Man With Sign, September 4, 02024

It's cool this morning, in the upper fifties F, and I've got on a thin sweater, so at least my Northern hemisphere is pretty warm. I'm wearing sandals, but my feet feel comfortable enough. I greet Craige and catch up for a few minutes on the last ten days. Then I set up my big sign and hold up LET'S BUILD A BETTER FUTURE TOGETHER.

Traffic is heavy, and the responses are almost entirely positive. A tiling contractor gives me a thumbs-down; I've seen this guy before and I sure as shootin' ain't gonna hire him. The get-a-job guy goes by at 8:08, a little earlier than his usual. But aside from these two contrarian voices, everyone else is friendly.

My voice is mercifully clearer and less ragged than yesterday. There is a little bit of scratchiness around the A-Bb register break, and I spend a lot of time singing in light head voice, moving through this area and gradually strengthening the mind/muscle connection and smoothing off the rough edges.

Tonight I'll be doing a short rendition of the Jaijaivanti tarana in an NEC Faculty Showcase (if you're near Jordan Hall in Boston at 7 pm, drop in!). So I move back and forth between doing 6-minute quasi-renditions and free improvisation: sing a version of the piece, then shift to long tones and exercises for about ten or twelve minutes, then repeat.

This allows me to internalize the overall performance shape without exhausting my store of ideas; I want to sing fresh music tonight, music that has some spontaneity and edge...But (as any improvisor knows) that spontaneity and edge is the result of a lot of careful preparation and thought.

At 8:21 I make a video, then sing for another few minutes before retuning the drone and moving to stand with Craige. Our duet on "How Can I Keep From Singing?" is well-tuned, resonant, and clearly phrased; we're moving to a more flowing and less metronomic rhythm that's more in keeping with the song's personality. When we finish it's just turning 8:30; time to go home.

Today's the first day of classes at New England Conservatory. I'm looking forward to working with students again; it is rightly said that teaching is "the discipline of hope," for surely it is an expression of a molecular-level optimism to pass knowledge and insight along to others. I hope this fall is a similarly optimistic experience for this country, and will continue to work ceaselessly to make it so.

See you tomorrow.

Man With Sign