Day Two

(June 26, 2012)

Day Two at Westminster

In ten:

1. Sing with Sabine. Lift your leg to find those high easy overtones.

2. Breath with Nova Thomas. Opera lady--narrow black capris, wedgies, floaty purple top over an ample bosom. Dark eyes, expressive face. Jokes. Breath exercises. Breathing is so much easier than I thought.

3. Connections. In a circle breathing. In a circle conducting. I have the face that says hi, yes, I’ll talk to you, let’s do it together. (And then I have to stay friendly!)

4. Movement in three planes--really on three axes--table plane, door plane (verticals), and somersault plane (not its real name? but forward, backward, the third dimension)

5. Then freely moving. Like putting on my Sunday slip and dancing around the living room as a five-year-old.

6. Conducting--sucky me. Tired, concentration gone. Two-beat screwed up, and what about this shoulder tension? The ache? The tightness.

7. Lecture tonight on “body architecture” and I get my shoulder joint remapped. The ball and socket joint is in my armpit! Think the movement there, the pivot there, and the tight muscles I’m envisioning in the top of my shoulder go away. Throw in some wrist issues that I’m going to apply to computer ergonomics as well as conducting and I’d say that was a very good hour.

8. A “big walk” with my roommate from Beijing. Her arms swinging big, mine just comfortably, we wheel through downtown Princeton, free and talking and we didn’t get lost. Way more energy when I got back.

9. Which is a good thing because my watch is running out of energy and running slow and this is why I was late to Master Class today because the watch ran down. But by the time I figured out the watch was slow it was late afternoon and somehow I lost a half hour from my dinner break--at least in my head. Which may explain the late bedtime.

10. But before bed, and the final studying, I talked kids and music and opera and traded iTunes files with my new friend from China.

It’ll do, pig.