Who Am I?

I am taking a break from work (which I can ill-afford) to take up this existential question, because I think this is at the root of a lot of what is making me unhappy.

I have said, truly, that I am not sorry I don't earn my living singing (although it would be nice to have "getting my makeup and hair done" in my job description not to mention being able to travel on someone else's dime), nor do I wish I had an opera engagement (even an amateur one) every month on end.

Yes, I want to keep singing better and better (which I think I am) and yes, I wish someone would invite me to join them in a concert, which would make me feel that I really am a singer, and I definitely wish I could devote 2 hours a day to working on music, but the crux of it all, I think, is really this:

If the people who flit from regional house to regional house to perform and come to to New York for auditions are singers, and the people who pay through the nose to sing with the expletive deleted orchestra that treated me like garbage and go to several auditions a month are singers, then who am I?

I spend about 30 hours a week copyediting, 10 hours a week on eldercare, and maybe 5 hours a week singing - or maybe 10 if you include choir commitments. I sing maybe 7 church solos a year and maybe one "something else". Since I sang Dalila in 2008 the "something else" has had an audience of less than 20, or an audience primarily made up of nursing home residents.

One of the reasons I went to all those auditions wasn't that I seriously thought I'd be cast in anything, but because it was an excuse to get dressed up and sing in front of people and feel special. Most people get a "no thank you" so that was not hurtful. I suppose it kept it real. I had thought going to those meetups would keep it real but it just made me realize how insignificant I really was in the scheme of things.

Now one thing I have always been, whether I sang or not, was a diva.

Now the esteemed Susan Eichhorn Young whom I quote so often, said no one can call herself a diva who hasn't earned it. So hm....

Why do I say I'm a diva? My partner's sister, with whom I have almost nothing in common (she lives in Texas and likes Glen Beck) do have in common that we know we are divas. We love big hair, big makeup, bright colored clothes, gold jewelry (she can afford it, I can't, although she did give me one or two pieces she was tired of), and red home decor.

One of the earliest pictures of me (I don't have it - at one point I tore up most of my childhood pictures because I thought I was fat and ugly) is when I was three years old and sitting at my parents' upright piano, turning my head to try to imitate a cabaret singer showing off.

This picture shows what I looked like at 18 (I only let people take neck up pictures, but I think I look pretty hot and neither my hair nor my cosmetic style is "natural")

and

this is what I looked like in the mid90s when I was a baton twirler with the Big Apple Corps Marching Band. (Why should the guys have all the great outfits?)

So there you have it.

As I said to a friend a few minutes ago, if I lived in "East Eggshell, Iowa", I could really be a diva! Being a soloist at a local church and singing an aria outside a bake sale would be enough!