Laurel Massé

Deep listening

I don’t have internet in my apartment at the moment. Nor do I have any magazine-in-the-mailbox subscriptions.  These two conditions are related, and there are a couple of reasons for them. The first, the “presenting complaint”, in med-speak, is the expense. When I first came back to NY and arranged for Verizon to be my provider, the lovely introductory rate was $17.99 each month. Sign me up!  When that rate expired, the new rate was $10 more per month, and now it's $44.99 per month before taxes. Just for internet.

Magazines are the same. A sweet bargain for the first year or two, to catch you, and then a much higher rate when your subscription renews automatically, as a “convenience” to you. More important, magazines, even the best ones, are either repetitive (sorry, Oprah), or relentless (New Yorker, I’m talking to you).  Or both. Who has the time to read them all? And who, in this apartment, has the time to read them all when there is a cat to admire, Shakespeare on the shelf, music in my head, and friends to talk to? Real life, compassionate, aware, loving, curious friends?

Which brings me to another concern: The Vortex. Our minds are wired to look  at the newest information. This can keep us both alive - Look out! There’s a snake! Move fast! A tree is falling! - and breeding - wow! now THERE”S a man!. This also makes us the perfect targets for Facebook and Twitter addiction, because the feeds keep updating. I find I am reading about someone I barely know doing something I don’t care about (so glad you’re having coffee for your hangover, my fb friend). It’s the latest, so it’s the loudest. Though it is easy to decide to stay away, actually doing that requires overriding millions of years of evolutionary development. But just as I am trying to do that, here comes another update, and it sucks me back in, on the off-chance that I need to know this new bit of information.

The Vortex substitutes the watching of life for living of life. It affected me years ago, through television, and so I got rid of my TV. Since then I have been encouraged (often!) to re-engage the box, and I haven’t yet done so. Perhaps when a cable company allows me to choose and pay for only the stations I want (I want my BBC, period). The result of this mode of living is that I am an alien. Those who watch a lot of telly probably don’t realize that they talk more about that than about anything else. They talk more about the characters on shows than about the people they actually know. I notice it because, when I have to ask who they are talking about, they are astounded by my ignorance.

But I watched a lot of TV in my past. Many friends have been made to endure my recall of theme songs and  jingles from the 60s. In 1978, when I had the car accident that forced me out of the music business for a couple of years, I had extremely good medical care from Dr. Alvin Mulne, and all the superb staff at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Burbank, CA. I also had Jamie Sommers, The Bionic Woman, on daily reruns, and that show played an important part in my healing, too. I had been surprised to find that, thanks to bad management, I was rather spectacularly underinsured, and the daily “meditation” and visualization of her speed and strength and acute hearing was almost the only post-op therapy I had. We really do have the technnology, built-in, in mind and spirit.

Today I am living in a cable-free, magazine-free, internet-free apartment. Some of this may may well change. It's inconvenient. To publish this post, I have to walk down the hill to the library with my laptop on my back, and then walk back up. It's raining. But once I am home again, the mental silence - because I can't check Facebook - is deep and fruitful. The payoff's been really big. Clearer ideas. Sharper awareness when I am out, quieter thoughts when I stay in. Intuition's more insistent. Prolific dreaming. Prayer. I feel more present to Presence.

So far, so good.

 

Turn the radio on

I had a lovely time this afternoon being interviewed by Sandra Lee Schubert of Wild Woman Network. You can listen here.

 

Thank-you note

I received a comment on one of my blog posts yesterday, which is not in and of itself unusual - and thank you all for that! But the post was one I wrote in September 2007, on the occasion of Madeleine L'Engle's death.

I was surprised.

Somehow, it had never occurred to me that something I wrote two and a half years ago would still be part of the conversation, even though I am never surprised when people tell me they love "Scotch and Soda", or "Je Voulais",  which were recorded in the 1970s, for heaven's sake. I'm deeply grateful when that happens, but not surprised. So, apparently I've had a little trouble generalizing. I'd seen that writing is like singing in one way - both are conversations - but missed another. - the conversation is not bound by time. As one who relishes reading old books, I am feeling a little silly about that, and also very jazzed.

