(no subject)
A boy asked me recently what to expect as a singer considering Village Harmony. He ended up not being able to sign up for it, but it got me thinking.
(for those of you who don't know, Village Harmony is my summer camp, a three-week hippie-tastic singing extravaganza involving a two-week concert tour)
Expect...
-to sing for more hours every day than you ever thought you could
-to learn more languages than you've ever known before
-to learn twenty songs in eight days
-to find the cultural context of the music you're singing
-to learn without sheet music
-to make your voice do things you've never heard it do before
-to drink more tea than you ever thought you could
-to make puzzling, unbelievable in-jokes in a matter of days (gomordzgua!, FEEEEEET...)
-to help make healthy food and help clean up and live truly communally
-to skinny-dip and frolic in fields
-to finally hear Carl tell a joke, and it's so funny you have to leave the room
-to meet fun, lively, exciting, strange people
-to have Patty yell at you...a lot
-to finally, just once, have Patty say, "That was perfect".
-to spend hours upon hours in a hippie-painted tour bus
-to run wild around Greensboro and Northampton and wherever else you might end up
-to sing in four-part harmony to the man in the general store
-to eat fourteen potluck dinners in fourteen days
-to sleep on fourteen different beds in fourteen different houses
-to experience how fourteen different families live their lives
-to share your newfound music with fourteen different groups of people who've never heard it before
-to be offered a great deal of hospitality
-to have your music stuck in your head all the time
-to inspire children and be looked up to
-to be treated as an adult and equal by respected leaders and teachers
-to have the bus break down at least once, probably twice, and be stranded somewhere
-to have freakishly warm or freakishly cool weather
-to change clothes in front of twenty other kids and a state highway and not care
-to meet many cows and many sheep
-to share and borrow clothing from everyone
-to hug and cry on your last night
-to feel that life is suddenly dull without harmony
(for those of you who don't know, Village Harmony is my summer camp, a three-week hippie-tastic singing extravaganza involving a two-week concert tour)
Expect...
-to sing for more hours every day than you ever thought you could
-to learn more languages than you've ever known before
-to learn twenty songs in eight days
-to find the cultural context of the music you're singing
-to learn without sheet music
-to make your voice do things you've never heard it do before
-to drink more tea than you ever thought you could
-to make puzzling, unbelievable in-jokes in a matter of days (gomordzgua!, FEEEEEET...)
-to help make healthy food and help clean up and live truly communally
-to skinny-dip and frolic in fields
-to finally hear Carl tell a joke, and it's so funny you have to leave the room
-to meet fun, lively, exciting, strange people
-to have Patty yell at you...a lot
-to finally, just once, have Patty say, "That was perfect".
-to spend hours upon hours in a hippie-painted tour bus
-to run wild around Greensboro and Northampton and wherever else you might end up
-to sing in four-part harmony to the man in the general store
-to eat fourteen potluck dinners in fourteen days
-to sleep on fourteen different beds in fourteen different houses
-to experience how fourteen different families live their lives
-to share your newfound music with fourteen different groups of people who've never heard it before
-to be offered a great deal of hospitality
-to have your music stuck in your head all the time
-to inspire children and be looked up to
-to be treated as an adult and equal by respected leaders and teachers
-to have the bus break down at least once, probably twice, and be stranded somewhere
-to have freakishly warm or freakishly cool weather
-to change clothes in front of twenty other kids and a state highway and not care
-to meet many cows and many sheep
-to share and borrow clothing from everyone
-to hug and cry on your last night
-to feel that life is suddenly dull without harmony