Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Who has rights to our mind.

I was out with my good friends the other night and I felt like I was in an episode of Seinfeld. They had now read the blog entries and I didn't know which ones they had read but I felt as I spoke like I was speaking for my blog. It's a very weird thing. You see I was writing this initially just to the universe and so I felt there was some godlike creature out there who it was all going to. But now wow I have people reading it and with that comes some sort of weirdo feeling of I don't know. I felt like I wasn't asking questions of them as I normally would but that I was living out a part of my blog and in fact this whole conversation could end up in a blog and that they might think that too. So it all felt very exposed and like my mind was sitting on the table with all of us as we chatted. And then one of my friends said, " I'll be disappointed if we're not in the blog," in a jokey way. But then I was going to write about our wonderful friendship and now I was thinking about all the possibilites for others to direct what was written. What a headf........

Okay calm down Roberta. Well now I am blessed to have so many friends. In fact one particular friend and I the other day, in all our glory, decided we were popular. Don't you love it. Still that's our opinion and it doesn't matter really whether we are or aren't it's our opinion.  So often in life I haven't been strong enough to have an opinion that was very black and white I'm a very grey person and that is wonderful because you can see every side to people's dilemmas --hence popularity !!! but it's a bit wishy washy don't you think.  I love the fundamentalists with their total belief and literal translations.
When my youngest daughter was born I was paid a visit by  a particular group of door knocking fundamentalists and invited them in for afternoon tea. We ended up meeting for afternoon tea at my house every Wednesday and I really enjoyed it. My friends all thought I was a bit desperate hence maybe not quite so popular at the time but I found it very reasurring to sit there talking about our separate beliefs and they were gentle in their prodding and I discovered I did have some particular beliefs.  Each time they visited they would bring another member of the congregation so I think I met most of the  members of their church during that time. My children loved their bible though it was a bit gory.

That time of afternoon teas and discussing the end times with fervour is a gentle memory for me now.
Ahh those were the days!!! Anyway my point was that perhaps my greyness is in fact more opinionated than I thought. I believe that all people are a potential friend and that sometimes it's a challenge to fit yourself into a situation where you can meet them and find that thread that links you. I've loved doing that with people in Pakistan in such different circumstances to here and in all the places of the world I've been. It's such a wonderful belief to know that every person is your potential friend it prevents you from having the usual concerns about whether or not you should speak to someone. YOu just do because they are on the earth with you at the same time. That's it you are all linked by that. So  I loved sitting with a family in their mud hut in the Swat Valley and communicated with them as they washed their mugs and plates in a copper bowl and when I sang for Oasis at the Hyatt and feared initially that they might bang a guitar over my head but found them bopping along to our songs on our first night there. Now that was a headf.... but noone is better or worse than the other we are just all people with a journey that leads us somewhere and the breaks along the way and how you deal with them are where you end up.

Well this all began as a blog to help people with singing and performance and I have certainly strayed. I was taught a wonderful little tip the other day for belting singing. And that is to try crying like a baby would and then lead into singing that power note. You really squish your face up like a baby would too when they cry. It's amazing the sound you can get with that belting singing if you try this method. Another idea is to say 'Hey you' as if calling across the room and then go into singing a belting note on 'you'....Kristin Chenoweth taught me that one in an interview I watched. She should know she has the Cheno note. But I think I'm getting a pretty good handle on that note too. It's all technique people. I believe you can all sing if you want to. And I intend to help as many people around here to sing if they want to. It's such a great thing to do.

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