12.12.24 at ye ole east coast grammar school….

FUN FACT: I’ll bet you didn’t know this fun fact! I’m your favorite student! Amanda Davis Chris Davis #slay

KID CANDOR: A single digit Gen alpha representative takes a long look at my diy distressed 80s shirt and says “you look like a hobo”. Huh. 🤣

KEEPING IT REAL: Student whispers to me and says on the DL “sometimes Lucy calls Charlie Brown stupid which isnt nice to say. But I like her because I say that word sometimes.” Terri Groves Marrone Nicola Rose

BRUH BANTOR:
Student 1: Can I still be in the play? I didn’t know about the September auditions.
Student 2: Bruh. I told you a few times.
Stacie Zaneto Oliveri Kevin Campana

UGLY SWEATER MIXED MEDIA CREATION:
I enjoyed making my ugly holiday sweater picture based on my favorite Robert Fulghum book. My pic is never fully dressed without bedazzling and beading. 😉 Grateful for these open ended creative prompts from Meghan Major and committee ❤️.

#elementarymusicteacher #juddschool #December2024

11.27.2024
By Elizabeth Perryman
Another 12 month cosmic jaunt….

1. Food texture matters.
2. Low maintenance shoewear is fleeting.
3. Friend shifting is heartbreaking and often an inevitable price to pay.
4. Water gets far too little credit for life sustenance.
5. Habits are dear and destructive.
6. Processing often sucks.
7. Energy exchange can be vexing.
8. Mornings often bring do overs.
9. Mornings can bring existential dread.
10. Reacting is a precarious sport.
11. Life simultaneously makes sense and no sense.
12. First impressions are fickle.
13. Bed firmness is important.
14. Good pens and pencils are a joy.
15. Aches influence gratitude.
16. Humor is unpredictable.
17. A brisk life pace is underutilized.
18. Belief is life affirming.
19. Purpose nutrifies the soul.
20. Worries should be based on a senior citizen’s worldview.
21. Niceness is an essential slippery slope.
22. Peace comes from accepting and coexisting with the lack of peace.
23. Continually reading the room can be bedfellows with anxiety and low esteem.
24. Advice by telling rarely yields preferred results.
25. Mind changing is a blessing.
26. Thoughtful electronic bedside manner reduces miscommunication.
27. Hair changing through the years is stressful.
28. Sleep solves many woes.
29. Age brings more humanity.
30. Tears are unequal.
31. Being noble can lead to misery.
32. Politics are a substandard human governing tool.
33. Boundaries are expensive.
34. Language continues to be a weak form of communication.
35. Kitchen tables are a delightful necessity.
36. Desperation is revealing.
37. We all have a Linus blanket in some form.
38. Poor eyesight would be a hardship when living through an apocalypse.
39. Maybe it’s better to know why we need to know an answer rather than the actual answer.
40. The 21st century canceling of others is the modern day scarlet letter.
41. Death is an incomprehensible fact of human life.
42. It bums me out when I see my generation turn into the judgemental naysayers that we railed against as youth.
43. Humans have a superhuman ability to persevere if they set their mind to it.
44. Surprise disappointment is a major downer.
45. Planned disappointment is tolerable.
46. RuPaul is right. We are all in drag.
47. Caring less is sometimes a necessary evil.
48. This century should be judged for the obscene salaries some folks make over the rest of us who often live check to check.
49. “Mind your business” would be a commandment I would like to add to the big 10; however blasphemous that may be.
50. I continue to assert that scary dolls are far less scary than investigation discovery documentaries.
51. Gender doesn’t seem to matter as much once we hit the senior discounts.
52. Is it really that sad that older people don’t always talk so much to each other? Maybe companionship at that stage of life is equally essential.
53. Progress can be a nauseating teeter totter.
54. Straw-gate needs to end. I refuse to eat paper anymore when using a straw and now just use my own plastic one.
55. I look forward to the day when spirituals are equally enforced in literature selection as is Italian art song in college music programs.
56. Colored drinking glasses bring me joy.

