Oi! What's actually going on?

So, it has taken a while for the muse of inspiration to bash me over the head again but I think my head, in the words of Basil Fawlty, has just had a damn good thrashing. I don't think anything has been resolved but there is definite food for thought.

To be honest I wrote that opening paragraph about two weeks ago and can not for the life of me remember to what I was referring. However, I reckon I can make it work.

I have neglected this blog for a while, of course I was planning on stopping writing it altogether, then decided I didn't want to do that and then found myself forgetting to remember to write a new post. Anyway, here we are and I am going to carry on wrtiting until I think of something interesting to convey to you. Interestingly, well I think it's interesting, The Artist's Way asks you to do something similar to this in it's very first chapter.

I have spoken of The Artist's Way before. It helped me out a few years ago in getting my performers mojo back. Unfortunately it has been lost again somewhere between 2015 and today and I am in a quandary as to whether or not I bother looking for it. As a result of this state of indecisiveness I am contemplating dusting off my copy of The Artist's Way and giving it another go.

One of the first things The Artist's Way does is to get you to write, what they call, morning pages. 3 pages of stream of consciousness, no thinking, just write whatever comes into your head. A bit like this blog really. I have a few notebooks full of these ramblings that I haven't yet dared to read back. Probably best not to really but I don't feel I can throw them away either. However, would starting this again help me get my singing mojo back?

I go through phases of wanting to sing and phases of really not wanting to. It is possibly hormonal. I am of a certain age where shit is going to get real very soon and I will enter a new chapter in the life of being a woman. I won't bore you with this as there are a fair few men who read this blog and I doubt they need or want to know the best way to deal anything vaguely menopausal. We'll draw a line under that right now and go back to trying to sort the rest of my life out.

There's no doubt that my life is pretty good right now. I make a decent living from teaching, I, for the most part, work for myself and don't really have to answer to anyone but there is this deep, little niggle that seems to say "you'll regret it if you give up singing altogether". Fact is, if I keep teaching I will not give up altogether but the only actual singing I seem to do at the moment is when I record guide tracks for my choir or the kids I teach (you should hear my Jingle Bells and I Wish it Could Be Christmas Everyday - maybe I'll post one). Much as that satisfies a little part of me that wants to sing I'm not sure it's enough.

Unfortunately the longer I leave it the more terrified I get of getting out there again. I wrote a post ages ago about stage fright, I've always had it but, especially as I get older and have more trouble remembering lyrics, it seems to be getting worse. But is that a reason not to do something? They, whoever they are, say you should do something that scares you everyday so maybe that's as good a reason as any to do it.

Anyway that's enough rambling for now. I may give The Artist's Way another go and see if it reignites something or I may just go and have a cup of tea and do a bit of crochet as all potentially menopausal women should do.

Up and at 'em Platt!....Let's have a coffee first though.

I am feeling rather strange at the moment. For the first time in years I feel like I have had a summer off. A bit like the summers I had when I was at school (although my summer holiday this year has been almost exactly 4 months long). That said, I did not spend the summer cycling with my friends all over West Yorkshire or going down the woods or running through the sprinkler in my swimming costume when my dad watered the garden but it has felt like I had no real responsibilities or any real need to be anywhere or do anything. This is not to say I have done nothing in these 4 months:

I did a couple of concerts at this year's Tête à Tête festival (see the following blog for more about that Who needs rehearsal?.....Um, me please.)

I have done a total of 2 auditions. One terrifying (Stage-Fright?.....Shhhh, don't tell anyone.) 

and the other much, much better than the first (I finally took someone's advice.....and hey, it was my own.).

There has been a spot of Mystery Shopping. That was fun but I have got a little bored of going to Pret a Manger for my lunch and then answering far too many questions about how their cappuccino compares with other coffee shop cappuccinos (there will be one friend reading this who will find that statement ridiculous as he, single-handedly, keeps them in business. Although not at the moment as he is up in Pitlochry being a star). They did pay me to go swimming once, though, and that was great.

Then, of course, there is my teaching (go to my website for details *winks*. Sorry for the blatant plug). This is probably the most successful of my summer ventures.

Before I embarked on the longest tour known to man (The Phantom of the Opera 25th Anniversary Tour) I had built up quite a nice amount of singing students and was getting a lot of enquiries. I also had a lovely weekend job at the Westminster Abbey Shop which I was, honestly, sorry to say goodbye to. When I finished the tour at the beginning of May I returned to Croydon and hoped that another singing job would miraculously land in my lap and all my money worries would be over. Unfortunately this was not the case. I did, however, have a back-up plan and, well before the tour was over, started advertising my services online again (not those sorts of services cheeky). I managed to regain 3 of my former students and had one more lined up to start the week I got back to London. For once I was proactive and it paid off (sort of). 

