I've decided to try a new place today. It's called Starbucks. Basically, if you haven't figured it out... I go to the Bucks de Star quite a bit....a lot of times because I am early to EVERYTHING.... so it is a place where I can kill a few minutes (or an hour....that's how early I can sometimes be), get out of the heat, get out of the cold, get out of the way, and sometimes I jump in a Starbucks when I see someone I know and don't particularly enjoy in order to avoid an insincere exchange of meaningless pleasantries. Basically.... if I see you on the street and we have a moment, it is completely sincere....and you know this because I haven't jumped into a store to avoid you. But that doesn't mean I have any idea what your name is. JUST SAYIN'.
I'm killing time before heading to my second voice lesson since I've been back. My last lesson was kind of a bust, but as usual, eye opening and amazing. I work with a man named D. Michael Heath. Now.... I know everyone is supposed to LOVE their voice teacher...and think they are the best, so I'm not going to harp on how... well.... on how I love my voice teacher and think he is the best. Right now, he is the best.... for me!
I've always loved singing. It was one of the things I have loved to do since I was little. I never expressed how much I truly enjoyed singing when I was growing up, but I think my parents and sister can vouch for the fact that the radio or CD player was always blasting and I was always belting it out in the shower. I loved singing Broadway shows, pop, and country more than anything, and my best friend in High School Jill (a.k.a. Jill Bill) and I would sing Miss Saigon at the top of our lungs in her Candy Apple Red convertible Nissan (I think) that kept falling apart every time we got into it.... AND IT WAS A NEW CAR! Oh, and just as a side note.... I still have nightmares of driving in the car with Jill.... thoughts of me screaming to her, "Jill... JILL... you're on the grass... YOU'RE ON THE GRASS!!!!" (we were on a major street....where we weren't supposed to be anywhere near the grass) Oh I loved my little bad-driver Jill.... She's probably mailing me some Anthrax right now after reading this. Sorry....but not really.
Singing wasn't anything my family pushed me toward. They basically pushed school and sports. And at one point my Dad offered to get me piano lessons, but I declined...I mean.. I wanted to SING, not tickle the Ivories! But I never asked for voice lessons, not even knowing they had such a thing...so no hard feelings. I had other things I was dealing with anyway, like my Big Red Mullet.
Flashback.... So there I was, 12 year old me and my family at Boardwalk and Baseball....an amusement park long since closed, when I saw it. A cheap, amusement parky recording studio where you can sing to a horrible karaoke track and then.... MAKE A MUSIC VIDEO! "Dad...DAD.... can we do that?" My Dad, being a musical theatre, song and dance man himself was on board for an opportunity to showcase his booming bass/barritone and charming video personality. We immediate name our duo THE SCHMECHELS, we were going to be FAMOUS! I just knew it! We recorded Blue Moon.... me signing lead, of course, and my dad doing all the backup and cool bee-bop-doop-de-doos and shit. Then we taped the video. Look out MTV.... here come The Schmechels! We end the session.... we end the day... then... after the unveiling of our masterpiece for my dad's business partner, he turns to me, looking up at him all wide-eyed and ready for praise from my adoring fan and says what all aspiring singing stars want to hear.........."So.... you're apparently NOT going to be a singer!" I WAS CRUSHED. I am 33 and thoughts of this experience still cripple my confidence when I vibrate my vocal chords together to sing a diddy. This was just the first of many times I have heard, weather blatantly to my face, or off the cuff, references to me not being a singer. The wounds can easily be opened still... but...
FLASH FORWARD! Summer, 2009. I have just spent 1 year on the road in a little, hugely successful tour of Legally Blonde, and I tear the cartilage in my left knee. BOOTS! I'm out. 10 weeks healing from surgery. An email address in hand from my closest friend and newest inspiration Natalie Joy Johnson for a voice teacher that changed her life. My brain is spinning.... Natalie Joy Johnson... amazing singer, gets this voice teacher from another amazing, singing Broadway sensation...this email address comes with a warning... DO NOT START WORKING WITH HIM UNLESS YOU'RE READY. UNLESS YOU'RE READY TO WORK, BELIEVE, AND CHANGE YOUR LIFE... Well.... I'm ready! I'm READY WORLD!!!! I want to be able to finally sing! To be a singer! My newly hacked knee propped up on my couch, I email him. To my surprise.... he emails me back... he said he would love to work with me. OH MY GOD! I go.... and the transformation begins! The next year of my life on the road with this new vocal information was incredible. I was practicing every day. Warming up before every show (Sorry guys....I tried to do it away from the dressing room as often as possible) Exploring new sounds, trying new placements.... JUST GROWING... and trying as hard as possible not to judge the sounds that I was making. And just waiting 'til I was back in NYC and able to study more with this amazing teacher.
Now, I'm aware of how often I saw things "Change my Life." And I know that when you make Everything important, then Nothing is important. But in the past two years, I have has so many life changing experiences, but meeting D. Michael Heath and study voice with him has been one of the biggest, most influential experiences in my life. I am not saying that NOW, after studying with this man for.... 20 lessons maybe, that I'm now a singing sensation. But I am saying, that because I have been working with this human divining rod, I have tools. I have information, and awareness of my vocal instrument, an instrument I've had my whole life but am now just discovering how to play. Each lesson, whether I come away with it without a face (from SINGING MY FACE OFF!!!), or a little disappointed cause I was not connected and present, I have grown as a master of my own fate. He says there are "no wrong sounds." He tells me , "It's just air.... just air passing over your chords." He gives me confidence that if I work hard, and practice.... I can be (my last daily affirmation...) "a great singer who tells a story through song."
So, all you miserable bastards (Glenn R. Haft excluded) who throughout my schooling and career have for some reason felt the need to express their negative opinions about my singing ability to my face can lick my balls! Get em good and wet.... but now I have to dry them off because I have to get to my voice lesson.
To those of you who have been nothing but supportive and full of love. Thank you.
LOVE LOVE LOVE
To myself. Fuck 'em... YOU CAN DO IT!
Ven
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