I was not planning on having this feeling – did not plan to be haunted by the young Britney Spears. I did not like her voice coming through the car radio when my two girls were four and seven and Britney fresh out of the Disney TV machine and being turned out as a pop singer. I did not like the tiny graspy grunt that she began each exhale with; the whiney sound that dominated the flow of that air. Her voice was artificial and pleading, and though she was in her late teens she dressed like a private school girl and aped the small dependent voice of a brain dead adult woman who seemed in need of another orgasm and not much else.

or

That ‘grrr’ of her grunt sounds to me like the remainders of a woman’s orgasm…a vocal relic[1]. Orgasm is a coming together of fight and flight with rest and digest. Accessing this collaborative relationship between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic functions of the Autonomic Nervous System is essential for a singer’s craft and it is healthy and natural. Curiosity around and practice of orgasm is the fifth piece of homework I give out – after yawn, sigh, belly-laugh and sob. It is a gift from deep within us. A route to learning how to consciously engage both work and release in a way that leads to renewable creativity.

In a variety of classes the week after my Britney epiphany I note the students who seem to be having a challenging time with bringing ‘work’ into ‘release’. I think concretely of the words grrrunt and grrroan. How they seem to conjure sounds located low in the body – how they have a little violence in their grrrip – the growling part of the sound. I know how good it feels to grrrowl. I recall how effective a dog is at keeping a threat at bay, without having to go all out, when he growls. It is such economical productivity. It has a hint of angrrr.

I surprise myself in early December 2012, by asking a group class what they remember of Britney Spears.  She seems incredibly distant to us all despite a whole decade of personal scandal so publicly displayed on supermarket magazine racks as well as her recent comeback. She was stunningly famous – selling more than 100 million albums worldwide – more than ten chart topping hits. When I demonstrate a version of the ‘grrr’ she used in her voice – albeit from behind my chest (avoiding my throat and her whine) – my students can recall this signature vocal relic of hers.

I ask them to try it out; it does not go very well. The five of them are trying to imitate my arms-length version of a star they can’t really remember. So I ask them to look for the sound within a sighing orgasmic phrase, re-membering it through body and breath, looking for some purchase behind the chest, and they all do much better! We analyze the sound; it has both desire and satisfaction. It is relaxed and forward moving and the longing is absolutely transparent…almost embarrassingly so. It is not yearning or nostalgic, it gives way to the sound of present moment’s unbridled pleasure. We go around the circle – each person bringing Britney’s tic to life, leaving behind the world of Disney, engaging in full-bodied sound. Maybe this is the sound that the record producers encouraged the young Britney Spears to pimp out, tone down and just ‘suggest’. Maybe they were trying to preserve the deep physical embodiment I experience hearing young Britney at 1:29 on Star Search – make it oddly age appropriate? Maybe they were caught between selling and feeling.

With enough encouragement the four women in the group get it. But our lone man has a harder time. I tease him that it must be easier for us women to show satisfaction, as well as continuing need or desire, given that we are capable of multiple orgasms. He laughs and tries harder to want more while retaining a feeling of deep satisfaction and he does find something akin to what the female voice seems to do just by nature. I witness this same thing in several classes that week – it is much easier for the women once they have jumped the hurdle of propriety – but for the men it is either the release of satisfaction or a galvanized and urgent need that seems more natural to them and not this complex neither/nor, all-of-it-at-once sound. But they do find it for the most part and I do get to think of early, and late, Tom Jones!

I miss the Britney who did not happen – the voice that did not develop or grow into maturity. I would have loved to hear that little one, now grrrown up, sing with Tom Jones. Watch him offer the same generosity I see him extend to Robbie Williams, or delight he beams at Janis Joplin, shared with the Britney who has been haunting me for the last three months.

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January 2009 – learning to love foundation

The man I am falling in love with is a slow moving creature. It is three a.m. and we are in my kitchen dancing to some music, a little drunk and definitely wanting to fuck. Or at least I am. He is hard…and despite this obvious indication that we should be having sex, he says he is not ready. In my muddled state I feel my heart drop gently into my belly. Disappointment. But somehow he manages to tell me this without hurting my feelings or making me question his desire for me…or his virility.