The "dream" is to teach 15-20 hours a week and so far I have gone from 2 and a half hours a week when I first got back to around 7 or 8 a week. In 4 months I don't think that is bad going. I have to keep telling myself that. Particularly when I start to panic that I will never have enough students. Everything is fine. I am slowly getting there and one day I will have 20 hours worth of teaching in a single week (and probably moan that it is too much) and wonder why I panicked so much during my 4 month summer holiday. 

I deserved that time off! We all deserve a bit of time off sometimes (admittedly 4 months is a little long, although we have established that I did not spend the entire time watching Wimbledon and eating ice cream). Unfortunately we have to have the financial means in which to have a bit of time off so it is not always possible. I am very lucky that I have managed to stay afloat (just). I had worked/toured for 16 months and, though fun, it was hard. Not sleeping in your own bed for more than the odd night here and there, living out of a suitcase, finding your way round a new city or town every few weeks just when you'd got used to the last one. I think it is fine that I allowed myself a bit of time to get over touring but now it is time to metaphorically buy the new school uniform, new pencil case and selection of smelly rubbers and other stationery paraphernalia and get back to making something of myself. Well, trying!

A pop song in the style of Britney Spears?....will "Climb Every Mountain" do?

So, having written about the fright I feel when going into auditions, I thought I should perhaps address the difficulties faced when choosing what material to take to an audition. To many people reading, this is the single most important thing to be addressed when going to an audition. I say, not so!

I have done A LOT of auditions in my time. Some have caused me to leave the building and punch the air victoriously (these can be counted on one hand) others have left me weeping uncontrollably having made the biggest arse (language, sorry) of myself in the audition room (as in the last diary entry I will be using my hands and feet AND someone else's hands to count these). Like so many of you out there, at times we go to an audition (I refer to musical theatre and opera auditions here) and take our absolute best song/aria and show the panel how truly talented we are. Ah, but then there are those auditions where we try to second guess what the panel will want to hear and learn something brand new to present. 

Often the audition is the very first time this brand spanking new piece has been sung for anyone other than your cat or dog and, more than likely, the first time you have done it with a pianist. But that is fine. You know it inside out. You can recite the words in your head without stumbling. You have worked out when you are going to move so you are not standing, boringly, in the same place/position throughout. You are totally ready to do this! So, you get in the room, give your music to the pianist, tell everyone what you are going to sing, stand on your mark and get ready. The pianist starts to play. "Hang on" you think. "This doesn't sound the same as SuBo's recording". "This isn't how it goes" You think, "oh well, I best sing summat and hope for the best". You somehow get to the end but it wasn't pretty. The panel look confused and thank you for taking the time to come in. You thank them back and leave, smiling hopefully in their general direction waiting for the moment when you are far enough away and you can cry/scream/laugh/ring someone.

This, you will agree, is not in anyway ideal and the sort of experience we really should avoid. Of course, at times, you may have been asked to bring something specific (these types of auditions are not included) or you may have been asked to bring something in a particular style. Even in this situation you probably have something that would "do" in your rep folder (repertoire folder - a folder including all the songs you are happy to do in an audition, just in case I am blinding you with science here) and don't HAVE to learn a new piece from scratch for the audition TWO DAYS LATER. I am ashamed to admit that, because I am lazy, I have never really had a rep folder overflowing with songs in every style I am likely to be asked for and have never had the get up and go required to rectify this. It is unacceptable really. A woman of my age and experience should have addressed this years ago and done something about it. On a more positive note I am of the school that is more likely to take something I know, no matter how inappropriate, rather than learn something totally new but it is still lazy. I am telling you all this in the hope that you can learn from my terrible errors.

I had a friend I did a show with years ago who, once our show had had it's notice and, therefore, scheduled to close two weeks later, found herself with no less than four auditions the following week. I swear, she learned a different song for each. No amount of cajoling could persuade her that this was counter productive. She got none of the jobs (she did get panto though so she had work for Christmas. Oh and she is not a Facebook friend or a Twitter follower so chances are she isn't reading this). Not only does this sort of behaviour mean you are likely to get a panel's back up for being unprepared but you put unnecessary pressure on yourselves. We worry so much about what an audition panel want to hear from us that we forget that, fundamentally, they want to know you can sing and that you can tell a story through that song. 

