creative.mother.thinking

explaining my life to strangers

performance angst – resolved

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So I finally went to the performance-group‘s rehearsal. Last Tuesday. I had been indecisive for the whole 15 days. Should I go, or not? But since my mother was visiting us and could babysit, I called and went.

This time it was much easier to prepare. I already had a babysitter, my toenails were painted, I didn’t care about my outfit, or about the rehearsal at all, because I already knew that I’d probably not be part of this group anyway. But, apart from being real curious about the group, I wanted to give it a chance, and – maybe my biggest reason – I wanted to know how I’d fare in such surroundings. Improvised dancing and singing.

Not to leave you hanging – I was rather pleased with myself. I went there, even on time. When I left the train I set off in the wrong direction, but the performer who had called me spotted me and gave me a lift. The other interested singer was there. I already know her and like her a lot. So I felt quite comfortable. (Here, I might add that I spent the whole afternoon before in stage fright, eating and reading blogs while avoiding to warm me up.)

I put on my quite-stylish-jazz-pants that are probably six years old, and my really cool legwarmers. Nobody else wore legwarmers of course, but at least I had the right shoes – none. There’s a teacher to this group, one of the reasons why it’s not exactly cheap. He started off doing body-percussion-exercises. Despite his nervousness about the two not-used-to-dancing-singers, we had no problems with that. He didn’t know that we both had been taken drumming lessons years ago. Then we had some exercises like walking through the room all at once, connecting with the others, partner exercises where you react, mirror or contrast the other person’s movements, and then the finale, free improvisation with dancing, singing, and sounds all mixed together.

At first I was a little shy with the moving. The dancers are quite good. But then I remembered the old days of jazz dance class. I just went with the flow, and it was big fun. So I’m really happy, because I don’t have issues with this performing, moving and singing at the same time anymore! It’s just gone!

The reason for this is that I don’t mind anymore. I shut my brain down. I stop thinking, “Oh, how I look! Oh, how stiff I am! Look at her, how elegant and fluent her motions! I could never do that!”. I just go with the flow, and sometimes I stumble because I once was strong enough to do a move like that, but I’m not anymore. And I don’t strive to become a dancer anyway.

So I still have to tell them that I won’t be coming back. I feel bad about it. They are nice girls, but I can’t be spending so much time and energy on a project like that. It’s not my sole project. Not by far. What I want to do with this experience is: a) incorporate more movement into my singing warm-up, b) maybe take a modern dance class once in a while, and c) maybe pick up strength training again. Or not.

talking to babies

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I don’t know whether you have noticed it too – people don’t talk to babies or toddlers. Well, most don’t, but I do. I was reminded of this just yesterday, at a family get-together. The toddler (15 months old) wanted to have cookies. The cookies were standing right in front of him. His mother said “No cookies!” to the adult holding the toddler. (She’s one of those “no sugar nor white flour will touch the lips of my baby”-mothers.) But of course, the toddler wanted them. Desperately, being really angry. I looked at him and said sternly, “You know what, toddler, you can scream as much as you want, but you won’t be getting any more cookies. Sorry, but your mom said no.” He immediately stopped screaming and looked at me like “What did just happen?”, and I realized that nobody had talked to him as if he were a real person for the whole day. He was yanked away, things were put out of reach, people were talking about him, but he was almost never addressed, and nobody explained anything to him.

Apart from my mother and me. This is not a single occurrance, I observe it all the time. A friend of mine (not a very close friend) and her fifteen month old were at our place. The toddler was with me, the mother at the other end of the garden. Toddler says, “Mamamamamamamam.” I said, “He’s saying “Mama.” Mother says, “Oh no, he also says that when he’s hungry.” So what? He’s fifteen months old. Mother, food, being hungry, being tired, that’s all connected for him. But these parents are giving their children the message that the children are stupid. That their wishes and feelings don’t count.