I wake up the next morning and marvel at all of this. I am almost fifty and for the first time in my life I believe I am moving at a pace that is giving me much-needed time to think — and feel — my way towards making a choice about sexual engagement. This man is becoming dear to me in mysterious ways that are related to the word “no.” And he is teaching me – through his slowness – about the time it takes to build foundation.

I have always valued my ability to be fully present in the moment of lust, and to let that lead me to decision. In the immediacy of the experience I recognize and reclaim myself. Sexual impulse brings me to life. I can organize a military campaign of activity around shared passion. And I can create all the fiction necessary to pitch ‘the idea of love’ to my inner editor. But in the end neither body nor head feels intact and the drama is exhausting. How nice it is to have the option to back out before chemicals and morality do their wicked dance of entrapment.

1

I am a singer and what I do with the inside of my body – in order to make sound – is invisible and is not fully processed by my motor-sensory cortex. This makes it hard to feel and difficult to boss around. It is under the purview of my autonomic nervous system and unless something is wrong, this branch of the nervous system does its work without letting me in on it. So within this body I need image and emotion to get to the heart of expressing and communicating my humanity.
I teach voice, too, and do so in my home. The boundaries between the personal and professional blur as I draw on my life experience as a mother, and use the art on the walls of my living-room studio to illustrate ideas and feelings. I love passing on the cathartic and technical expertise that I have accumulated over thirty years of singing in public and while teaching at my piano. My students dream about houses as they strip themselves bare, rewiring and re-plumbing their insides in order to free their voices and build technique.
To sing from the heart, foundation is necessary. The diaphragm needs to give way into the body so that air can come in by itself. This trust within the breath allows for courage. When our base – our pelvic basin – is rigid we armour through the chest. This is a superficial stab at strength and it causes us to force in order to be heard – I call this sound brave. Courage is different. It is open and heart felt. It gives and receives. The chest softens into a sigh and the ribs counter, expanding and protecting through flexible strength.

Ruthlessness and compassion discover how to collaborate as we risk speaking the truth. Within the singing voice this ebb and flow of air, this pulsing of flesh, leads to extraordinary sound that seems to surround the singer rather than being dependent on the striving of an individual set of vocal cords. Vital, vibrant, vigorous. The body fully alive in vibration…”

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“Like many people, Kazumi was daunted by the idea of singing in public. But at 58, he has decided to use his awe-inspiring singing voice to channel his cerebral palsy (CP). As Kazumi draws from his exuberant, poignant and painful experiences, performer and teacher Fides Krucker guides him to embrace his inner artist. Kazumi’s one-man show features songs like Smokey Robinson’s “Tracks of my Tears,” which take on new and unexpected meaning in this moving account of self-discovery and transformation through the power of song.”

2011, 34 min 35 s

• Directed by
  Lawrence Jackman
• Produced by
  Annette Clarke

The post ‘How Does It Feel’ appeared first on Fides Krucker.

By Juliet Trimingham

The post Opening Night appeared first on Fides Krucker.

'Bodhisattva' by Richard Herman

My eyes move past the five women and focus on a painting hanging on the wall behind them. It is of the bodhisattva1 and I have had it since 1991. The painting is large – about 4 feet by 5 – and the colours are vibrant: vertical emerald green banners on either side and the bodhi sitting in the middle, many hues of red, fuchsia, maroon, rose, orange and teal. She is blurred slightly as if trying to come into focus on a TV screen from another galaxy. Her face shines a bleached-out pink and behind her neck there is a golden yellow disk – unifying head and body. Today, that disk makes more sense than ever as it illustrates the glow of sound surrounding these women.

It dawns on me that I have been calling in the bodhisattva for 20 years. That I knew nothing about her when I bought the painting from Richard Herman, that I had no understanding of the energy she was balancing on that canvas surface.
But today I am having a delightful “aha” as I feel the meaning of sattvic while hearing sattvic sound. Sattva is a Sanskrit word and its definition includes harmony, balance, joy, peace, serenity and intelligence…”

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