Opera Organically Video of the Day: Alan Watts, "Vibrate"

No. 145: On Dogs and Sopranos

When the singer looks at the chance to sing

like a retriever looks at a tennis ball,

(with or without the drooling)

she knows she's found 

her Voice.

No. 144: The Heart is a prism

The Heart is a prism

Gazing through her

I bow at the altar

of Life:

infinite shiny pieces of Me

fused by Light.

And, just beyond 

this infinite strength,

this core of We,

are You: mirror image

and clearest Sight.

No. 143

From the perspective of the Heart there is nothing to say.  The Heart wants only to be in Love. How do we achieve this awareness?  How can we learn from a way of being that has no words? Our teachers can build a bridge to this place, and hope that we cross it...but how do we take the first steps along the path?  We begin by realizing that our very bodily existence is the beginning of our path to Love.  We are here, on Earth, even scattered or sad, unclear and insecure, we are here. This is incredible news!  For when we know we are alive, that we live and breathe if only in pieces, it slowly becomes evident that the glue to hold all our parts together is one and the same with what we have been seeking.  Over time, the peace and joy which we have sensed embodied in the people and creatures we admire become more than just signposts or beacons in the night.  They become one with who we are.  We become One, and suddenly there has never been a separation between us and the teacher.  There has never been a bridge.  There has only, ever, been Love.

No. 142: "Musicophilia"

In his book Musicophilia, the physician Oliver Sacks writes of a very curious phenomenon called musical hallucination.  Musical hallucinations occur mainly, it seems, in the minds of people who have suffered prolonged hearing loss.  One of Dr. Sacks' stories is of a psycholanalyst who, after bypass surgery and genetic hearing loss, began to experience musical hallucinations.  This man, named Dr. Rangell, says this of his condition:

The musical hallucinosis is related, I feel, to the hyperacusis that goes with the hypo-hearing.  The internal, central auditory pathways must overwork and enhance sounds...Passivity is overcome by activity.

How can this intriguing knowledge of how the brain compensates for loss or lack be applied to Opera Organically?

I believe that, for a true singer, if the expression of love that s/he must allow to flow as her voice is somehow blocked or stunted by life experience, the brain will compensate and allow for this expression in a different expression of love.  His world will expand in a spiritual way or through another artistic pursuit.  She will experience love in new ways and through new sensations.  S/he will travel new places and log new impressions.

Until one day, when s/he looks back on it all and realizes, s/he was singing all along in some way or another, and it all lead to the truth of love and life NOW.  NOW s/he can sing, not through hallucination or compensation, but as whom s/he truly IS. 

No. 141

Have we, in the interest of creating a necessary, clear scientific model of the operatic voice and its development, divorced the process of learning to sing so emphatically from the process of becoming a person, that those who are looking for themselves while they are looking for their voices rarely succeed in finding either?

Quote of the Day: The Purpose of Mystical Experience

As I see it, the purpose of mystical experience is to convince us, at a soul level, that our true nature is Spirit—to convince us so deeply that we are liberated from existential doubt. Why? So we will finally be available to participate, consciously and wholeheartedly, in the greatest gift we've been given … which is the life we are already living right now.

~ Andrew Cohen