That makes me real furious. Okay, sometimes I felt like a fool, blabbering away with my baby. We’re out, he’s in the stroller, and saying “Da!” and pointing. And me, “Yes, that’s a nice flower.” Sometimes I’d imitate his sounds just for the fun of it. And because I respect his urge to communicate. Now that my son is three, he’s an amazing talker. Big vocabulary, very articulate, quite good grammar. I don’t know whether this is because of all the talking, but I didn’t do it to boost my child’s language skills. I did it because it seems natural to me, and because I see children as real persons.

I believe that even babies understand more than they can express. What Moxie writes on babies and sign language makes perfect sense to me. I think that it’s hurtful for a person (even one that’s only a couple of weeks old) to tell her (not directly, of course) “You’re stupid. I’ll only talk to you, when you’re all grown up. Try to point out something to me, I won’t be listening anyway.”

I have been accused of trying to turn my son into an “anti-social super-brain”. By a person who thinks that you can be too intelligent. I don’t think that one can be “too” intelligent. I believe, intelligence can be boosted only so far. But it can be dampened. As can be the urge to communicate. (By the way, the only thing I do to “boost” my son is listen to him, when he talks, and answer his questions as good as I can. I’m not the one with the flash cards or anything.)

But talking to your baby or toddler seems to be very odd behavior. Imagine my delight when I went to a party recently and almost all the parents there talked to their babies. Like “I know, you’re hungry right now, you’ll be getting your bottle soon. See, the water is already boiling.”

I don’t know, why I’m spending so much time around people who make me feel really weird.

Oh, they’re family.

head explodes

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Um, not literally though. Since I’m vertical again after the stomach flu, but not on normal food again (no fat, no sugar! for me!), I’m healthy enough to see all the things that were neglected since Friday:

  • laundry
  • practice
  • work on business flyer
  • work on homepage
  • write half a dozen e-mails
  • blog.

  • prepare for my mother’s visit, oops!

Maybe it’s a blessing, because I didn’t worry about my mother’s visit at all. Until now. I worried whether my son’s well again, if it’s okay to eat just a little cheese (no), whether this dreadful flyer will ever be made (maybe), whether I’ll ever have the space to write down the song that’s been in my head since Sunday (sung part of it into my PDA), and then it all went boom, when I remembered that my mother will be here for the next week.

So I’ve been making a little Might-Have-Done-List:

  • prepare guest room
  • plan meals and go grocery shopping
  • clean house
  • clean child
  • look up movie theatres and films
  • organize get-together with relatives living in this town

But my son told me that he and my mother-in-law have spent all afternoon in the garden, making it look nice. So all’s well. After all she’s my mother. We can shop and clean together.

from ear infection to stomach flu

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This is, what you get for saying “My son is hardly ever unwell.” Like he had only about four or five episodes of flu per year. Although I knew that children starting to go to daycare are prone to infections, I hoped we would be spared since he was going to playgroup before, and since we as teachers have a lot of contact with children.

Well, hope is a nice thing. And he only had about one infection since starting kindergarten in February. His flu/ear infection started at the end of January. And he still has it. Every time we’re thinking, “Oh good, he’s getting well again.” it starts all over. He’s been virtually deaf for months now.

Now I see the ones of you who don’t have children nodding their heads in sympathy and then tune out. (“So, her child has been unwell. So what? Give him tea, put him to bed, and then get on with your life.”) Only a parent knows what “My son’s been having an ear infection” really means.

Those infections hurt. A lot. When your baby, toddler, or preschooler hurts, you suffer too. First, because one of the people you love most in life is hurting. Then, because this person is not gonna suffer in silence so you can get on with your beauty sleep. Your child will be wanting to be with you. All day. On your lap. Getting a shower might mean to leave a wailing, feverish, unhappy person in front of the bathroom door. He will wake you up every other hour. He will be sleeping in your bed, parking his head on one pillow, his feet in the other, and he will manage to push both of the adult sleepers out of the bed. You’ll be waking in between his wakenings to make sure, he’s covered. You’ll be having big discussions with the other parent, whether it’s okay to overdose the pain medication. In the middle of the night.

