I will be back. No I am back…honest

‘For tone deaf singers, I suggest modern contemporary music. No one will notice except possibly the composer and he probably won’t either”

So after my illness and surgery I am finally back in London. I am not 100% but am largely better and need to get on with life.

This week I already seem overly busy including a singing rehearsal tomorrow night, I am not sure my vocal chords are ready for the extreme flexibility needed for this piece but I will go along and use my ears and see how my voice is working. Not singing or even speaking much for 10 days does not prep you for athletic, high scaling, bonkers chromatic vocal runs 😉 Sorry did I say bonkers? I like the music in parts, it has beautiful spirituals, a monster score, I love it’s breach, it’s extremity, it’s ambition, it’s heart, the sheer skill you need to sing it, the bipolar nature of singing it from lyrical and beautiful to short harsh grating, but the sometimes deliberately vocal line clashing so against the music and the difficulty thus in sight reading and learning 10 chromatic notes per time signature changing per bar reminds me in parts of the above joke 😉

If this piece of music was a sport it would be Iron Man.

It is Michael Tippett’s A Child Of Our Time, a war protest written at the beginning of WW2 where he was arrested as an anti-war protester. I am singing as part of a choir with the BBC Singers at the Royal Festival Hall in a couple weeks. I had to audition for it, because you do need mad skills and as always I love singing in groups of amazing singers pieces of work that really mean something.

However the last time I sang anything this strident was Wagner’s Pilgrim Progress in German at the Royal Festival Hall. The small female harmony group came in on the second half, my second note was a top A and I realised with 3000 people in front of me that I couldnt actually remember any German words apart from Heil, Heil. I just sang appropriate sounding German consonants with the correct tune for a bit til I remembered.

This reminiscing reminds me it is time to get out of my sick bed and slowly come back to life. 11 days of illness is a lot and my motivation is in hiding.

I have had bigger things than this to come back from, far worse illnesses, great tragedies, deaths of loved ones, life not working out as planned.. but this struggle, today’s struggle still seems hard. I can hear positive messages in podcasts and books but the inner flame is still a bit flickery, not quite ready to blaze into the life force that I have when I am well.

I have to restart my blog series, do my weekly Newsletter, edit a few interviews I did just before I fell ill, plus get back to the list of 25 things I wanted to get done 2 weeks ago before I languished of consumption a la Puccini.

However just having a rehearsal will get me started plus I am going to a Q&A with Dennis Kelley the writer tomorrow lunch.  I am going to bed as soon as I post this and then getting up early and go for a fast walk, then chant and a positive start to this week.

What tricks do you use to get yourself remotivated after a set back? I would love to hear some comments, whether it is on fitness (yep got to get going with that again although I do have a cunning plan), creativity, CVs out the door, marketing etc etc. When your TO DO list seems bigger than you, what do YOU do?

<p>Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / <a href=”http://www.freedigitalphotos.net” target=”_blank”>FreeDigitalPhotos.net</a></p>