Money and Ambivalence

This post is prompted by a number of things, most specifically that I re-connected with someone I had been friendly with when I was just out of high school and we friended each other on Facebook. She seems to be an opera lover, and as she lives in Paris, loves Samson et Dalila, so I said I would post a sound clip of me singing "Amour Viens Aider" on her wall. This was part of a package my mother got me as a Christmas present several years ago. She has a friend who's a sound engineer and he hauled his equipment to my coach's studio in Manhattan and made a CD of me singing several arias (the best is "Stella del Marinar" which I have as my sound clip on this blog).

When I listened to "Amour" just now I really wanted to cringe. Yes, I got up to the interpolated B flat, and actually, that two octave run sounded quite good, but the rest of it didn't. When I'm singing, I'm always conscious of how my upper register can get screamy, but on recordings, it's my lower register that sounds dreadful. Sort of like it won't perch on a pitch anywhere and is just what I call "sqwawky and talky".

Now if I were a "real" singer, I would have made another recording by now, but there's no way I can justify the expense. This probably cost my mother about $300. Even if she were alive I wouldn't have gotten that kind of expensive Christmas present - I spent the past year using dribs and drabs of money in her bank accounts to supplement my income.

Then there's the issue (less directly related to singing) of photographs. There's a "real" singer I follow on Facebook and on my pseudonymous blog, who is "who I wish I were". She is a working opera singer (no big sexy roles, but still...) and is quite attractive in a zaftig kind of way. In any event she exudes sexuality, despite (perhaps because of?) not having a steady relationship. One thing I envy about her is her self-confidence/self-involvement. At least once a month she's posting a spate of very attractive pictures (I have no idea if they are professional photos but they certainly look as if they are). Big cleavage, big lips, everything shown off to advantage - definitely not family snapshots.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the nice photos I have of myself. I just don't know people who take those sorts of photos and again, I couldn't justify spending money on something like that.

When I first began my post-2/15/04 journey, I had no photos of myself at all that didn't make me look middle aged and sexless, so I spent about $300 for head shots. I guess it was long enough ago that I got a contact sheet, and out of about 100 photos, only one didn't make me look like an uptight Junior League lady

but I couldn't justify doing something like that now. What would these pictures be for?

I don't know whether it's generational, but most of the "real" singers I'm so envious of are just enough younger than I am that they are well versed in how to use web cams, make Youtube videos, record themselves on their laptops, etc. If I had the time to learn how to do those things I'm sure I could, but my plate is pretty full, what with copyediting to pay my bills, taking care of my partner, and singing and learning the music I need/want to learn.

So speaking of money....

I am very frightened by what's happening in this country. How can the American people have elected representatives who think it's better to let a big corporation like GE not pay any taxes, than to see that average people can have Social Security, Medicare, and other support programs? I can understand that certain members of Congress live in a bubble, but most people in this country are not rich and you'd think that they would rather have a safety net that they might need than a dream of getting rich - which they won't.

How this affects me personally is that there's a big chance my partner might miss a Social Security payment, and an even bigger chance that her food stamps will be cut off. (If anyone's wondering, that's one of many reasons why we're not getting married. She needs to spend down to get Medicaid and other services, and my assets don't need to go down the drain so that she can be in assisted living. We're at the point when many straight couples wonder how to get divorced so that the surviving spouse won't end up destitute if the older sicker spouse ends his or her life in a nursing home.)

So there's certainly no money for self-indulgences right now. Not to mention that we haven't had a vacation in several years. I actually feel much less stressed out working freelance and not taking vacations than I did working in an office, making twice as much money, being sleep deprived, bored, and angry, and then taking a nice vacation once a year, but it would be nice to take one more trip to Maine and perhaps one to England in between the time our little dog dies (he's 13 and not well, and we simply can't leave him)and when my partner does.

Voice lessons aren't an "indulgence" and neither are group coachings, or the rental of the studio for my concert (that will actually pay for itself), but recordings and photos - those will have to wait.