Goodbye, John Prine 🎶

The great American songwriter John Prine passed away in Nashville today, from Covid-19.

I recorded his most well-known song tonight. To process my grief. Since I was sitting here stunned with sadness, singing it over and over, along with every version Sonos hosted. Why not record myself.

Two takes. It was late.

Then Mr. Pennington mixed and uploaded it. He’s very handy. He likes electronics. I have no idea what most of the stuff in our house is. The light fixture is a sculpture of a circuit. Whatever. Makes him happy.

I was worried when I heard John Prine was sick with coronavirus. I didn’t think he’d make it. I don’t think Boris Johnson will either. You don’t really believe he’s not on a ventilator, do you? What else would he be doing in the ICU. (Update: BJ is out of hospital and says he was not on ventilator so my bad.)

Angel From Montgomery is one of my favorite songs ever.

I have been singing that song to myself for at least 15 years.

Betty Buckley used to sing a very fast version in her cabaret act in New York. If it was recorded I couldn’t ever find it. Her take on it was great because everyone sings it slow. Slow Angel From Montgomery is melancholic. Fast it’s like a broken down dam, which serves the dramatic lyrics. I am an old woman! Betty would launch fast and hard onto the audience. Wish you could hear it.

Angel From Montgomery is a great American song. John Prine was a great American poet. So is Flo Rida. When I need a healing I look up to the ceiling. That’s a great line. And I do, too, Flo. And I get one.

I often sing, but just by myself at home. Mr. Pennington says I sing pretty. But I’m private about it. I do it more when he’s not around. Just me and sound in our old wooden house. That’s what I like.

The vibrations from singing are intensely soothing on my highly-sensitive, always overwrought Ehlers-Danlos body. I don’t listen to myself. I just savor how it feels, rattling my face, my nose, my chest. I see colors in tones in the air. It’s transcendent.

Singing became a completely differently experience when I began injecting ascorbic acid daily. I just had more strength. That was a very nice change. It happened early on in my recovery. I knew I was on the right track.

Learning to sing, which I spent a good amount of time and money doing, was my first real experience with spotting bullsh*t. That confusing experience of people having no idea what they are talking about, and everybody agreeing, yet it doesn’t yield results or make sense if you break it down.

“Sing from your diaphragm,” is an anatomically meaningless statement. You can’t breathe from your diaphragm either. Or from your belly because that’s where digestive and reproductive organs are. Your lungs are in your back. Best to take in the air there. To breathe into your back is a nice massage on the thoracic spine, too. Pumps the cerebrospinal fluid.

They’re not vocal cords either. They are folds.

Learning to sing was the beginning of my training for being a great patient. It was worth every penny and all the aggravation.

I’ll decide if it makes sense, and I don’t need anyone to agree with me, thanks. This is my time and money we’re burning through, here. That’s what I learned from voice lessons.

Back then, when I used to study singing, I had a lot of pitch problems I couldn’t correct. That means singing off-key. No one could tell me how, except the very last vocal teacher I had, who sadly has passed away herself.

I only had two lessons with her, but that was enough to sort it out. I still use her CDs of vocalizes. They are exercises like no one else ever gave me. They are complex and very very fast. I have to concentrate hard to execute them. What’s the point of singing dumb predicable major scales, slow even! One must have agility to be able to hit pitches with precise accuracy. Working speed also gets rid of throat tension. You have to give the tension up to move fast and stick the landing exactly on pointe.

You know who has great precision of pitch? Adam Levine from Maroon V. He is so deliciously exact. Listening to him is like being in the arms of a great lover. And I don’t even like tenors.

I did solve my pitch problems, thanks to that last teacher. It was not a hearing problem. It was typical EDS stuff. Came down to coordination and proprioception.

Singing is a very precise muscular activity.

It takes more relaxation than strength.

It takes less air than more. Overbreathing is one common way it all goes wrong..

It takes having the strength around your rib cage to hang onto your breath so the diaphragm and vocal folds can function automatically, which is all they can do.

You think of the pitch you want. Your body will make it. Like walking a tightrope. If you have the right strength, agility and balance, if you’ve done it enough times, you know you won’t fall off. You can trust yourself to sing.

Kind of like life, no?

Know what you are doing, try hard in the right places and let go.

Grief is making me wax philosophical.

Be safe and well during these difficult times.

I sure hope you ain’t done nothing since you woke up today. ❤️

Fly high, Mr. Prine. Thanks for explaining life to us so well.

Just give me one thing that I can hold onto. 🎶

To believe in this living is such a hard way to go. 🎶