Making Some Noise

Last Thursday night I went to Wolf Trap to hear Renée Fleming in concert. Doesn’t she just have the most beautiful name? Renée. So lovely. Her singing was equally lovely, and I found myself marveling that anyone can sing with such volume and still manage to sound beautiful. When I try to make that much noise, I am not nearly as successful.

I’ve always been soft-spoken, which is a real pain in the arse when you are trying to get anybody to listen to you. Some don’t even notice I’m in the room, which is insulting, to say the least. I used to scare the living daylights out of a roommate of mine all the time, because she’d be bustling about the room, thinking she was alone, and then would jump three feet into the air when she finally saw me. I looked forward to those moments. When people constantly don’t notice your presence, you start to get a little ornery.

It doesn’t help your morale when everyone always praises you for being quiet. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “Oh, Renée is sooooo good, she’s soooo quiet!” as if being good and being quiet are the same thing. Little do they know. My strategy has always been to remain as inconspicuous and well-behaved as possible, so that people will forget I’m there, and then I’m left to my own devices and can do whatever the heck I want. This has generally worked brilliantly for me.

But my plan to be invisible has worked a little too well. Several years ago, I finally got sick and tired of being bumped into or left behind, interrupted or ignored, all because I’m quiet. I decided it was high time to stir things up a bit. Turn up the decibel level a few notches. Thus began my Quest To Learn How To Be Freakin’ LOUD.

I started clomping about the house in heavy shoes for a while, but that’s generally unsatisfying after the first ten minutes or so. Same goes for banging pots and pans together while I am “cooking.” I’d turn to instruments, but unfortunately, I had decided to play the flute as a child, instead of something like the trombone or drums or pipe organ. Yet none of these external things would solve the problem, not really. I could roll cannonballs down the stairs, but the cannonballs would be loud, and I would not.

So I decided to become an opera diva, theorizing that I didn’t appear to have any physical limitations, and could therefore learn how to be loud. What an undertaking that has turned out to be! I didn’t realize how many mechanical adjustments were necessary to sing with power. And it doesn't help matters when your body is used to being very lazy. I’ve gotten along just fine for a quarter of a century on very little air and even less effort, so trying to increase the airflow and energy has been a totally foreign concept to me. It's as if my muscles are saying, "What? You want us to push? Ha ha. That's funny. Go sit on the couch."

It’s made me inordinately happy, though, to be allowed to keep up a cultivated scream for an hour or more. Very cathartic. Why didn’t I think of this earlier? Sanctioned screaming!

I've found a wonderful teacher who serves as a guide as I try to figure out the enigma that is my voice. She is very patient. She tries to give me suggestions as I let out an ear-piercing shriek for five minutes while attempting to adjust whatever involuntary muscles I’m supposed to adjust to sound halfway decent. So far, I haven’t found them. A typical lesson goes like this:

Me: LaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAA
(Teacher: Lift your soft palette, Renée … And support. Renée, you need to...)
Me: AAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
(Teacher: Hold on a minute. Supp-)
Me: AaAaAaAaAaAaAaaaAA AAAAAA AAaaaaaaAAAAAAAaaaaAAAAA
(Teacher: OK. That’s good. That’s good… That’s enough.)
Me: aaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaa
(Teacher: )
Me: AAAAAAAaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAA
(Teacher: Renée … Renée, you can st-)
Me: AAAAA AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
(Teacher: (exasperated pause)…………Renée!)

She has the patience of a saint.

Okay, so I sound like a strangled duck right now, but that’s fine. Occasionally I will make a beautiful sound by accident, and the way I figure it is, if I can make such a sound by accident, I can learn to do it on purpose.

I’ll let you know if this plan works out. It may take a while. I suspect the only thing I will ever have in common with Renée Fleming is our name.