While your child spends his day in bed crying “But I’m soooo saaaad! I wanna go to kindergarten!”, you’ll have to go to work anyway. Without the benefit of childcare. (Thank you, Mother-in-law.) And then, right when he seems to be getting better – you get the flu.

So, the husband has been having something like influenza for the last week. He deemed himself unfit to teach, alas we’re self-employed, so he taught anyway. He should have spent the week in bed with me making tea… The child had the next episode of ear infection, complete with light fever, being deaf, and being irritable. Every day we didn’t know, if he could go to kindergarten or not. He went anyway, he wanted to, very badly, and his fever went away. And then, what happened? Right after the doctor told me “You keep on giving him his medicine, and when everything goes well you might be able to avoid an operation to remove his adenoids.”, he’s getting the stomach flu as well.

That was a nice night. He woke up at 1.30, 3.00, 4.30 and 6.00 to throw up. I spent a little time, cleaning vomit from: him, his bed, the floor all the way to the bathroom, the wall next to the bathroom door (My advice: don’t ever carry the child to the toilet, fetch a bucket), the toilet, and me. Got to bed, start over. Fortunately, the teddy bear was spared. The bear is essential to sleep success. In the course of that night I trained myself to go from sleeping soundly when hearing a strange sound on the baby monitor to full sprint with the bucket in under two seconds.
My husband, by the way, slept a very cough disturbed sleep in the guest room. He didn’t want to affect my sleep. But I decided not to wake him. (See the halo over my head?)

So there comes Friday, and we’re having a problem. We both had to teach and my mother-in-law was visiting a friend. To far away to be called back. My husband wasn’t feeling well (because of the flu), and I started feeling a little queasy myself. At first I thought about sleep deprivation and nausea caused by the episodes of the night, but – no, I had the stomach flu too. But only mildly.

So, we taught our students while being sick, and with the child. Not the best option, but if you’re self-employed it has to have some benefits to it, hasn’t it? We were lucky, the child sat on my lap for two hours, I had only piano students, and no singing students, and our last two students didn’t show up.

Today, we’re feeling much better. Thanks for reading all this whining. I’ll be fetching fennel tea and zwieback.

rehearsal rescheduled

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So. I painted my toenails, got a babysitter, got hysterical, thought about what to wear, taught myself a singing lesson, warmed up for the dancing part, planned transportation, packed my bag, powerd up my PDA, copied the new Desden Dolls album to it, because I was going to use public transportation; and right when I was about to leave the house, I met my husband who said, “Are you still here? The perfomer has left a message.” (If you’re wondering what the hell I’m talking about, go here first, please.)

I was not to go to the rehearsal-audition for this performance group after all. Because the other singer who had been interested hadn’t called, they decided to reschedule to May 9. Because it would be better to tailor the exercises to two of us. Exercises? I didn’t know I was about to take a class. I was wrong, obviously. When I looked up the group on the web, I found out that it is a dancing class. Participants pay 18€ every time they rehearse. Well, I thought I had reached the stage where people pay me to sing. It’d be okay for me to contribute to the rent of a studio, since I can’t hold dancing rehearsals in my home, but paying a teacher?

I also found out that the group’s search for singers is part of an attempt to get “more professional”. Hm. Ten years ago I made a decision to let people do their attempts to be “more professional” on their own. They may ask me to join, when they already are “professional”. This sounds arrogant, I know, but I had been part of a vocal quintet for five years, meeting every week, and having additional rehearsals before every public appearance, before I realized, we’d probably never become “professional”. I vowed to do most of my praciticing in private and then go to a few rehearsals well prepared.

