Valentine's Day and Beyond

I wasn't going to post anything about Valentine's Day as there is not much left to say about it after all these years. If you aren't familiar with my story you can read here.

But I posted this on my Facebook page, because every year on this anniversary I think it is important to take stock.

it is now 8 years since that fateful Samson et Dalila duet. Every V-Day I think about the Mentor (sometimes I don't think about him for months at a time, amazingly). Do I thank him for my big dramatic mezzo voice that I discovered in my mid50s? The passion for my art that has never waned not even for one day? The fact that nothing will ever be the same? Nonetheless, I am still going out for a simple meal with the love of my life, who never asked to come along on this journey. I am blessed that she is still here when so many are gone.

I also posted this on the Forum because the pseudonym I've used for so long relates to this anniversary, and I thought I ought to just say something about it. The Forum is to me what young people call a "frenemy". I have gotten a lot of help from it but it has made me sad too, as being yet another place to read about the lives of "real" singers.

Right now we're friends again. I got suggestions from two people I really respect, which have spurred me on (if I needed more spurring) to proceed with the Verdi Requiem project. And I got a cute response to my posting about Valentine's Day and my name. This was from a gentleman whom I mostly knew through my pseudonymous blog. He was never a friend of mine but he was a friend of one of the women who wrote there, probably my number one envy-idol, because she not only had the singer-life I wished I had, but also had a lot of the kind of natural sex appeal that I seem not to have unless I work very hard at it (or am in a private situation with someone where we're all clear about what's what). Which is why, despite my leftward leaning political views, I am one of those women feminists love to hate because I still am not convinced that someone like Clarence Thomas is legion in the world of office work. I certainly never encountered anyone who ever even noticed my decolletage let alone commented on it or anything else in an untoward way and I worked in offices for 35 years.

In any event this gentleman was always flirting online with the lady in question, in a way no one has ever flirted with me, except in private, so I was quite startled when he responded to my off-topic post.

Here is my response to his kind comment that "music finds us":

This wasn't just any music. This was a moment of magic, during which I felt like a big diva, not to mention the sexiest and most beautiful woman in the world singing the sexiest aria ever written, and in a church no less!

How could life ever be the same after that?

And there you have it.

I have worked hard in the past eight years, put in hours of blood and sweat in my "practice room" (the loo), sung an entire concert version of Samson et Dalila (minus the chorus), several opera scenes in concert, and numerous church solos, but I have never found that ever again.

As for the Forum itself, it seems that the posted topics are a bit different from the last time I perused it (several years ago?) There are quite a few posts from people with much less experience than I have, and I can answer people like that if I choose. I know about vocal technique, fachs, church repertoire, even what arias and other music might be suitable for different voice types.

I also know quite a bit about health issues.

What I don't know much about are costume fittings, stage makeup (the real kind, not the DIY kind I wear all the time even to do the laundry), travel as work, travel as infidelity trap (the last time I had any hopes of that I was on a business trip for my last job and I fell and fractured my kneecap - a punishment, perhaps?), and dodging passes (if you want to dodge them) during love scenes onstage.

So I don't need to read those posts.

We will see if the Forum and I stay friends.

Now it's back to work, and off to choir practice.

I will wait until the 26th before checking back with the choir director about "Lux Aeterna"