Deep Throat #7: On Being and Unbeing a Singer
He knew what he was doing when he looked at me and said, “Sing for me.” Had I been nude in his bed I would not have been as naked as I was then, stripped down to my brand new skin.
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Hanne Blank
7 posts
Hanne Blank (www.hanneblank.com) is a writer, historian, and educator whose work lies at the intersection of body, self, and culture. Trained as a classical mezzo-soprano at New England Conservatory, Indiana University School of Music, and Tanglewood, she feels that those who cannot figure out what the connections are between her musical career and her literary one probably just need to go to the opera more often. She currently splits her time between north-central Massachusetts and Atlanta, Georgia.
Deep Throat #6: On Being and Unbeing a Singer
The gulf between the place where I sang Mozart and Debussy with people my parents’ age and the place where I went to public school and tried to make friends with kids my own was vast.
Deep Throat #5: On Being and Unbeing a Singer
There is nothing I have experienced that is so physical, nothing that resonates in the bones and meat of a person like it does to make music with other people at that sort of level.
Deep Throat #4: On Being and Unbeing a Singer
It is not a coincidence that among the synonyms for “practice” is “ritual,” and for “ritual,” “practice.” When you do a thing over and over—even if it is only so…
Deep Throat #3: On Being and Unbeing A Singer
It would be easy and satisfying to say that I stopped singing because of the crack in my throat. It would be false. It’s true enough that there was one.…
Deep Throat #2: On Being and Unbeing A Singer
My face burned with rage, with shame, with humiliation. I was failing openly, blatantly, at the one thing I still somehow, in the back of my mind, expected to be perfectly capable of doing after more than a decade’s silence.
Deep Throat #1: On Being and Unbeing a Singer
When I shut my mouth I lost a part of myself so ingrained, so accustomed, so integral I had not even known it was possible to lose it.