Also, the experience of the last days has shown me that there is no space in my life for something that involves going out every week. I spent the whole of yesterday in preparation. My stuff, everything for the babysitter,… And if my mother-in-law could not have been babysitting, I would have had to put my son to bed half an hour early, and borrow a car in order to get to the rehearsal not quite on time. How realistic is that? Every time I leave the house in the evenings, it concerns four people: me, my son, who’s used to be put to bed by me, my mother in law, who has to babysit, and my husband, who has to rush after lessons in order to relieve my mother-in-law…

So much for trying to overcome my performance-problem. Oh, by the way, in preparing for that rehearsal, I found that my problem with moving and singing at the same time seems to get better. Maybe it’s only in private, I don’t know, but maybe I don’t care so much anymore, whether I look good, or not.

performance angst

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I wanted to write about a million things today: tantrums, mother’s guilt, not dieting, whatever, but – I got a call from a dancer-singer-actress, and so I’ll be “auditioning” tomorrow in the evening.

She’s a member of a performance-group. They are dancers who improvise and sing. She told me about it last year, when we met at a singers workshop on improvisation. Then I thought “A group? Me in a group, are you crazy? Me in a group with dancers?” I only wanted to do my own stuff then.

I still want to make my own music, but during the last year I found myself thinking of performing again. I stopped performing in 1999 or 2000. Not entirely, mind you, we did a couple of birthday parties and such when requested. But we didn’t enjoy it. So we (that’s my husband and me) put our energy into the CDs instead. And later also into the child.

And that seemed to be right, until I found myself over-eager to sing to people at parties or to do jam sessions. And since I’ve decided to work on the things that are difficult for me, I even thought about taking acting classes. Because, I have a little problem with performing:

I can sing in front of people – no problem.
I can talk to a large audience – no problem.
I can even dance in front of people – no problem.
But I can’t do two of these things together. Let alone all three.

When I’m singing in front of a band, there’s no problem with the singing, but I can’t talk to the audience. I’ll sing like crazy, then smile and say a hushed and very soft “thank you”, and then – smile. I’m even able to make a mess of the jazz musician’s traditional “The last song was blablabla, and the next will be blablabla.”
You have to understand, the problem is not the talking. I’ve presented a paper in front of hundreds of people at a conference. With a microphone. Audible, understandable, and well received (until somebody dissed me out of the conference publication, that is). But I can’t talk, when I’m the singer.

The same goes for singing and moving. I have been to a lot of Rhiannon‘s workshop and there you’re always doing things like sing and move at the same time. Improvising. In singing, the improvisation comes quite natural for me. Moving’s a little harder, but possible. But an aquaintance once joked that the minute I was singing, I moved like my feet were nailed to the floor.

Hm. I’ve been working on it. In our late Brazilian Band I was trying to sing, play percussion, and dance samba at the same time. I actually can do it, but the percussion might be a little off time. And somehow it never made the same impression a couple of half-naked Brazilian dancers would have made.

Last summer I visited a workshop for singers on performance. I thought, there I’d learn how to present myself on stage. The workshop was marvellous. I feel much more confident now, because: a) Now I know that I’m not a beginner anymore. (Takes a while for some of us, being a singing teacher could have been a clue.) b) I’m not supposed to move around on stage like a bumblebee, because obviously my respiration type is solar.

This is one of those esoteric theories that I thought to be completely bonkers, but sadly it works. I’m having a couple of singing students, I found almost impossible to teach until I found out that they are breathing different than me. Anyway, a solar type is supposed to do only one thing at a time, and is comfortable only in rest. So I’m doing fine on stage when I’m only standing there and singing. I’m even finding that some artists get away with doing no announcements or only a few. I’m fine with that.

But, finally having the official “you don’t have to move on stage or do anything other than sing”-badge, left me with the freedom to explore this moving-and-singing-at-the-same-time thing too. And so I’m off to go to a rehearsal for an improvisation group of dancers.

So, what’s the most important thing to do for tomorrow?
Right, paint my toenails. And get a babysitter of course. And give myself a singing lesson, and improvise a little. And get hysterical. And find out, where I have to go. But first the nail polish.