learning to sing

When I was a kid, I walked a lot outside. Between my grandmother’s house, my father’s house, my mother’s house, my school, my music school. Because Iceland, most of it is like nobody lives there. And when I walked I could sing and sing and sing and no-one could hear me. And that’s how I learned to sing ; And that’s what i did for I don’t know, ten years, or fifteen years, or whatever, of my life. And that was kind of my little treasure, my little secret.

And then when I met an engineer, much later, first they tried asking me just to be in one place while I sing, which is absolutely ridiculous. It took them ages to teach me that one, and I sort of managed to learn. But then I’d sing very quiet and whisper and be really delicate and the next second I would scream and everything would explode and they would have to repair everything and I would sit there kind of all embarassed.

But I’ve been singing now for about seventeen years in microphones and I thought I might allow myself one luxury and that would be singing outside again. So we would record the songs and mix them, do like an instrumental mix of them, and in the evening they would buy some beers, get like an 8-track machine and a DAT-machine ; and headphones with very very long leads and microphones with very very very long leads. And they would sit behind the bush, sitting and drinking their beers.

Around midnight, a starry sky, and I go and run on the beach, go away from them, so nobody can see me, like, black and the stars up over. I would put my feet in the sea and out-sing the quiet bits against the sand, and change the sound with the micro- phone like this (makes as if she’s holding the mike in her armpit), and stand up and run and do the happy bits, and go into the bushes and hide behind them ; it was a complete goosepimple experience for me ; it was very very precious and I hope I can sing like that more in the future.

loladamusica, 1995