Patience from all sides

Some Saturday evening musings...

My days are sort of blurred together punctuated by doctors' appointments and PT and a little more surgery...

This summer and perhaps for the rest of my life patience is something I will learn and relearn and mediate to learn and allow some more.

The doctors say I am healing well. I want to wake up ready to go and get back into the studio!

I think my students are wishing the same thing!! I have NOT abandoned you honestly I haven't!

So as I am learning to regain my body and my healing, what can I suggest to you the singer when your teacher is not there for awhile? For any reason?

Summertime often takes teachers to programs away from their regular studio, or they take the summer off, or any other possible thing.

What do you do?

This is when you truly begin to discover the team around you and it starts with you. You are your teacher. What have you learned? What are you learning? Are you recording your sessions regularly enough to know what you are aiming for?

Where are your coaches? Singers you need these! You need your musical coaches, your stylistic coaches, your language coaches, your character coaches, your performance coaches, your audition coaches! Some coaches combine some of these facets but even still a summer of coaching to see how your instrument is able to be a true foundation for all of the artistry and truth to be embodied can be a liberating and also a humbling experience.

Are you taking classes? Are you honing skills in different disciples? Are you studying acting? Dance? Movement? If you have been told you are awkward on stage are you seeking out classes and coaches to work with you to overcome that? Are you taking performance classes and audition workshops and building character for a song or for a role?

You see, you don't need to wait for your teacher and get impatient! There is so much to do! By the time the teacher returns, you will be in another place artistically and have built more maturity in your craft that the work you do on your instrument will have another level of authenticity and sense of coming home.

Begin to get honest about what your instrument can do and seek out the coaching and classes that will allow it to show positively right now. Do not try to do what you cannot yet. Be real with what is real. The next stage will happen when you are patient, willing and open to receive it.

That last sentence is my mantra tonight and for the next few weeks.

Patience. The next frontier.