This morning...overcast again. Just around the edges, ever so slightly, there is a feeling of September. The days are shorter, and my morning writing is done in partial darkness.
I have started exercising again. My week off weigh training turned into almost three weeks without batting an eye. But yesterday I began again. I'm beginning to think that it's all about beginning again.
At my age my body simply doesn't really care all that much about fitness, so it often becomes a struggle between me and it. My body says, "What do you want to workout for? Don't you know it's a losing battle? You will get old, and you will die...who are you kidding with this working out shit?" "Shut up!" I explain.
It seems that when I hit forty, I found myself in this conflict with my body. The eternally young part of me wants to workout and look good, the aging part of me wants to relax and call it a day. These past seven months have been about not listening to the resigned part of me. Resignation is such an unattractive quality.
I give up. It's pointless. Hmmm...is it?
No. Not yet.
When ever I think of getting older and rotting away, I try to keep Cornelius Reid in mind. Mr. Reid is arguably one of our times greatest voice teachers and authors. I was fortunate enough to have a few voice lessons with him at his New York, upper Westside studio in the early nineties. At the time he had just turned eighty and was at his teaching peak. David Dunbar, who was my voice teacher and friend at the time had arranged my classes with Cornelius and sat in during the lessons. In a break during one of the classes Cornelius and David spoke about Cornelius' eightieth birthday party. This man could have passed for a sprightly sixty-something in a blink of an eye, and had the voice of a man in his thirties.
The advice and teachings that Mr. Reid imparted to me during those lessons still instruct me and guide me to this day, but perhaps the biggest lesson of all was that being eighty or ninety didn't mean a person necessarily had to be "old". Mr. Reid was definitely anything but old. Last I heard, he was still teaching and giving lectures around the world in his nineties! Thank you Cornelius Reid for teaching me all these things.
Some people have a profound influence on a person's life. One day I will tell the story of exactly how Cornelius Reid changed the entire course of my life by writing a book called "The Free Voice".
So, a new day begins...
HI, I am looking for photos to coincide with an abstract I have written on Mr. Reid's book Voice: Psyche and Soma. My voice teacher uses his teaching method. I have been a student for a number of years. Would you suggest any good photos online to illustrate his methods. thanks chris