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.