I haven't written much lately, mostly because I am drowning in work. Today is Ash Wednesday. To me Lent is mostly about singing (my choir sings more during Lent than at any other time) and sometimes about trying to be a better person.
Growing up Marxist, needless to say I was not raised with Lent, but I certainly was expected to live a life of penance, at least on some level. I went to an expensive private school but wore old second hand clothes, went to the theater but owned little jewelry, and of course was discouraged from fussing with my hair or using cosmetics (my rebellion was neither to become a Weatherperson nor a Conservative but simply to stuff my bathroom cabinet with lipsticks, nail polish, and hair products of every possible type and variety, the more the merrier). I was also made to feel guilty about any personal vanity. The triggering event (I think) to the brouhaha surrounding the pseudonymous blog that I deleted involved my asking the universe whether or not singers in general were self-involved. This was prompted mainly by my envy of the number of photos of themselves these people have (and post everywhere). I was not making a moralistic value judgment. I was probably mostly expressing envy not only that I didn't know people who would take these sorts of photos of me unless I made a big deal of asking them (hence my new profile picture here) and that I don't have the kind of smart phone that makes it easy for me to photograph myself, but that I also think I shouldn't want these sorts of photos. There was a time in my life (before the digital age) when I had a camera with me on every vacation, as did the friends I went with or visited. But the purpose of that was to photograph the larger world, and if people appeared in the picture it was incidental, and we hardly primped ourselves beforehand.
To be honest, I am extremely self-involved regarding my appearance, I just don't move in the right circles to milk this aspect of myself.
In any event, I feel that so much of my behavior and life is "Lenten" that I am not much in the mood to do anything to honor the season other than stick to my promise not to pick fights with my partner. She is mostly an ex partner, we don't live together, I can do what I please when work allows (and this covers quite a lot of territory that I don't discuss here), so I should be agreeable and kind during the weekend days when I cook, do laundry, shop, and sometimes even have an enjoyable outing with her.
Otherwise I am mostly focused on what solo oratorio piece I will be singing. The choir director said that "Lux Aeterna" would not work as a solo (well, yes...I wanted to sing it as a trio but couldn't get two men from the choir to sing the other parts) so I might do "Buss und Reu" from the St. Matthew Passion as it's a "Matthew" liturgical year and the choir will be singing some of the choral sections on Good Friday. Or I may sing "Fac ut Portem" again, which I love.
As for the other subject of this post, benefits, I saw a Facebook posting from a "real" singer (she is not one of my envy targets because she is a different voice type and is actually not one of the women who posts lots of pictures of herself) saying that she finally had health insurance. She said she mostly sings for a living but has had to take some other work as well, to feel more financially secure.
So how did I get where I am now. I was never unemployed, not even for one day, since 1977, until I left my last full-time job in 2009. And I have never not had benefits, full stop. When I left that job in 2009 it was with a "retirement package" that allows me to stay on their health insurance rolls. Now I am working freelance 30 hours a week.
I have a singer friend (another late bloomer, like me) who said that she probably wouldn't have wanted a career as a singer because of the cutthroat competition. For me, the issue was not that, but rather, among other things, the idea of financial insecurity.
I also almost cried when I heard from my teacher how little he is getting from Social Security. I am going to claim it when I am 62, and it won't be much, but it will be almost 5 times what he is getting.
Was all this worth 35 years of boredom and counting? I don't know. I made the choices I made.
On another subject, on Monday I saw Aida at the Met. I don't have time to write a review here now, but might do so another time.
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