Music Monday on Wednesday: of Renaissance Women, Time Management, Filling in the Blanks on Monday's blog and Mahattan School of Music 2012, Why I Keep Going

Hey everybody.

 I'm writing a lot this week! I'm sick- oh, don't worry- my Doctor assures me with full confidence I should be able to sing by my rehearsals this weekend for my gig March 11th! (Yeah, I know. My health? Pshaw. But my voice? Anything to preserve my voice!)

Which is a bit about what I wanted to write about.

I want to fill in on some other pieces of the puzzle left from Monday's blog about serendipity.

For a lot of you who have read me or known me a long time, you know that my life as a singer has been a very wild and zig zaggy adventure. Trust me. I didn't start out in life thinking I was going to be a "classical pop crossover Broadway jazz singer songwriter with some country and some rock and roll." I wanted to be Celine Dion and Barbra Streisand from the get go! But what HAPPENED ALONG THE WAY, SO FAR? Well, that was why I wrote a one woman show called "StandUpera." And as a songwriter, I still want to be Tori Amos and Leonard Cohen as well as Harold Arlen and Diane Warren.

I WILL share pieces of StandUpera here, but for those of you new to me, my blog or my story (as a singer, actress, novelist, screenwriter, playwright. I have no problem claiming all my Renaissance Woman capabilities, including correctly spelling Renaissance on the first try) because I'm tired of branding and marketing and pretending I'm smaller than I am just to make other people understand where I'm coming from. Oh, I understand it's like, wait, Tori Amos can also sing like Broadway and opera and she can also do standup?

Yup, I bet she can.

Just like Barbra Streisand is an amazing singer, actress, writer, director, and who knows what else.

Just like Bette Midler did standup as well as sing like that.

Just like Beyonce can sing and dance and act and market and who knows what else.

Just like Madonna and J-Lo.

Just like Lady Gaga.

And who knows where else things might transpire? Look, if ever I actually "make it" with one field or another, I will be so grateful and let the unfolding of my career happen in the arena, of course! But until then, I will focus all my energies on being my Renaissance Self.

Time Management? I really love it. It's like that quote:

"Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work." - Gustave Flaubert

Some day I should post my daily schedule up here. It's not a daily schedule like, from 7 am til 7:45 I walk Henry, then from 8 am until 8:30 I study Italian while eating breakfast (although that is what happens every day.) It's more like, I have ordered them in priority, and then I set a timer. So most important things are accomplished first, but worked around any appointments I have, readings I give, etc. That way, every day I practice, although it might happen at 11 am or 3 pm or 5 pm depending on the day. But every day it happens! Maybe, if people are interested, I'll share it someday. But since I DID set a timer on writing this blog, I want to get to filling in the blanks on the rest of the story from Monday!

SO!

A little bit about Manhattan School of Music 2012 and what kind of singer I am (hint: more like Linda Ronstadt.).

When I was in high school, I studied opera. Not because I wanted to be an opera singer, but because that was what was available to me. I had a few wonderful teachers. They all happened to be in the classical tradition. I was also writing songs, sort of a la Jewel, the kinds of songs you would expect a smart and talented and melodramatic teenager to write. I had some heroes, odd ones, though. Nina Simone. (My Dad gave me some of her CDs and a life long love affair was born. Years later I discovered we shared a birthday!)

I had terrible eating disorders in high school and college and was surrounded by an atmosphere of oppression. I don't mean to say that my peers and friends and family were oppressive to me because they meant to harm me. I was simply too much. Too emotional. Too bursting. Too ambitious. Too smart. Too weird. Too different. Too easily influenced by other people's fears. Too needy for people's approval. Too needy. And so I made a series of rotten choices, like turning down a full scholarship to NYU to go to Saint Olaf. Like getting deeper into an eating disorder and that led to a whole downward spiral into depression and then pushing away friends and family and dating total a$$holes (you know who you are, you lovable lumps!) (like attracts like. I was an a$$hole in my own way, too.) And then it just got worse and worse until I found myself in an abusive relationship with a controlling international businessman confronting the fact that I had woken up and wasted years not being myself.

Oh, trust me. my real self was still calling out. I was singing, writing songs, touring, singing in cabarets and rock bands. And some of it I loved and a lot of it didn't feel right but I didn't know what else to do.

I moved to LA, wrote a beautiful album that the producer then had me record in not MY voice but a voice that had nothing to do with me, and after years of bulimia and singing too low and improperly, I wrecked my voice and started getting sick all the time and was just lost.

Then I started working with voice teachers. Like, really. Like, listening to what they actually said. Like, trying it. Like, not thinking I know everything (can you believe THAT?)

And I started piecing my voice back together.

And then I started dabbling in Broadway songs and opera again.

And then I thought, I want to be Andrea Bocelli.

I want to be Kristen Chenoweth.

I want to be Barbra Streisand.

I want to be Erin. I want to be ME. Whatever and whomever that is.

So, I thought about being an opera singer. Could I do it? Was my voice too damaged?

And I started applying to all these different young artist programs, summer programs, companies, having no idea what would happen. No one wanted me. No one. Until one place did. Manhattan School of Music. They invited me to be a part of their Summer Voice Program and I started working with some of the best in the WORLD.

Which brings us up to Monday's blog and Rose. She was the other person interested in me.

A few months after that program at Manhattan School, by the way, I was visiting my parents in Minnesota and going through a box of old high school stuff. That's when I found that prospectus from MSM all those years ago.

Do I want to be an opera singer?

Honestly, at this point in my career, I want to be a concert singer a la Andrea Bocelli who does musicals a la Kristen Chenoweth and who sings on the Ellen show and on her own TV show a la Glee. ha! I know. I'm still a dreamer! But why not me? That's why I keep singing and writing web series and auditioning and auditioning and auditioning. Eventually, I will get so undeniable I MUST get hired, or, I will be old and lose my teeth and say, "Can't say I didn't try." ha.

But that's not why I keep singing and writing and acting.

I keep singing because I am a singer.

I keep writing because I am a writer.

I keep acting because I am an actress.

I keep creating art because I am a woman, a creative, a child of God, a member of the human race, and because stories are how we hear and heal one another.

I love you.