As someone in a 12-step program, I am not a big fan of New Year's resolutions. When I need to make changes, I will know, as I indicated in this post.
My partner said to me that this had been, for me, a "good year". Do I agree? I don't know.
This is the first year that I spent the entire year as a freelancer, living almost entirely off my earnings. The "almost" means I took about $10k out of money that had been in my (deceased) mother's bank accounts, but that is, perhaps, money that I would have been able to earn this year or last year if I hadn't been taking care of her when she was dying and wrapping up her meager estate.
On the other hand, I felt a certain amount of despair that here I was, once again, trapped at a desk by myself for hours at a time doing something safe, dull, and predictable.
My singing has continued to improve (certainly my best singing is better than it ever has been), but I have had more and more bitter realizations that no matter how well I sing, I am basically "nowhere" on the classical singing food chain, certainly not living where I am living, which is what prompted my remark about small towns and my (sometimes) wish that I lived in one that was misunderstood and ended an online friendship.
I decided to delete my pseudonymous blog, and to stop reading most of the online journals of other singers, which only made me feel angry and envious, caused a virtual brouhaha, and led me to realize how terribly bored I am a great deal of the time (only when I am trapped here doing my work-for-pay - I am never bored when I can choose how I can spend my time) and what a temptation it then became for me to enviously read about how real singers live, hate myself and my life, and put poison pen to paper (metaphorically speaking).
One reason I didn't make any resolutions, other than the one mentioned earlier about, where singing is concerned, to set my own goals and mind my own business, is that I already practice and already spend a certain chunk of the day learning music. What I seem to need is an identity vis a vis the world of singing, even simply an identity that I can have between me and myself.
The biggest shock I experienced when I went back to singing in 2004 wasn't that I wasn't going to have a "career" - I had already figured that out - but that there was so much talent here that I couldn't even carve out a niche for myself as a good amateur in a milieu in which I was respected by other people. I mean if I want to put on a concert I can always find people to sing with but I had hoped to find a few people (and I mean this in the practical sense, not in a egotistical one) who sang almost as well as I did but not quite, who were eager to perform, and who would invite me to do things and at least share the cost and the planning, but this has not happened.
I have even tried to wrack my brains looking for something else I could do to entertain myself and satisfy my need for glamour and flash, something not as highly competitive as singing, but I don't come up with anything.
So. If I did make any New Year's resolutions, here they are:
1. To practice every day.
2. To always have a musical work (opera, oratorio, etc.) that I am learning, aside from choir music.
3. To always have one choir solo to look forward to (we usually choose these for ourselves, subject to scheduling and, occasionally, veto by the choir director)
4. To always have one other thing in the works. If it's not outer directed (an audition to go to), then it can be inner-directed (something I will plan and organize myself).
5. To remind myself every day that I am an exciting, glamorous, vivacious, performing artist even if that is not what I do for a living and even if I never travel, if what I do for a living never takes me beyond my tiny desk or leads to my meeting anyone, and even if no one cares what I'm wearing 99% of the time except me.
6. Any time I see a friend with a camera, if I'm wearing something nice, ask them please to take a picture and email it to me (this doesn't cost a cent these days).
7. To be grateful that I have a place to be safe and something to do that's secure while at the same time working at doing things that don't feel safe and secure, because safe and secure is boring and boredom is dangerous.
I guess that's it.
I may have an audition to go to on Saturday - or not. I sent a resume and head shot to someone via FedEx (this was an audition I had heard about through non-traditional channels) and will call them tomorrow to see if I got a spot. Surprisingly, when I mentioned this to my partner, she did not get into an uproar about it, so this is progress. I don't want to write details about this audition until either it's over, or I know that it's not on. I just want to keep this to myself. I have been preparing two roles, and would be happy with either (one I'm sure is out of the question, but I can always hope).
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