It thrills me that you read what I write, and that you care about the things I care about, whether it is the song of a bird or the way someone sings the national anthem, a passage of scripture or a cool blog, the chill of a winter night or the warmth in Elizabeth Taylor's eyes.

So, thank-you, D H-T, for your comment about Madeleine yesterday. Thank you all for your time and thoughtful attention. You might not know how much you mean to me, but I sure do.

 

Who is to blame?

That is the question that has been racing around the country today. Who is to blame for the attempted murder of Congresswoman Giffords, and for the senseless slaughter of six people yesterday? Yes, there was a shooter, but what inspired him to shoot? The Tea Party, say some. The gun lobby.  A widely-publicized map marked with targets. Obama's policies. Republicans. Democrats. The disintegration of civility. Gay marriage. Muslims. Right-wing Christians. Left=wing socialists.

We want a scapegoat.

And we want that scapegoat to be someone else. Not our tribe. Not us.

We want to lay our sins on that goat (as in Leviticus 16), shove it out into the desert, and go on with our lives, unchanged. And we could do that. Read the comments section of any newspaper or blog to see a web of raging blame and counter-blame.

If we let this go, doing nothing but blaming someone else, we will all but guarantee it will happen again.

it is true that people across the political spectrum have been saying and writing recklessly hateful things, feeding the fear and frustration of others. People have wished misfortune and pain on those they disagree with, and celebrated when that wishing bore foul fruit. It is true that such speech is dangerous.

But equally dangerous - and perhaps more so -  is the silence of people of good will, the reluctance to get involved, and the willingness to be distracted. 

We are all responsible for the discord of these times. Until we recognize that, nothing can change.

 

 

 

 

What I Did on my Vacation

I was not on vacation. I just wasn't writing. Life simply got a-hold of me, and that is good. Except for this: I am not a multi-tasker, and am hard-pressed to hold attention on several things at once. I have worried a lot about this over the years. What is wrong with my brain? What is wrong with me?

Perhaps nothing is wrong. Perhaps what I have been taught is "letting balls drop" may really be having tried to juggle more than I can mentally handle in the first place. I should have recognized this a long time ago. The clues were always here, especially in my reading patterns. It was never enough to read one "Black Stallion" book. I had to read them all. And then it was not enough to read all the Black Stallion books. I had to read all of Walter Farley's other books, too. The Island Stallion. Sulky Colt. Even The Great Dane, Thor. Intense focus on one thing, sometimes to the seeming exclusion of others. 

When I am performing, that's what I do. When I am teaching, that is what I do. When I was training dogs, that was the world. When I apprenticed to an herbalist, that was the world. And when other things come at me from the side, I have a hard time dealing with them. This could be a mighty mental discipline, a "being here now". It's not, alas. I wish it was. It's just me, being me. People pitch balls to me that I don't even see sometimes. I just hear the big clatter as they hit the floor!

The past month-and-change has graced me with some challenges, and some more challenges to the half-solved challenges, and it has been a rough Lent. But Easter is coming, is already here; light is very near. And so I rejoice, and praise God. And that is something I can do no matter what else is going on.

Because it's not another ball in the air. It is the air itself.

Thanks, Steve, thanks Apple, stop by anytime!

Little did I know, when using the word "jobs" in the title of my most recent post, that I would become a small part of yesterday's excitement about the new Apple iPad. All I knew is that I was starting to get a lot of hits on this blogsite. Now, I am a performer, and so at first I did think it was because of something I had done. But I couldn't think what. It was all quite bewildering until Stuart, a regular reader here, mentioned something about timing and getting lots of visitors, and when I questioned him about what he knew that I didn't, he told me about my "jobs" title intersecting with "Steve Jobs". The Steve Jobs whom everybody was googling for a day or two.

