An Alto Sentence
I could no longer hit an A above high C consistently by the time I was nineteen.
I was twenty three when I had to finally admit this to myself and seek out notes in my own register. The hardest thing about not being a soprano I anymore was the fact that it meant I no longer could just follow the melody blindly. Almost any song arranged for more than one female voice has the high sopranos sing melody. While my tone is nice (I recently taught an intern the trick of singing to a stressed cat and was complimented on my voice - this is the extent of my singing career these days), I have a pretty bad ear. Singing the melody is by far the easiest thing to do and when I found that I sounded like a strained weasel, I was a little lost for a while. I bounced through songs and notes randomly, including brief stints where I said fuck it and gave tenor ranges a try. It took many solo car trips to ring true to my voice.
My voice here is changing. For years I have spoken about frustrations regarding my job and the men in my life with a bite. Now, I have no frustrations and, more importantly, feel no need to bite. Not that I’m not a sarcastic bitch with ST sometimes (he likes me that way), but it’s usually not the highlight of our time together. I try to remember snippets of conversation, caress a feeling into a paragraph. But just as I tried to hit those notes, I’m stumbling all over the screen right now. As I cannot fix this with trips to Gainesville and a dozen cassette tapes, my only options are to stop completely or allow you to watch every ungraceful sentence and semi-colon.
In other news, both trips have been planned. My mother is very excited about us coming to visit and I can’t wait to show ST the cabin. I also spoke with my grandmother. She outright suggested they help pay for the car, which gave me a great opportunity to explain my current finiancial situation (I turned her down). We ended that conversation on a much more normal note for us so I think she’s feeling better about the whole thing.
Off to study!
In sum? What an awesome problem to have. :-)
I find it to be reassuring that you’ve addressed this “change of voice” so openly. While I like the hardcore you who speaks of men with a real bite to her voice, it’s also nice to know that I don’t fit the same mental classification that other men have.
Sarcastic bitch is pretty high on the list of adorable traits I have about you in my mental catalogue. Just for the record…