The Power of the Voice

I spend the whole afternoon with my cousin Lucy, and her daughter Lucyann, age 15.  They came from Puerto Rico because Lucyann was accepted to participate at the American High School Honor Performance Series at Carnegie Hall.  Tomorrow Sunday she'll be singing as a member of the honor chorus in Carnegie Hall.  

During todays rehearsal, conducted by Dr. Jeffery L. Aims, my notions of the power of the voice  was reinforced.  Two hundred and fifty voices: the highs, lows, long notes and phrases, short notes and phrases.  The Harmony. Oh, I could have heard them singing forever!

I experienced something on the same idea last week.  I was singing at 14th Street and 6th Avenue, on the F/M train line downtown.  My singing spot is between the benches; most musicians place themselves closer to the stairs.  I looked on and I noticed that people were avoiding the first bench as they come toward me.  There's an abandoned backpack on the bench.  I don't want people to avoid the bench; I want them to sit and listen to me sing, and then give me a donation.  If they don't sit on the bench they won't enjoy my singing.  No money. 

When a train left and the station was quiet I got up and listened to the backpack.  Silence.  Gingerly I opened the top zipper.  Books.  Notebooks.  I opened the second zipper.  More books and notebooks.  Ballpoints.  I decided to place the bookback with my things.  It was heavy.  How could anyone leave behind such a heavy backpack?

About forty minutes later a young man, face flushed, says:  "You have my backpack.  Thank you for saving it for me."  "It's a heavy bag.  How come you forgot it?", I asked as the train entered the station.  "I was listening to you.  Your voice's so beautiful...I was in a trance..."

 :) 

Colds and the continuity of life

I'm working on blogging twice a week, Mondays and Fridays, but it's not working out. (I told you about Murphy's Law and me!) This week the problem was a cold. Colds have a way to creep themselves into my body. Then I have some difficulty breathing and feel week. I only want to sleep. Sleep. Meanwhile everything else falls apart around me and I don't seem to be interested in anything. Not music, not singing, not anything. Can't concentrate.

Most of my friends feel sick with an upcoming cold and/or sinus infection, and they go to work, continue to do what's expected of them. At the end of their cold they have completed all the things that they were supposed to have completed before the cold started. That's not my experience. My life seems to fall apart when I get a cold, sinus infection or any upper respiratory infection. It's not how often I get them. Actually I don't get them that often. Not since I started acupunture treatments. But when I get them I cannot accomplish anything. It's very annoying.

So that's why last week blog wasn't done. I had a cold. I went to sing a couple of times because I needed the income. Interestingly enough my voice wasn't impaired. I could reach every single note at the bottom and top of my voice. I just didn't feel like singing. I wanted to be home or somewhere else to sleep. I needed to learn and practice the songs of the new CD An Angel Voice in the Subway, but I dind't do that. I seemed like to much work. I wanted to sleep. 

Now that I feel better I have completed another blog.  There we go.

How to Win Friends and Influence People

Perhaps some readers recognize the title.  How to Win Friends and Influence People is a book by Dale Carnegie where he teaches what he says in the title.  I've wanted to read this book for many, many years but when I've tried borrowing it from the library it isn't available and when I'm at the bookstore I don't remember that I want it, or I also want something else that I end up buying.  But a few days ago, after I sang in the subway for a couple of hours and went overground for a bathroom brake and food by the West 4th Street Station a street vendor was selling by the park.  It was perched on the fence railing.  "How much?"  I asked.   "Five dollars."  "Too much.", I said and began to walk toward the dinner on West 3rd Street.  "How much you got?", he asked.  "Three."  "Three it is", he responded.  So for three dollars I finally got the book I've been wanting to read for thirty years.   Maybe even forty.

While waiting for my food at the dinner, I skipped the preface and first chapter, and people pleaser that I am, I went straight for the second chapter Six Ways to Make People Like You:  "You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people in you."  Oh, my God.  I'm in trouble here.  Many times I behave like a genuine diva and forget to ask people how they're doing, or there names or what do they work in.  I find myself auto-scolding you forgot to ask, say, do.  And feeling lousy about it.  I come from a highly dysfunctional family; auto-chastising is encouraged.  :)  I've tried this bad habit but, I'm to much of a diva.  How could the advice of a book that was first written over sixty years ago, help me now.

Then Carnegie continues: "I spent an evening in the dressing room of Howard Thurston the last time he appeared on Broadway-Thurston was the acknowledged dean of magicians.  ... But in addition to that, Thurston had a genuine interest in people.  He told me that many magicians would look at the audience and say the to themselves, "Well, there is a bunch of suckers out there, a bunch of hicks; I'll fool them all right."  But Thurston 's method was totally different.  He told me that every time he went on stage he said to himself; "I am grateful because these people come to see me  They make it possible for me to make my living in a very agreeable way, I'm going to give them the very best I possibly can." 