Oh what a week, late November back in 24….

It’s been a wacky teaching matrix week.
I was very touched by a note from a student.
It was talking turkey week with the littles.
Clouds and sunsets have been epic.
The Fran crew keeps my recorders stocked.
Kids thought Schroeder’s piano was a toilet.

Somehow a colleague must have intuited my grappling with a full plate and unavoidable left brain challenges recently because they randomly said to me in the hallway “you were born to do this job”. 😭 🙏🏻❤️

Health Progress Update 11.22.2024
It always goes quicker in the beginning so this is by no means declaring freedom from having an addiction to emotional eating. I’m focusing on habits this time around, personal grace, and how my senses affect my triggers. More to come on that soon.

1. Bringing my lunch to school has been very helpful. It’s thought out and controlled with food that I enjoy. And, it saves me a good deal of money not eating out.
2. Oatmeal with almonds, blueberries, and raisins has been very satiating for breakfast.
3. Fresher and earlier dinners has reduced snoring and apnea.
4. Soups with dinner are filling and tasty.
5. I am starting to feel actual hunger. It doesn’t make me run for food as fast as my emotional hunger does. I don’t always need to eat at the same time and I don’t always need the same amount of food every day.
6. I’m down 12lbs but most importantly my pulse is 77 from the 93 bpm of 2 weeks ago.
7. Stairs are easier. I’m less winded. I’m moving easier.

Yeppers, that’s Kiwi behind me on the pet wall at school. ❤️ Elizabeth Honer

JE DIS= JE “DISASTER”
https://kintsucrooner.wordpress.com/
It is the fall of 1997. I am in my 2nd year of graduate school as a vocal performance major. I am surviving the music school vocal grind with everyday singing expectations from teaching, performance classes, and rehearsals. I have just sung my first young artist program, Dorian Opera Theater, albeit a tuition one, and had a wonderful experience. I am very young dramatic soprano at the time, singing a lot of Mozart. My middle voice is attractively filling in at 27 but my top hasn’t completely caught up; almost making me sound like a soubrette according to the high level coaches. I don’t have much in the area of dynamic contrast. At the time, I looked down on myself due to this fact but now I know that easily available dynamics weren’t to be for years to come due to sheer throat physicality.

Somehow, I have made it to the 1997 Metropolitan Opera Regional Finals for the Western Division. My dance card that got me through two rounds was the ever available “Rusalka” which was the vocal girdle of my technique flaws and Dove Sono which I do believe to this day could be well executed by a mezzo-soprano.

The regional finals are at USC in California. I have called my Dad to tell him that I advanced. He didn’t believe me at first. Yeah, he was there all along through my vocal struggles so I can’t really blame him. The finals are being radio broadcast. I am a part of the top ten singers who have made it this far. It is the round before the finals in NYC. I am completely spooked but somehow muster the courage to go up and sing my Dvorak. Of course, following the tall blonde tenor and his clarion high Cs wasn’t too fair. The lights were up so I could see the audience. I did ok on my first piece. Respectable, I guess. They actually like my Czech. I just liked that it got my sound out and focused my voice.

I gingerly walk to get a glass of water while the judges choose my next piece. All I can think is, please don’t pick “je dis,” for the love of God, please don’t pick “je dis.” They won’t, right? They always want Mozart.

The announcer with his most austere and intimidating voice (it is imprinted in my brain since I still have the cassette that they gave us,) “And now, Elizabeth Perryman will sing….Je dis que rien ne me’pouvante.”

I am hoping you read that in the most snooty voice you can imagine cuz that is EXACTLY what echoed in my mind that was simulateously and silently repeating many a f***ks.

Somehow I found the confidence to just sing it and keep going. I wanted to run away but I somehow I stayed. I broke phrases. My voice was shaking throughout. Good lord, if Micaela wasn’t truly in that theater that day, however vocally kaput…. Protégé Moi indeed.

