When I began working with The Artist's Way, one term I kept reading was synchronicity. I hadn't a clue what it meant, in fact, I just thought it was a lot of New Age blather.
I haven't seen much of it, just dribs and drabs, like meeting a woman whose specialty is Spanish art songs at the same time that the church where I am an (unpaid) soloist started having a service in Spanish every Sunday.
Something I have begun focusing on is that, no matter how well I want to sing, and no matter how determined I am to do something with singing other than just being a church soloist during the years remaining to me, I know that I will never interest anyone as a singer, other than close friends and church people. I have been rejected by at least 10 "community opera" groups in Manhattan (probably that means all of them) so in addition to letting go of my dream of being an opera star, I have also had to let go of my dream of being a big fish in a little pond, AKA, to perform a leading role (if I'm not getting paid at least as much as I make as a copyeditor I am not singing in an opera chorus or performing a comprimaria role - time is too short) in a no-pay community opera group.
So the question I have asked myself is (and I have asked it over and over) what do I want? If I want to sing a role like Azucena, for example, I can roll up my sleeves and revisit those terrifying high B flats and organize a production of Il Trovatore myself for a small outlay of cash, that will probably be seen by 20 people if I'm lucky. Or I can organize some kind of concert. I am hoping the Requiem will be a success, mainly because it is a charity event and I plan to keep the focus on that it is something for people to hear during Lent, and that the ticket money will go to the Food Pantry and Community Lunch.
But I know that the other thing that I want is a spotlight. That is why I continue to be intrigued by Julie and Julia. Julie was not a great cook or a great writer, but her story piqued someone's interest. So my challenge is: how to pique someone's interest. Surely someone might find it interesting that a 62-year-old is on a path to keep singing better, struggling to fight the physical aging process and cram a lot of what conservatory students learn over 4-6 years into my little nooks and crannies of free time.
As for the title of this post, here is the turn things have taken. I realized that in addition to my envy of working singers (and by this I don't necessarily mean people who earn their living singing, but people who are regularly cast in various opera productions, sometimes for pay sometimes not, who are doing it on a regular basis) I am also envious of the whole "gestalt" that some of these people have, posting things on Facebook and other places, where they toss out bits of wisdom intertwined with snark and have lots of "yes men and women" who tell them how fabulous and clever they are. I am as excluded from that as I am from the real world of singing. I have some supportive friends on Facebook, but with one or two exceptions, they are not those people nor do they behave like that. People wish me good luck, or say I will be in their thoughts and prayers, but I don't have a "claque". So I was feeling very lonely and bereft (really, at 62 to be a wannabe is rather pathetic, whatever the territory) when out of the blue, one of my Facebook friends, someone I knew long ago and reconnected with, posted on my wall that she had been listening to my Youtube video of Wagner's "Angel". She has shared this with her friends and seems to really love it. I was so touched I almost wanted to cry. So few people really have any sense of the "fabulousness" I try to project (although what I have is probably more authentic and will last longer) that I was quite astonished that this "Angel" video (which, come to think of it is not "fabulous", it is churchly and angelic) has taken off the way it has. It has more hits than anything else on the church Youtube channel, although it is probably sacrilegious to look at it that way and even care.
So you never know when something you have been yearning for will just sort of turn up, from an unexpected quarter...
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