At the start

So really, what's this blog for?

I've always written a diary. Ever since I was twelve. As a sort of expunging of daily feelings and thoughts. The need to write lessened as I grew older and developed different ways of thinking. Perhaps because of deeper relationships with friends talking replaced the need to write so regularly as we spent time in discussion instead. There is still a pull to record things. My own thoughts, with no input from others, no incessant traipsing backwards and forwards over an idea in discussion. Simply to write, let the feeling or idea go into the air, or onto the page and into the calm. Writing is one of the most releasing things I know to do. That and making music.

I was once traveling on a long journey from Bologna to Milan on a train from visiting a friend. Perhaps I was having a moment of romanticism but I started writing poetry into my beautiful moleskin diary which I have with me always. We had spent hours of the first day searching every inch of an old Bologna book market. There were the most fascinating old books, some of which were dusty and falling apart, old maps of Italy printed on thick paper now browned at the edges. I found a sweet edition of some of Shakespeare's sonnets with translations into Italian. I cherish it now as a reminder of the wonderful year I spent living and singing and studying there.

I think the decision to start a blog online is something of a random one. I intend it to focus on singing and the idea for it came out from my observations of various other blogs; very few actually deal with the technical issues we come across as young singers, how we approach them and how the emotional journey we travel as we grow in maturity helps our performance and musical interpretation. I intend to tell a story I suppose, and maybe, if I continue, document my development from the beginning to now and see what happens in the future. Who knows what could happen...