Shit day and Schumann for dessert.

So whoever had a shit day out there, I suggest they do what I have done today. It seemed the roof was falling on my head I had so many problems and they seemed to have no end. If fact I was so stressed out I slept half of the afternoon just to turn off my brain. Since my particular crisis didn't end today and maybe will end tomorrow I was expecting to be full of nervous nail biting and pacing the room back and forth. Instead I reached for the unusual cure - I called a friend of mine to come over and accompany me on the piano while I massacre Dichterliebe (Poet's Love) song cycle by Schumann. This was a new experience for me. I have sung before with recordings in the background and I thought I was pretty good, well at least better than the usual singing-in-the-bathroom. This time I was accompanied on a real piano to a tempo and volume which I chose and it was only me singing. I focused on three songs that seemed challenging but manageable and of course started with most excited one "Ich grolle nicht" only to loose my voice after 5 minutes of singing with full voice and no warm up. Still it was terrific fun and we laughed to no end looking at each other with every new bar we'd terribly trash. A porn-star in Venice singing Schumann to accompaniment of a contemporary opera composer who sees the score more as a guideline rather than anything to adhere to. I laughed when i was bad but I laughed double when I was good. The most difficult song of the cycle ("Ich hab'im Traum geweinet") happens to be the easiest looking on the page and fact has fewest notes to play but for the singer expressively it can Mount Everest and delivering it convincingly is as involving as sniffing poppers in the sling in the darkroom full of hard cocks. Well maybe its not the most eloquent parallel but intensity of the experience is definitely comparable. For most of the time voice is unaccompanied and you feel completely exposed. It opens with a long solo phrase that you need to intonate perfectly and bring to a crescendo and diminuendo within only two and a half bars. It takes a good ear and real balls to do it as that one phrase says everything about you as a singer and performer. We finished breaking our teeth on "Im Rhein in heiligen Strome" which is the most balanced of the three songs and has parts where you can open up and sing your lungs out, and parts that require whisper-like voice. All in all my earlier problem disappeared for two hours. Who would think? Better then smoking, drinking or taking hard drugs - I'm getting old, am I? Too bad most of these songs set 19th century poetry which in our day seems tacky in how it simplifies the love topics. My German sucks but with dome dictionary help I made a translation of the song I mentioned to be as challenging as climbing a mountain. But the text; touching in its own way, could it be any simpler? I have in wept in my dreams. I dreamed you lay in the grave. I woke up and the tears still flowed down from my cheeks. I have wept in my dreams. I dreamed you abandoned me. I woke up and I wept very long and bitterly. I have wept in my dreams, I dreamed you were still good to me. I woke up, and yet again my face floods in tears. Back to porno and sex in the next chapter.