Accountability

When I was involved with the pseudonymous blogging community, I for good or ill had a rather intimate look into the lives of a lot of "real" (aka "working")singers. Many of these were trying to lose weight, so they set up "Boot Camps" which were mostly about fitness but could be about anything. A key to this was "accountability" which is easier to maintain if you make your intentions public.

Yesterday, thanks to a lot of encouragement from my therapist; the pastor and choir director at the church where I sing; the church office manager; various Facebook friends; Zachary, the nice man who comments here; and most surprisingly of all, two singers I respect enormously - Cindy Sadler and a man who calls himself "houndentenor", both of whom responded to that post on the The Forum that I was so frightened to post, I am now "accountable" for my Verdi Requiem concert.

I am going to make this happen, full stop. In November I will put it on the church calendar (I will shoot for the Saturday before Palm Sunday) and ask my teacher if he wants to sing. I will also see if the soprano who sang in my Verdi concert will be free. She sounded really eager to do it. And I will take it from there. The long lead time will give me a chance to get my ducks in a row, so to speak. And if people back out, I will deal. I have done it before.

This is definitely a work I can sing. Other than the bang-up high A flat in "Liber Scriptus" (which I can sing like gangbusters when I'm feeling well) and the sustained pianissimo in "Lux Aeterna" there is nothing vocally difficult. It requires a high level of musicianship, which I have definitely begun to acquire thanks to my involvement with the church choir. Even though I am not primarily a choral singer and always have to be careful not to do uncomfortable things to "blend", my involvement with this choir, singing soprano one week, second soprano the next, and alto the next, in a variety of music ranging from Bach cantatas to African-American spirituals arranged for classical voices, in a setting with not that many other singers and only at most 3-5 other trained singers, has taught me so much!!

Yesterday I asked God to bless this endeavor, which brought tears to my eyes. Although I am not Christian, I am not an atheist like my parents either. Asking for this blessing has helped keep fear at bay: fear that something will intervene to derail it, mostly. I just can't think about that.

But what all the planning I did yesterday mostly underscored, is that people take me seriously. I was actually stunned that Cindy wrote back to me on the Forum and I thanked her.

I also got a nice email from the woman who had said she was insulted that I had asked her to sing for free. She is, as I said, a good person, and she explained why she gets upset when people ask her to sing for free, which I can understand.

I am feeling better than I have in a while. I was please to see that I made a lot of money last month without feeling I was taking time away from my singing; I am beginning to recover from all the recent losses I've sustained - two pets and my partner's neighbor, which triggered a lot of fear that if this woman could die suddenly in her apartment my partner could also; and my partner now has a cleaning lady coming regularly, which means that our time together can be more pleasant. We even went to see Hugo last weekend.

Tonight I am going to bring the music for "Lux Aeterna" and give it to the choir director to see if he would like it for a solo.