and the actual truth is, I’m twice as lazy and unimaginative as the next guy. I’m also extremely self-conscious, which any armchair psychiatrist will tell you, to be self-conscious is to be indulgently self-critical. In my case usually to the point of constantly “shorting out” like a piece of electronics someone spilt their beer on.

At moments of intensity and challenge I find myself tripping all over myself, forgetting everything, with thoughts much like an animal with a disposition for flight over fight, but ultimately too dumb to do either. A possum freezes under the oncoming lights of a family automobile, and so do I under the daunting threat of things unknown. I freeze from stem to stern. Shoulders bunched around my ears, my hands twist up, breathing short and unsteady.

My teacher, apparently aware of this possum-like posture, has a few tricks to untame the whimpy beast. Tonight after my vaguely rigamortus run through an Italian aria something needed to be done.

“Ok, vibrate your lips through this first verse, like this.” She then produced a sound like the putt-putt of a motorboat, cutting through the light and lovely waves of “Caro mio ben”.

She played the first note and I mimicked her putt-putt, rolling my head back and forth as spittle rained across the black lacquer piano. As I reached the end of the first verse she said, “Now sing it. Don’t think.”

And so I did, very naturally employing the imagery she had outlined these past weeks. The umbrella in the back of my throat that creates open, full notes. The pockets of resonance in the sinuses, which suddenly rung and traveled along my jaw and cheekbones till I felt the sound coming out my ears. My posture erect and stomach taught, hands still twisted but twisted with arms encircling a barrel of imagined air and infinite resource. Even if my chin was still lifted just a bit too high, my brain, so hell-bent on getting in the way, was numbed by a body suddenly ringing like a tuning fork.

Week in Pictures

Vitals Oct 1 - 16th

Confidential Note to Jessica S and Nadine S

Confidential Note to John T

Hey John,

I replied to your email last week, but it wouldn't go through to the Juno account. I sent it to your USC one...

Thanks!
Shannon

Voice Lessons 3

My voice teacher asked if I had been practicing and I said, “Yes”. Of course, right? I mean there’s the walk to work where I sing with Bowie and Prince and Elvis (Costello) on my iPod. There are the meanderings around the house and the drives in the car with show tunes and Beach Boys and Modest Mouse. If equipped with a better shower I would have sung there too. Mine is so dingy and claustrophobic. I’m not inspired to do anything but utilitarian tasks and sometimes I even skip over those in my haste to rejoin the world of light and air.

My voice teacher asked if I had been practicing and I just said yes, and it felt like a lie especially when she asked me how I’d been practicing and how often. I trailed off into some mumble about, “Well, you know, that song we did… I’ve sung it a little.”

I sung it two weeks ago walking home from our last voice lesson. I sang it talking to my friend on the phone when I was so totally psyched about singing in this new way. Not much since. Maybe a line hummed when I came across the sheet music in my apartment.

The problem is this: The level of passion (lack of passion) I am bringing to all life endeavors. This holding back I employ in the moment, and then this loss of momentum, this forgetfulness for the true depth (and potential depth) of those things I am passionate about.

My ex-boyfriend would chime in here and say, “Uh-huh,” Sneer in that way I used to think was so hot (inspiring). “Do you know where it is?” The “it” referring to my nether regions.

My voice teacher during our first lesson was trying to describe where I needed to sing from. “You have to sing from your female parts,” she’d said. I remember that she was looking at me intently, trying to see if I really got what she was saying. “You know,” she continued, “sing from your cooter.”

Sing from your cooter. It’s a provocative line worth repeating. In fact it should be repeated all the time. A mantra to adopt. Sing from your cooter. Write from your cooter. Make art, dance, love (you know?), and in all things important do it with your cooter. Do all things from this passionate and essential place. A place recognized as underdeveloped, infrequently explored, even avoided and ignored. In fact you could say this essential challenge of cooter recognition and implementation inspired this corny, broadly (ill) -defined project. The project just lacked a slogan or a vow, so how about this: I swear to lead life with my cooter and let the rest fall in line after that.

Describe your street:

Noisy. Packed to the gills with people. It’s feels anomalous, perhaps like most urban residential blocks feel. The mix of people and the intentions of these people.

My house is a landmark. Built in the last few years of the 1800’s. A senator was born here. He was progressive, even for our times. Now it is divided up into crumbling units always bursting or breaking, occupied by graduate students, most visiting from the other side of the world. All of them lonely and sweet. Too brilliant to be imagined.

Each night, sometimes several times, I see a mother and son walk down our street. They are inseparable. Dressed averagely. Clothes clean. They discuss things secretively and sometimes go through the trashcans. When the son doesn’t have a cigarette, he asks if I’ll give him one. I don’t like them. At first I said hello. But they are scavengers. Who knows how they became this way, but their passive interest in free garbage somehow puts me off. If you need garbage, then you need garbage. They are their own cult. They have their own rules.

The lady next door hates us. She owns the house on the other side of us and rents it to the most despicable undergraduates. They break bottles and shoot fake guns. She has her man over there everyday cleaning up their mess. Most of the kids drive black or white luxury SUV’s. On game day they pull out a rickety table, set it up on the lawn. They fill red plastic cups with beer to play beer pong. The guys take off their shirts and scream. The girls simulate sex. “You should come over.” They say when I come out on the stoop. “Maybe some other time.” I usually say.

Vitals Sept. 15 - 30th

If there are patterns developing (hundreds) it is that with a moderate amount of confidence I get "wordy". Also rainy days and Mondays always get me down.