Ah... oh...

I want you to sing with sat­is­fac­tion in mind. Do it on “ah”.
I did what I had to do. My teacher played a lit­tle high­er on the piano. I did it again. “I can hear you, but I can’t see any­thing in your eyes. Where is your hap­pi­ness in singing?” Pit­ted in the spot­light, I let myself go by pre­tend­ing to be hap­py. It is so dif­fi­cult to exult. The sound com­ing out of my body seemed to sat­is­fy Vincent.

“Now think of the mys­tery, of what sub­ju­gates you, sur­pris­es you. Sing it on “oh”. Good Lord. I quick­ly saw where he want­ed to take me, like “if you want to sing, my man, you’re going to leave the realms of the intellect.”

I, who eas­i­ly drape myself in pas­sions, quick­ly real­ized that this was an epiphe­nom­e­non of what real­ly boils in me. More­over, by alter­nat­ing between the “ah”, the “oh”, singing them some­times in the low­er reg­is­ter, some­times in the high­er one, sud­den­ly clung to my throat immense­ly hot, dis­turb­ing, espe­cial­ly desta­bi­liz­ing feelings.

Like a patient Zen mas­ter, Vin­cent tried to bring out this tenor’s voice that he has iden­ti­fied in me. He thinks of no longer insist­ing on bass, espe­cial­ly since, indeed, when I have to sing an “A” bass or even and espe­cial­ly a low­er tone, a “G”, I have the clear feel­ing of being blind, of not know­ing its color.

How­ev­er, when I sing in the high notes, my voice gets thin­ner, fright­ened or tired. I am very com­fort­able, like many peo­ple, in the mid­dle areas. I am so unac­cus­tomed to this free­dom that is offered to me in the course, and I might add that there is a frus­tra­tion to be cas­trat­ed by all these hap­py years singing in a choir. I am no bet­ter than my class­mates, but I am more and more inter­est­ed in singing what I con­sid­er, with the help of Vin­cent, the true nature of indi­vid­ual singing. I have noth­ing to say against choral singing. It has its require­ments that I am will­ing to com­ply with. How­ev­er, I would like to take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be a soloist else­where when the time comes.

My tenor voice is cer­tain­ly still not very a good one. I become a child again, and I prob­a­bly won’t have time to become an adult. Nev­er­the­less, from now on, I will play the game of hap­pi­ness, I will pre­tend to love these melodies so beau­ti­ful but with words so for­eign to my life. When I have to sing God, I’ll sing ver­ti­go, for a change.

“Ahh­h­h­h­h­h­h­hh, ohh­h­h­h­h­h­hh…, then, shall the right­eous shine forth as the sun in their heav­en­ly Father’s realm.” If we could change the words, put Niet­zsche on… my eyes and my whole being might be more eas­i­ly integrated…