Friday, November 30, 2007

i'm alive

or at least I think I am. This has been a nutty nutty week, but I shall spare you the details.

The big picture is that I have moved into a gorgeous (4th floor) apartment with a good friend of mine from school. It's beautiful. Ok, and gorgeous, but you knew that. It looks transfigured after the clean-up job the management company did after we took our first look.

It seems like it's a smaller management company, so you get some of the personality of individuals, but with a more business-appropriate standardization (none of the, say, crazy landlords that try to steal your security deposit). In the case of our apartment, the choices came down to the floor tile used in the bathroom, the carpet throughout the apartment, and the wall/ceiling colors.

They're all very neutral and picked to be appealing to most everyone, but they are not drab. The carpet is a muted caramel color and is padded exceedingly well so it's very soft. The walls are painted a diffuse off-white color that picks up the color of the carpet, really unifying the space. The kitchen/bathroom tiles are similarly well-chosen.

In any event, it's also been a trying time because it is end of term in addition to the financial squeeze and time crunch of moving. But, that is over. It was definitely an exercise in trying to put aside the frustrations of things not working and instead focusing on a) what is working and maintaining it and b) what is the first source of what isn't working (rather than just symptoms).

I just put my finger on the source of vocal trouble, at least -- the time crunch has eaten into the time that I've been putting into really developing vocally and keeping the gears all oiled and lined up (such as they can be in this technique-building stage). The fact that I haven't been able to do that (or rather, chose not to with the limited time that I had) meant that I, instead, had to focus on how to make specific performances work.

Note to self: always make time for the basics!

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