ready? ok!

i'm drinking green tea right now instead of coffee. not because i'm suddenly a health nut or because, as ellen degeneres said after she went all L.A., "coffee is rotting my stomach." i love coffee, stomach rot and all. no, i'm drinking green tea because i've lost my voice. it's not completely gone, but i sound like the cheerleaders in my high school. you know the ones--the popular girls with blonde ponytails who walk around the halls with their red and blue pantaloons and their raspy voices. that's what i sound like. i was hoping i could at least pull off kathleen turner. sadly, she's more of a man than i.

like most singers, it's a fucking bad situation when my voice goes. i have an audition for baltimore opera (chorus) on saturday, and annapolis opera auditions are the week after that. my voice has been gone for over a week; will i remember my arias? will i have a voice come saturday? who knows.

also like most singers, i jump to the worst possible conclusion when i've lost my voice. it's not just a cold--it's allergies. it's not just allergies--it's nodes. and not soft nodes, either, but hard nodes. the kind that have to be laser-operated; the kind that the surgeon was trying to remove when his hand slipped and he sliced julie andrews' vocal cords, ending her long singing career. or, it's not just hard nodes--it's throat cancer, brought on by years of smoking. i'll be the youngest case of throat cancer ever. i can already hear the electronic noise my voicebox will make.

what did i do to deserve losing my voice? i question. most people just say "ha ha, listen to me! i sound like a frog! it's so funny that my voice is gone! ha ha!" for singers, however, it always holds a deeper meaning. maybe it was that last beer on friday night; maybe ive been oversinging. i used to always think that emily was psychotic, being so paranoid about the treatment of her cords. i'm starting to understand.