And you know something, the Subway Diva actually likes to put her best notes forward for you.  She enjoys singing for people and enjoys listening to their comments about her singing and songs.  I didn't know it, but I actually like people, especially subway people very much.  I enjoy writing the songs and singing them for you. After I read that paragraph I had a nice glow feeling on my belly button.  (You didn't know?  Divas have belly buttons, too?  I'm an inny!! :))


So my prayer is: "I'm grateful because these people in the subway, who are here on there way to another place, stop and see me.  Listen to my voice.  They make it possible for me to believe in myself, in my musical abilities, and to earn some money.  I'm going to give them the very best I can." 

Blog and Podcast Starting

#1: Blog and Podcast Starting
Blogging. Podcasting.

My friend Dana, who has been helping me with incorporating the Internet and social networking in my singing career, suggested that I start a blog. I e-mailed her some samples and it took a few tries to write something that she found acceptable. I come from the old European school of diary writing. When I was growing up in Puerto Rico education was still dictated by the old standards of European education that the Spaniards had left in the island fifty years earlier. Memorizing multiplication and division tables, repeating lists of the causes of many wars, names of presidents and heads of states, our own legislators and senators, and writing essays in English and Spanish. To inspire us to write correctly we read the best of English, Spanish (meaning from Spain in this instance), and Puerto Rican literature. Stories, novels, essays, and diaries. The diarists I read were intellectuals. They described everything in ernest, even normal conversations, using words that had to be looked up in the dictionary. The pursuit of happiness was intellectual happiness.

When I moved to the States in my early twenties, I learned that the masses didn't procure intellectual happiness. Knowing words from the dictionary wasn't a goal. I remember someone saying to me: "Why do you speak like a book?" All the English that I knew then was from books. In Puerto Rico I didn't have English speaking conversation partners, I learned English to read the books I was told to read. I wrote how the books taught me. I spoke the way I wrote, with words that had to be looked up in a dictionary.

Reading other peoples blogs I've learned that a blog isn't like the old diarist wrote. A blog is like a converstion about yourself, but not your intellectual self. Your everyday self. The self that goes to the subway and sings. Perhaps the self that writes songs, but not the self that analyses what she's writing. The self that observes what's going on. My teachers would have called it pedestrian writing. I wouldn't have been able to get away with that kind of writing in school. Actually, I don't know if I can be a pedestrian writer and write a blog, but I can try. I do hope that even if ocassionally I write a word that you have to look up in the dictionary, or at least ask out loud what does it mean, that you choose to read my blogs. It will be hard for me to adjust, but I believe that if you have a good education, and I do have a good education, you can adapt to write in all styles and circumstances.

When I told my friend Andres Bedoya that I was going to start blogging, he suggested that I start podcasting as well. I never envision myself being part of the Internet when I daydreamed about a career as a singer. (I never envisioned myself singing in the subway stations either.) Andres who was handing me the copy of the cover for my upcoming CD An Angel Voice in the Subway, said "A podcast is like a verbal blog". Not having heard a podcast before I asked, "How long should the podcast be? Do you think fifteen minutes would be enough?" "Oh, no"- his friend Jackie chimed in. "A podcast had to be longer than that. I like to put one when I'm going to clean my apartment and listen for about an hour until I'm done." Andres nodded as Jackie spoke. "A minimum of twenty-five minutes."-Andres added. I thought about it as I was going from Brooklyn to Manhattan by train, and then bus. An hour podcast? It would be like a making a radio show. I always wanted to make a radio show. Should it have segments? I could make different segments. I went on and on in my head. But, could I make a commitment of podcasting for an hour every week. Every week. I have a hard time being pedestrian on paper, for a few paragraphs, do you know how much effort to hold it up for a whole listening hour? HA!

Then I had a brain storm. What if I included music. Sometimes it could be a finished song, mini-cantata or solopera, but mostly it could be the music as it streams in my brain. My music comes from an inexhastible source of music that I hear in my head 24/7. (Does that mean that I'm weird?) I'm sure I'm not the only person in the world that hears music in her head all the time, but I haven't met anyone that has this gift (or curse?). For the first 30 something years of my life I thought everyone heard music in their head, although I wasn't actually aware that I heard the music. It was just there; I though that everyone heard their own music too. It was like the blinking of my eyes. My eyes blinked, therefore everybodies eyes blinked. Then the Sony Corporation came out with the Walkman. Millions of people ran to electronic and music stores to buy it. After several months of what I thought was an odd behaviour, although I couldn't explain why, I passed a man than was peeing by a tree. As I walked by him, I heard what he was listening on his Walkman (the tree was very close to the sidewalk!) and I asked loudly in my head: "But doesn't his head orchestra play music for him?" That's when I realized that other people don't have a resident orchestra and chorus to play music for them inside of their head.

Now, twenty years after Sony revolutionized the world with the Walkman, we have a technology that can easily collect the music and play back but with a few adjustments. So, I'm going to regale you with the musical musings of my brain. I'll start with half an hour, and you can tell me if you like it and want to me to make it longer or if that's the right length.

There I've completed my first blog (Dana would say that it has to many subjects, and she would be right!) and you may hear my first podcast here:http://tracksofasubwaydiva.podbean.com/.