I'm taking singing lessons from a new teacher this term. I've had three lessons and they must be working because I now can hardly sing at all. The things I've learned in previous years from previous teachers are no longer of use except in certain specialized situations. I am being taught to produce my basic tone in a new way, so all the physical and mental markers I associate with producing pitch and line and phrase are now useless.

Because I now must think radically differently, my actual performance of songs I've known and performed in the past is now pitiful. I no longer can trust my breathing or even my pitch accuracy because I don't yet have control of this new world of tone production. This leaves me trying a lot harder than I have in a while.

This is analogous to how students tend to look at me when they encounter me for the first time. Students in first year composition see me asking them to produce writing in ways that high school may well have overtly denied. The recipes they are used to and comfortable with get them no where, except in "certain specialized situations." They are left trying to find their voices.

My teacher says he is freeing my voice; I say to my students that I am trying to free their voices. My debut performing a song in this new milieu was yesterday afternoon. My teacher gave me the song Monday, called me Wednesday at 11:00 to tell me I was performing it in his master class at 4:00, and then I did. I got through. It was painfully uncertain singing. Prior to his lessons I would have performed it confidently and with a certain sense of mastery.

I tend to have students write the first day. I tell them to write freely. I have them read aloud the first and second day. Their pieces are painfully uncertain. Prior to my lesson they would have written as they had been taught. They probably would have done so with a "certain sense of mastery."

Teachers are aggravating creatures.