So, to those of you who visited looking for Steve, I am sorry he wasn't in, but am so glad you visited, poked around, and read some of my writing. I hope some of you will come again from time to time. I'll be here. And Steve, you are always welcome (do consider bringing me an iPad as a hostess gift).

Blessings to you all.

Gravity, gravity, all is gravity

FIrst, I was given Hal Weiner's beautiful photo (see my 11/5 post). Then, this morning, I discovered a blog called Real Live Preacher. Gordon Atkinson (the preacher of the title) has written a lovely piece about gravity that I have been thinking about since I read it. You will, too.

Bloggie goes a walking... to visit ChoralNet

I just discovered that my blog post of June 12, Why SIng? was picked up on ChoralNet. I was quite surprised, and also rather flattered that something I wrote "went choral" (next best thing to going viral).

I checked out the site, which seems a marvelous resource for choral singers of all kinds. There, I also discovered that Hal Leonard Music has purchased Shawnee Press. This pleases me. I am forever talking to students about pronouncing the words so that the listener can understand what the lyrics are about. Now, just maybe, it will be possible to get that helpful little Shawnee Press pamphlet, Tone Syllables, that outlines the techniques I first learned at my grandfather's knee - he was for many the lead baritone with Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians - and then had reinforced at Fred Waring's Youth Choral Workshop in 1966 (when I was extremely youthful!). I have never once sung onstage without using what I learned that summer, and I am completely mystified as to why every chorus and choir doesn't use this same concept. If a song has words, there is no reason whatsoever for the words to be unintelligible. I don't mean that lyrics in German should be understandable by non-German speaking listeners, but they certainly should be making sense to Germans! I am especially shocked to hear opera sung in English that is so mangled as to have to be supertitled. For cryin' out loud, folks! I realize there are technical difficulties in producing that incredible volume of sound, and several classical singers (and teachers of same) tell me that it is impossible to clearly enunciate. I might have believed them... had I never heard Rufus Muller.

I was privileged to get a ticket to his recent performance in Jonathan Miller's production of Bach's St. Matthew Passion. Rufus sang the tenor role ot The Evangelist (the central role) with exquisite control of his voice; able to caress, grieve, whisper, thunder, and inflect with a razor's edge of irony when called for. It was thrilling and gorgeous singing - and I understood every word.

Which proves it can be done, and there, for the moment, I rest my case. Let's have a run on Shawnee Press's Tone Syllables, and change the singing world!

Face to face

All right now, gang. Today I am hoping we are going to talk about Facebook.

I am very conflicted about the site. There are things about it that I really like. Finding old friends is at the top of the list, as I have moved many times in my life, and never knew what some of my junior high and high school friends grew up to be. Or where they are. Through Facebook, I have reconnected with several folks I have not seen since 1965 in Paris. Or 1968 in Andover. I also have made the cyber acquaintance of some very lovely people, some long-time fans whose support means a great deal to me. And I certainly know what a lot of people are doing at any given moment.

But...

I am not a fan of applications, of green plants in computer art form, of digital ponies. Of being hounded by people who invite me over and over to join something I don't want to join. Of seeing how many of my friends are Facebook-obsessed. Of finding so many emails from friends (who already had my email address) coming to me now through Facebook. And most importantly, I am not comfortable with Facebook's ownership of what is posted to its site, which is why I am no longer feeding my blog directly to my Facebook page, at least for the moment.

Those of you who are performing artists: have you seen an increase in your audience, your bookings and your income because of your Facebook page? Is there enough gain to offset the world domination aspect? Am I just being too 20th century, or is Facebook really devouring everything?

New egg in the nest

Several singers have asked me to write more about singing itself, about technique, voice care, singer health maintenance, and dealing with one's life as a performer. So I have started a second blog, The Songbird Salon, in which to hold that conversation. I envision a conversation in which there will be many voices. We are all part of the songbird species, and so I invite all singers to drop by the Salon. If we flock together, we will weather the storms more easily. And oh, what a joyful noise we can make!

And in this blog, I will continue to explore art and faith and life...not that these are three separate things...