It turns out singing is all about the breath. Why am I surprised? For years I’ve heard this: the diaphragm, singing from the diaphragm, not the throat. You strain your voice if you sing from the throat. But there I was, sitting in that metal folding chair, remembering what I’ve been taught over and over again: in yoga (downward dog), in meditation (trying hard to let go, to BE the breath), during a massage, the masseur’s elbow deep in my sore muscle (breathe into it). Breathe. How many times do I have to be reminded?

I had imagined myself standing by the piano, the handsome teacher with his long curly hair, threaded with silver, pounding out the notes: Do, Re, Mi. Imagined my hands clasped in front of my chest like a plump soprano, my décolletage rising and falling. But instead, I listen to his lecture, his own deep, resonant, musical voice, speaking, just speaking, about the breath. “Do this with me,” he said. “Now you are blowing out candles on a cake. Whooo. Now you are sighing, long and slow. Ahhh.”

In the car all week, I practice. When I am cut off by a semi on the freeway. Breathe. When I am rushing through Safeway and choose an aisle blocked by shopping carts. Breathe. When I am singing with Madonna in the car. Open your mouth; breathe up from the diaphragm; expand the sides of your ribcage; fill your love handles with air. And the love profusion/you make me feel/you make me know.

Breathe, breathe, breathe. Raw, but not ragged. Deep.