Report on first round of auditions and - what has become of 'Being'?

Well... just done 2 days of auditions for the recording of Inanna - and found a few people we'd like to work with - but not a rock solid cast. We are going to have to look further afield - and do more reseach. It was fun doing the auditions and it was most interesting when people brought to the session their own special style of singing - Irish folk songs, free improvising, meditational toning, serphardic, soul, as well as Bel Canto, Mozart, Rossini, Handel et al.
It is hard to find really strong voices that can be relied upon to be faithful to the score and explore their voices in a non classical way. To find people who have the technique to work quickly and easily on a score and are vocally able to shift from chest to head in the space of two notes, for example - or yodel, grunt, tremour and wail in one phase, count to 11 and reach a beautiful high note in the next - it is not an easy ask! But still - I know there are people out there who could do all that.
It's a task a minute at the moment for me - every time I finish one set of jobs another jumps out at me. I was about to cook dinner tonight - thought of one email I had send, asap - and ended up spending an hour writing at least five emails which occured to me from that one.
The best bit of the day today was cooking the lentils and chopping the vegetables. It was a revelation to me how wonderfully grounding that was. I didn't realise how much I was longing to get grounded until I did that! And it took a lot of effort to decide I was going to cook. I could so easily have bought a ready meal. But no, tonight I thought - do yourself a favour and cook. It was really a healing experience! I'm so wound up about keeping things on the go with this project - I find it so hard to come away from it and just be. Ans yet my whole 'be'ing is desperate to just be. Yet, I have set myself up with an ambitious, goal orientated, massive, almost mad project to try and complete. OK we will get a demo of the opera - but so what? Then we are just at the beginning - this could go on for 5 years - searching for sponsors, festivals etc.... what have i taken on?
And yet - I would rather be 'do'ing nothing else. It's just that I need to find the 'be'ing bit within the 'do'ing of it all!!! And yes, cooking works for me in that way. Reading contemplative texts before sleeping does it for me - looking at the sky does it for me - but these precious moments are few and far between - as there is a little devil inside me - that drives me on and on to make this project happen - and yes, it's a highly motivated devil - with good intentions - but boy I wish she would learn to love the moment more. And yet -when I am in a less active time work wise - I get restless and want to beworking on some grand plan... Humm.. very interesting to write it down... blogging shows me something about my own contradicitons.
The other high point of the day was a call from a very interesting singer who has expressed interest. We are meeting tomorrow and I have high hopes that she could move things on to the next stage - both in terms of her contribution and who else she might be able to suggest to sing - as she is very well connected.
We have decided to put in an extra instrumental rehearsal for the recording - this will really secure the string section - get all their bowings sorted before the big day. The date for the recording is set - it's June 10th! After that three days mixing - and working on the film side too! We have a professional film maker interested in filming the whole project -so we will end up with a DVD promotional demo - which is much more exciting. I've started a video diary as of this week as the DVD will include some interviews as well as the music. It's all good stuff!!