This may be one of the most honest things I have ever written; it is taking all the angst I have felt not about singing but about my place in the universe of singing, to a new level. Which is why I feel compelled to write this even though I need to practice (which I will do later!)
I was asking myself why is it that every time I get too deeply involved in conversations on the Forum I start to feel depressed. Ditto if I respond too much to things that "real" singers post on Facebook.
I think the most devastating thing that happened to me when I began to emerge from my cocoon with The Mentor and stick my toe into the big wide world of singing wasn't disappointment that I didn't sound like a polished professional yesterday, or that I didn't get anywhere at auditions, but that I really was a nobody. As I said, if you were to put all the people singing opera in New York in a room, and give them a grade, I would end up in around the 15th or the 20th percentile. (One of the very first things I did when I started singing again was enter a competition, one of the few that had no age limit. We were given grades, based on a perfect score of 100, and mine was around 55. Of course I have no idea what other people's scores were, but still...I should add, though, that about four years later when I went to an audition that provided feedback, the only negative feedback I got was that I was too histrionic and too old.)
So the point is, in a city like this one, no one is interested in someone in the 15th or the 20th percentile. I mean the church where I sing for no money is happy to have me there - I do sound as good as many paid church soloists and I don't make a fuss about getting paid. All I want is regular solo opportunities and respect. (And as that church seems to be the only place, really, that I have gotten the latter, it's that that keeps me there, at least as much as the former.)
But the thing that was even more devastating, was realizing that there's a whole culture to do with singing regularly, whether you're a striving mid-level professional or a good amateur with a manager, that I am not a part of. A culture implies shared stories, mutual acquaintances, similar experiences, and a feeling of belonging.
I mean the Forum is exactly that: a Forum. There are people who post there who are mid-level professionals and people who post there who are 40 and taking their first voice lessons since college. But there is a pecking order and it has been made clear to me that I am at the bottom of it. It's fine if I have a question. People have been truly helpful, for which I am grateful. But it is also made clear to me in subtle ways that I am not part of the "in" crowd and that unless I am there as a supplicant, I should keep my mouth shut. Stupidly, I think that if I share experiences of my own, tiny scraps of things that occur to me in the microscopic nooks and crannies of my life that involve singing in public, past and present, that someone will be interested, and will make me feel included. But of course they won't. It's similar to being in Junior High and yearning after the popular girls who never invite me to their table or include me in their gossip, because, quite frankly, I haven't quite had the sophisticated life experiences that they have had, so in their world I have nothing to say.
The same thing happened with that pseudonymous blog. I felt like I had my nose pressed against the windowpane, looking into a glamorous world where people bought gowns regularly, traveled and stayed in hotels, had on-the-job flirtations, and, of course, worked very hard on perfecting their art, needless to say.
This may be a non sequitur, but I was thinking the other day about purging my closet - I probably own enough clothes for four people. So I was thinking I should definitely get rid of a lot of the office attire that I will never wear again (the nicest things I will keep to wear to the opera or an occasional party) but that I will never never never get rid of the handful of gowns that I bought at Housing Works, even though I have worn two of them once, and have two that I have never worn at all. I suppose I want someone to know that even the fact that I bought those gowns says something about me. I am the woman who bought those gowns, even if all I do 95% of the time is sit at a laptop editing manuscripts or sing in a choir robe.
A bitter lesson that I have learned is that I probably am better off staying away from this "community" of singers in which I have no place. I got some suggestions about how to put on an opera or concert so I should just cut my losses and disappear again.
But the problem that remains that I have no community. Which is what I meant when I made that post about a peer group. I wasn't just asking about how to find people to sing in a concert I want to produce, I was asking about how to find a group of people with whom I can find common ground, people (not young vocal performance students, but people closer to my age) who are excited about singing, who want to deconstruct their last practice session or strategize about how to orchestrate an opportunity to be "diva for an afternoon" without feeling pushed out by all the younger more polished people. People who will look at me and see the woman in the gown who sang "O Ma Lyre Immortelle" not the woman in jeans who pounds a laptop and cleans up semicolons.
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