Eighteen months!?
At some point in the middle of lesson 4, Patty mentioned that the process of learning to sing, for a rank beginner like me, takes about eighteen months. Which really throws a wrench into my thing-a-month vision of this year. An eighteen-month long wrench.
Actually, it throws a wrench into the whole idea of spending only a year at this “new me” project. I’m not even through one month of my forward-from-fifty year, still on the first step of my particular twelve-step program. How can I spend eighteen months stuck on step one?
The whole idea of learning to sing in a month was, of course, ludicrous. I’m not quite sure what I thought before I began the lessons. Most days I feared that Patty would take one listen and pronounce me hopeless. Other, more optimistic days I imagined there was a secret key to singing, the musical equivalent of the quadratic equation. Once I knew the formula, I fantasized, I’d be trilling away, lah-de-dahing my heart out.
Somewhere in the middle of lesson one, when I had neither been delivered very bad news nor clued in to the secret code, I knew I’d need more than a month to accomplish much of anything singing-related because singing, like so much else in life, requires a long slog of practice, practice and more practice. Sigh.
But exactly how much more than a month I’d need I wasn’t clear on. Two months? Six? Now I know: eighteen. Oy.
So here, on the cusp of month two, I am modifying (slightly) my forward-from-fifty plan – both for singing and for the year. I am honing my singing goal to this: I want to be able to sing three songs. The three I’ve selected, and which I am already working on, are: “Simple Gifts”; “Halleluyah,” by Leonard Cohen, and Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game.” I’ll continue my singing lessons (and keep you posted on my progress) until I feel that I can confidently and comfortably sing those three songs.
At the same time, I want to move on to another goal, so, even though I’m continuing my singing lessons, September will bring a new project as well. More about that in the next post.
Forward From Fifty 