The audience gave me the aw, poor girl, pity clap after I finished and I quickly exited.

All this to say, despite the humiliation of singing this piece 18 years ago, my French being characterized as pedestrian by the adjudicators, I am still doing my best, making progress, and contributing to the singing arena many years later.

I had much more success singing the whole role of Micaela in 2001 and now, in 2015, I have really started wearing my big girl singing britches.

I am singing “Je Dis” this Sunday at my recital. It feels like an entirely new piece and one that is completely in my wheelhouse.

I guess all this to say to fellow singers, keep at it. Don’t take critiques or criticism as gospel. Steer away from folks who want to forever corner your voice and make hard and fast judgments. Opinions are as ever changing as the waves of an ocean. Popular opera singers can be as fleeting as pop stars. Vocal pedagogy is real. I am living proof. I have cassettes and CDs to prove it. Now when I sing, people say, you are so fortunate. You have such a gift, it just comes out of you. It has taken 30 plus years to “just come out.” I know that these comments come from a kind place but it wasn’t the feedback I received as I cracked my entire junior year of college. Feedback in 1989 was more like, nice dress, good high A. You just can’t take it too seriously, good or bad.

A great opera director once told me, the key to having a life in singing is tenacity. That’s all. It isn’t the hall or venue. It is about using your voice to help heal and possibly be a force in the positive transformation of the many difficulties we all face in this mortal world. This profession is a gravely challenging one but one that I count as a great blessing. #kintsucrooner
(headshot circa 1997)
https://kintsucrooner.wordpress.com/

I would like to hereby proclaim that today, 11.17.2024, is my nephew Nick Ann Neal F. Perryman’s birthday! He made me an aunt in 1996 and now he has 2 Aunt Lizzes! Have a fantastic year, dear NFP!

N eighborly
I ndustrious
C aring
H umorous
O riginal
L oving
A ffable
S ensitive

I am feeling lifted up after teaching voice to @thetacetmode and @lindagarciamezzo. Brian has seamlessly boarded the Alexander Technique train; something that positively rerouted my singing life when I began working with Patricia O’Neill at LSU. Linda is doing great work with her formidable mezzo soprano finding ease and balance. She aptly described the inner voice struggle to release in “Inside Out” terms. She said disgust and rage were fighting joy in her head. Oh can I relate (with an extra shake of shame.) #voiceteacher #alexandertechnique #insideout #asopranoonherhead

I had a very vivid dream about my Dad recently. I must have been inspired by Cooper Ford’s PD and the exploration of mapping when actively listening to music. In my dream, I was watching my dad map out the piece he wrote that is on his gravestone “go forth into the world in peace”. This was a favorite prose of his from his Anglican faith. I started to sing his tune and do the same thing my dad was doing. He had an index card of his plans for the day. It was the beginning of the month of October when he would ultimately pass away. My Dad looks up at me in the dream and chuckles at my mapping. He says he will finish editing his piece by the spring. I sadly explain that he will pass away. He gasps and says he had no idea. He immediately asks about Janet Perryman and Neal F. Perryman Ann Held Perryman/the boys. Elizabeth Honer’s dad Frank appears in the dream and I introduce them. I tell my dad who knew me before I came out about how I have met and married my soul mate Elizabeth. I share that he’d love Eliz’s Mom, Dad, and family. End of dream. #grateful #dream #visit #brucefperryman

(The text is the one of the last emails I got from my Dad in June of 2001. The pic wit my grandma is the recital he referenced in the email)

Election Day 2024. My wife Elizabeth Honer summed it up well imo; we go forth voting today with a grief of naïveté since the first time we casted a ballot. Regardless of outcome, the impact of this election will either be felt directly or by the sobering awareness of many who voted contrary to the best interest of all and our freedoms professed in the United States Bill of Rights. #election #2024 #unitedstatesofamerica