This is not earth shattering wisdom I am imparting here but we are prone to forget it in an effort to please people. As performers it is ingrained in us to constantly want approval from the people who hold our futures in their hands. What we all need to realise is, although we need work in order to pay the bills and, well, survive, we need to be proud of ourselves and gain our own approval (if that is possible). The more we go into auditions thoroughly prepared the easier they get because you lose the one element of auditioning that gets us into more trouble than anything else. Self-doubt.

So please, please, please go to your folder now. Look through it and see where the holes are. Do you have a 1960s pop song, an up-beat, contemporary musical theatre piece, do you have an aria in English? Fill one of those gaps today, well before you need it. I am a firm believer that in the end it is more important that we finish an audition able to say "yes, that went well, I couldn't have done it better" than leave the audition ruing the day someone told us we had a smidgen of talent. 

Some of you out there probably think I am saying nothing new and you know all of this. To you I say that is wonderful. However, if my writing this means that just one reader heeds my words and can leave an audition wanting to punch the air rather than weep then my work here is done.

Stage-Fright?.......Shhh don't tell anyone.

Actually that title is a little mis-leading. This is more about pre-stage-fright (if you can get your head around that made up concept). We performers go through a lot before we actually get a job and the chance to do what we trained to do. So, yesterday I had an audition. Auditions are like gold dust at the moment and it has been a while since the last one so I relished the opportunity to get back on the horse and do one. Or so I thought.

I have never enjoyed auditioning. Who does? (Actually there are probably a few of you out there who positively love it but that makes you weird in my book.) I just don't think I am any good at it. Put me in front of an audience to do something I have rehearsed to within an inch of it's life and I am a happy girl. Put me in a room with 2 or 3 people scrutinising my every move and I turn into a nervous wreck. My leg shakes, my voice gets all quivery and you can forget support, I left that at the door when I walked in the room (I was told by my sister, sorry, editor to explain myself here. If you are unsure about what I mean by support it is, basically, how we singers control and help the breath maintain an even flow, and consequently keep pitch and volume steady. I hope that makes sense). Add to all of that the idiotic, involuntary things I am prone to do in auditions:

1) Waving at the panel as I walk in or out of the room (I do that a lot).

2) Stopping mid song because my mind has blanked and I can think of nothing whatsoever to sing in it's place.

3) Giggling uncontrollably because everything is so ridiculous.

4) One time I did an entire audition with my skirt caught in my tights only realising when I was 5 minutes down the road after leaving the audition.

And then there was yesterday's debacle;

5) Having stopped mid song twice (yes that's right, twice) I proceeded to tell the panel that the stopping was due to the stress I had endured trying to pay for the parking for my car. I must have been about 30 seconds into telling them how the machine was broken and I had to phone up but my credit card had expired before the voice in my head screamed SHUT THE F**K UP!!! (3 exclamation marks are justified I think but sorry for the language.) 

I kid you not, all these things have happened to me.

Sometimes these odd little happenings work in my favour. I remember doing an audition in a ground floor room with a gargantuan window thrown wide open to the street. I was singing "Brimstone and Treacle" from "Mary Poppins" and had just got to the big finish. As I hit my high A (possibly A flat, I can't remember but will check before I sing it again) with full force a cyclist went past the window and promptly fell off. We laughed for days and I got that job.

However, I digress. Auditioning is a necessary evil but something that I have never been adept at and, if I am honest, as I get older, I am getting worse at. I have never been an arrogant performer and have little self belief (although I do believe wholeheartedly I am supposed to be a singer). I rarely believe I should be offered any job. I do know when I am right for something but, unfortunately, the panel hardly ever agrees with me. I can count on one hand the jobs I have got that I knew I was right for but it would take both hands, both feet plus someone else's hands to count the jobs I didn't get but knew I was right for. It often comes as a surprise to people when we start rehearsing that I am as good as I am (that isn't meant to sound arrogant btw, especially having just told you I am anything but). This is because I constantly apologise for my existence when in an audition. Not literally (although yesterday I think I did).

I know I am not alone in feeling this way which is why I am telling you all my thoroughly shameful audition stories. So many of you have probably been overlooked because an audition did not go to plan. For us performers stage-fright is tantamount to a disability (this is not meant to be flippant). Stage-fright renders me unable to get a job (sometimes) and that is a problem. Is it worth putting myself through it anymore? I don't know. I still have the will to go on trying and have not started making inane excuses not to go to auditions so, for the time being, I will fight the fright and hopefully, eventually, get another job (which will probably encourage the inevitable "Wow you are actually good. Who would have thought" type statement on the first day of rehearsals. As long as I get the job they can say what they like!).

P.S. If anyone out there feels like sharing any of their own embarrassing/funny/heartwarming/terrifying audition stories please, please, please comment below. I, for one, would love to hear them.